A Quiet Country Town E-Book

David Gibbings

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 363

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

'an excellent read' - AEROSPACE magazine In 1915, Westland Aircraft Works was established in the country town of Yeovil. Since then, aircraft have been designed, manufactured and tested at Westland, including the Lysander, which was used to transport British agents to Europe during the Second World War. In 1948, the company focused solely on helicopters and its aircraft have been sent all over the world since then, used in life-saving with Air Ambulance and Search and Rescue, and deployed in warfare such as Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan. In this new and updated edition of A Quiet Country Town, David Gibbings celebrates over 100 years of Westland through an anthology of writings that retell the company's history and its special relationship with Yeovil, which has rarely been quiet since the first aircraft took off from the airfield that now lies at its heart.

Leseprobe

Cover photograph: Doug Lloyd

First published 2015

This paperback edition published 2021

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© David Gibbings, 2015, 2021

The right of David Gibbings to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 6446 3

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

A Dedication by:

The Rt Hon. the Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon GCMG KBE

‘As well as being a world class aero-engineering and technology firm, Westland is the industrial heart of the community in Yeovil and South Somerset. I was privileged to work for a Westland firm in Yeovil and to represent the community in Parliament.

For anyone interested in the South Somerset area or in Britain’s proud aero-industry, this comprehensive account is a “must read”,’

Paddy Ashdown

Contents

 Acknowledgements

 Introduction

  1.How It All Began

Derek James

  2.The Westland Railway Siding

Derek Phillips

  3.The RAeS at Yeovil

Dr G.S. Hislop

  4.Saga of a Widgeon

Harald Penrose

  5.What on Earth is a Wapiti?

David Gibbings

  6.Wapiti Aircrew

James Kightly

  7.Flight Over Everest

David Gibbings

  8.Pterodactyl

Harald Penrose

  9.Lysander

Harald Penrose

10.Spitfire and Whirlwind

Harald Penrose

11.W.E.W. Petter 1908–1968

Glyn Davies

12.The Bombing of Yeovil

Dilip Sarkar

13.The Good Neighbour

Graham Mottram

14.Normalair

Mike Bednall

15.Helicopters

O.L.L. Fitzwilliams

16.Here be Giant Killers

Jack Sweet

17.Wyvern

Harald Penrose

18.Rationalisation

David Gibbings

19.Westland 1947–1968

John Fay

20.Lynx – The Making of a Thoroughbred

David Gibbings

21.The Procurement Dilemma

David Gibbings

22.Exocet

Jim Schofield

23.Airborne Early Warning

Jim Schofield

24.Going for a Song

David Gibbings

25.Ode to the Wessex

David Baston

26.Putting the Record Straight

David Gibbings

27.The Westland Affair

David Gibbings

28.Working with the Italians/English

Peter Dunford and Fiorenzo Mussi

29.Airfield Noise!

David Gibbings

30.Oltre il Centenario

David Gibbings

 Appendix 1: Aircraft List

 Appendix 2: Westland People

 Appendix 3: Pictures of Westland

 Bibliography

 Fred Ballam

Acknowledgements

It is always pleasant, when one has been involved in a book, to discover that your efforts have not passed unnoticed, and that the author has acknowledged the contribution. For this book, which is an anthology, the authors are prominently named, and can be assured of my thanks for their fine work.

A number of my colleagues at AgustaWestland helped me on the way but I shall not follow the risky path of naming a few, in the knowledge that I would unintentionally miss someone out.

I will break that rule just a little: the basis for the cover was the work of Doug Lloyd; few books, publications, presentations or layouts are produced within Westland without his generous help. Simon Pryor controls the use of AW photographs, and the high standard of photographs available is due to him. Both these stars have my thanks as fellow artists, enthusiasts and valued friends..

It has been my privilege to assist Richard Folkes during the lead-up to the centenary. I have always admired positive thinking and good humour, and here I have met my match.

I am indebted to my colleagues from the Westland family past, and their brilliant young successors and of course that ‘Parcel of Rogues ’who make up ‘Flight Operations’, pilots and engineers who knowingly or unwittingly have contributed to this book.

I would wish that those who started it all in 1915 could be aware of what they, we and the people of Yeovil have achieved, and long may it continue.

