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Aviation History
1964
1964 - 1638.PDF
FLIGHT International, 28 May 1964 895 Letters Letters for these columns are welcomed, though "Flight Inter- national" does not necessarily endorse the views expressed. Name and address should be given, not necessarily for publication in full. Brief letters will have a better chance of early publication. "Brab's" First Flights SIR,—There will be many tributes paid to the memory of that great man Lord Brabazon, but I wonder if I may contribute my small share by setting out a few of the lesser- known facts about his early flying. He was aware that his delightful autobiography The Brabazon Story was not certain about some of the early points, and was very pleased when these were cleared up. The name familiar to all the early pioneers of the air was not, of course, Lord Brabazon, but J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon, a name even better known in France than in England in that vital year 1908, when Wilbur Wright was galvanizing the Europeans into action by his flying at Auvours. Moore- Brabazon had the true pioneer spirit: he saw clearly the future that lay ahead for the flying machine, and he "wanted in" as the Americans so expressively say. He thereupon journeyed to the only commercial concern in the world who at that time offered to build flying machines—the firm of Voisin Freres, at Billancoun on the Seine, near Paris. It was Moore-Brabazon who commissioned their first "standard" Voisin pusher biplane. It bore proudly on the side-curtains of its tail-unit the inscription, "J. T. C. Moore- Brabazon No 4," in memory of his earlier attempts to build aircraft. He learned to fly this historic machine in December 1908 on that first of European aerodromes, the military parade ground of Issy-les-Moulineaux, then a suburb of Paris. He then took the machine to Bouy (Camp de Chalons) near Reims, and on January 17, 1909, made a creditable flight of 5km. He thus became the first British-born aero- plane pilot, Cody not yet being naturalized, and Henri Farman being a Briton domiciled in France, son of expatriate British parents. It was in February 1909 that Moore-Brabazon made—by pure chance—a move which was indirectly to be of the greatest service to world aviation. For when paying a routine visit to the Voisins at their Billancourt works, he saw a brand new aeroplane just being completed. He asked Gabriel Voisin if it was for sale; Gabriel said it was and the aircraft was duly disposed of. But it was in fact not for sale, for the great Henri Farman had commissioned it, and had stipulated various design improvements he wished to have incorporated. I have a photograph which shows the machine in the factory with the inscribed piece of fabric pinned in place ready for attachment: it reads "Henri Farman No 2." Someone removed this before the English visitor was shown the aircraft. Lord Brabazon was amazed when I told him this; he had no idea that he had bought Henri's machine, and would of course never have dreamt of being a party to such decep- tion. The young Moore-Brabazon then had a 60 h.p. ENV engine installed in the machine and brought it to England; he had inscribed on the side-curtains of its tail-unit the name he had decided upon, Bird of Passage. It was on the Bird of Passage—thus his second Voisin—during the weekend of April 29-May 2, 1909, that he made the first powered aero- plane flights by a Briton in Britain, at Shellbeach on the IsleofSheppey. Lord Brobozon's first Voisin ("/. T. C. Moore-Rrabazon No 4"), 1908 Lord Brabazon's second Voisin, the former "Henri Farman No 2" and later the "bird of Passage" (1909) When Henri Farman discovered what had happened, he suffered, as a friend said, "«n choc terrible." Suddenly, at the height of his fame, he had no aeroplane to fly, having sold his much-modified original Voisin to an Austrian syndicate. So, justly infuriated, he left the Voisins for ever, and rapidly designed and made in a small workshop of his own his celebrated "Henry [this time spelt with a 'y'l Farman No III." This classic machine first flew in April 1909, and its progeny did more than any other type of aircraft—even the Bleriot XI—to make the world airminded. Determining to identify himself with the embryo British aviation industry, Moore-Brabazon commissioned the Short brothers—who were then also building six Wright Flyers under licence—to construct a new machine for him on which he could compete for the Daily Mail's £1,000 prize for the first all-British aeroplane to be flown by a Briton in a circular mile. This he won at Shellbeach on October 30, 1909, on his Short No 2. With these achievements particularly to his credit, he was rightly awarded the Royal Aero Club's Aviator's Certificate No 1, dated March 8, 1910, and light-heartedly commemor- ated to this day by his car registration plate "FLY 1". It was also fitting that the Aero-Club de France should also honour him by granting him their Brevet de Pilote Aviateur, No 40, dated the same day—March 8, 1910. It was a great pity that controversy later arose and sought to deprive "Brab" of the honour of being the first Briton to fly in Britain, in favour of either Phillips or A. V. Roe. Great men as both of these claimants were, Phillips never did any productive flying in his life, and Roe only really "got going" at the end of 1909; neither could hold a candle to Moore-Brabazon's achievements at the time. After all, as his friend Griffith Brewer said on another occasion, "the meaning of the first flight is the first successful flight; other- wise it would include the first unsuccessful flight." London Wl CHARLES H. GIBBS-SMITH Private Pilots and Instrument Ratings SIR,—I was very interested in the article "Panel Games" by Richard Sarjeant which appeared in your issue dated April 30. We have a Piper Comanche 250 which is solely flown by me except on rare occasions when we employ a commercial pilot. The aircraft is equipped with ADF T-12 which, as you know, is not Class I, and King KX-100 90-channel transceiver with VOR and ILS. I propose to fit, in the very near future, a 360-channel transceiver with 50kc/s spacing and will, obviously, use the transceiver part of my KX-100 as a stand-by. In addition, I shall also fit a marker beacon receiver which will give me a pretty comprehensive radio equipment and which can be built up to include glideslope and a second VOR if necessary. However, I see from an information circular received this morning that the MoA propose a progressive withdrawal of the 75Mc/s marker beacons and a reduction in non-direc- tional MF beacons (NDBs) and to substitute DME facilities, so it looks as though my efforts to bring our aeroplane up to date will be completely wasted. My biggest limitation at the moment is my ratings. I am an ex-RAF pilot with, unfortunately, too much low-level work and not enough instrument training but with l,000hr experience. I have, of course, as my ultimate aim the instru- ment rating but, as Mr Sarjeant says, so much work is involved even for somebody with quite a bit of experience that I have been put off so far. In addition, as the Comanche does not have class 1 ADF I should not be able to take the test in my own aeroplane which, obviously, means additional expense and training to get used to the aeroplane in which I will have to take the
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