Introduction

So it is 100 years since the airfield was established and the manufacture of aircraft commenced at Yeovil. From that time onwards Yeovil ceased to be the quiet country town it had always been, and began to develop as an aviation centre.

As celebrating a significant anniversary would clearly call for a book, my own thoughts were that this should not be yet another catalogue of aircraft, but rather something that brought out the relationship between the aircraft company and the local community.

The formative years were devoted to fixed-wing aircraft; however, Westland has established itself as a helicopter company and now stands as a centre of rotorcraft activity within the UK.

The West Country has always been at the heart of the quest to fly. In 1848 Stringfellow flew his steam-driven model at Chard, and this event is generally accepted as the first flight by an aircraft operating under its own power. It is interesting to reflect upon the incredible rate of progress since that time. It took 50 years before the Wright Brothers were able to fly a mere 40 metres/120 feet.

However, thirty years later the DC-3 flew, capable of taking 30 passengers between cities, and little over thirty years after that Concorde was flying the Atlantic at supersonic speeds. By the mid-1980s, the Space Shuttle was taking man into space.

Although the development of the helicopter does not invoke the same excitement as the supersonic adventure, the creation of an aircraft that can take off and land on a given spot is a life saver in itself, and involves all the high technology available. It follows that the work going on within the factory compound and airfield at Yeovil today has advanced to a level comparable anywhere within the aerospace industry.

If one looks into the origins of any significant settlement at Yeovil, it becomes evident that it was beginning to expand with the arrival of the Romans and the traffic of goods along the Fosse Way, so there is cause for some amusement that maybe there has always been Italian interest in Yeovil from the very beginning.

It should be noted that for one third of the century we now celebrate we have been closely associated with the Italian company Agusta. It certainly should be noted that this is also reflected by the fact that Yeovil has chosen to twin with Cascina Costa.

A great deal has been written about Westland, and extracts from these sources have been selected for this book, and there are also several original items. Taken together they should tell a story, not only about the engineering, but about the people involved and the relationship with the town and local community.

When Westland decided to transform itself into a specialist helicopter company, the decision was influenced by the fact that here was a flying machine with only limited military potential, largely seen as lifesaver or means of transportation, a technology well suited for a ‘Swords to Ploughshares’ philosophy.

The armed helicopter that has evolved from such good intentions is now a force to be reckoned with, but even so, for any major disaster in the world there is generally a call for helicopters to carry and place help where it is needed.

Although we have not experienced warfare on the scale of World War Two during the last seventy years, Britain has been to war on several occasions in Suez, Malaysia, Aden, the Falklands, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, and helicopters have played a crucial part in the action. Oil exploration on the scale that we now know it is totally reliant upon the unique capability of the helicopter.

Search and Rescue and Air Ambulance are now well established.

And to serve the UK, all but a few came up from Somerset!

NB An observation I must make concerns the number of technical terms that proliferate throughout this book. They are, I fear, the language of our profession, and in my opinion unavoidable in a book of this nature.

1 How It All Began

Derek James

In his book Westland – A History the author Derek James opened with the following: ‘on the way in which the Petter family established engineering into a quiet country town, that in turn evolved into the Aerospace Centre it has now become.’

The South side of Yeovil Borough in the early 1900s. From an original drawing by Stan Seagar, a designer who joined the company in 1917.

‘What’s in a name?’ asked William Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet; he then went on to opine that whatever name we give to a rose it still smells as sweet. Most aircraft manufacturing companies originally bore the names of their founders: Sopwith, A.V. Roe & Blackburn, Boeing, Northrop, Loughead & Potez, Fokker, Tupolev, Mikoyan & Gurevich. Others used the location of their factories: Gloucestershire Aircraft, Bristol Aeroplane, Sud Aviation, Reims Aviation, and Fabbrica ltaliana Automobili Torino. Then there was – and still is – Westland, a name first used in 1915 by the wife of Percy Petter who, with his twin brother Ernest, was to establish an aircraft business that retains this name 100 years later – although it is now joined with Agusta, whose history stretches back to 1923.

The Westland story began way back in 1868 when a young Somerset man, James Bazeley Petter, was given a thriving Yeovil ironmongers business as a wedding present at his marriage to Charlotte Waddams. As the business, named Haman & Gillett, prospered, James and Charlotte produced fifteen children, of which the third and fourth were twin boys born on 26 May 1873. They were christened Percival Waddams and Ernest Willoughby. About two years later James Petter took in a partner, the business name was changed to Petter & Edgar and agricultural equipment was added to its activities. Petter also took over the Yeovil Foundry & Engineering Works, which among other things, produced castings for the Nautilus-patented fire grate, its success being assured after Queen Victoria had these grates installed in her homes at Osborne on the Isle of Wight and at Balmoral.

Some twenty-five years before James and Charlotte were married, Somerset was witness to a number of aeronautical events resulting from the experimental work of John Stringfellow and William Samuel Henson, a visionary of air travel and fellow experimenter with Stringfellow. Both lived in Chard and devoted much time to steam-powered models. It was in the year of James Petter’s wedding that one of these was credited with being the first heavier-than-air model to fly (although doubts have been cast on this achievement more recently) and was shown at the Royal Aeronautical Society’s first exhibition in London’s Crystal Palace. The county was also the site for a number of nineteenth-century balloon flights and experiments with model gliders. Without doubt these and other aeronautical activities caught the attention – if only subliminally – of Percy and Ernest Petter.

While still a pupil at Yeovil Grammar School, Percy was developing his engineering skills by building rudimentary, hand-cranked ‘vehicles’. On leaving school he worked in his father’s Yeovil Foundry and became its manager when he was aged 20. Percy later admitted that he had lacked experience and depended heavily on the foreman, Benjamin Jacobs, a multi-talented craftsman who, in 1894, built a 3hp single-cylinder oil engine to power Percy’s ‘horseless carriage’. This was an old four-wheel horsedrawn phaeton, a light open carriage named after Phaeton of Greek mythology, who was the son of Helios the sun god and notorious for his bad driving of the sun-chariot! Completed the following year, this motorised phaeton went on show in the Crystal Palace and took part in the 1896 Lord Mayor’s Show. The success of Percy’s project resulted in his father launching the Yeovil Motor Car & Cycle Co. Ltd in a purposebuilt factory at Reckleford. Ernest was given administrative responsibility for this new enterprise, plus the Yeovil Foundry and the ‘Nautilus’ fire grate businesses. Future prospects looked good and the twins’ brother, Hugh, was charged with promoting sales. Percy Petter recorded the following encounter: ‘I remember a day when Colonel Harbin of Newton House asked Hugh how the cars were getting on. “We’re still pushing them,” he replied. “You usually are when I see you out with one,” said the Colonel!’

However, this venture into motorcars was a financial disaster. An analysis of the company’s businesses revealed that engines were the most profitable products and a £7,000 bank loan financed production of 1hp and 2hp oil engines, initially aimed at dairy and agricultural applications. It was in 1898 that Percy Petter publicly revealed his interest in human flight when he presented a lecture on the subject to members of the local YMCA in Yeovil Town Hall using lantern slides and models.

A more worrying financial crisis arose in 1901 when Ernest Petter reported that all three businesses, particularly the engine side, had contributed to a £3,000 loss. This time, friends came to the rescue with loans totalling £4,000 and within the year the company, now renamed James B. Petter & Sons, had reversed its fortunes with a £2,000 profit.

Meanwhile, Percy and Benjamin Jacobs, now the chief engineer, often had ultimately fruitless discussions about designing an engine for an aeroplane. Percy also built a device consisting of a powered vertical revolving shaft with four horizontal arms carrying box kites to carry out experiments to attain vertical lift. These were short-lived due to the need for him to concentrate on the company’s engine business. Nevertheless, they were harbingers of rotary-winged flight in Yeovil some fifty years later.

In 1910 Petters Ltd was registered as a public company to carry on the business of making oil engines. As the demand rose so did the need for larger production facilities. There was no more space at Reckleford and another site was sought. One day Percy Petter, along with Mr Hardiman the foundry manager, visited a possible site at West Hendford. ‘We went along a narrow lane which terminated in high wooden doors,’ recalled Percy. ‘Beyond them we saw a fine piece of meadowland sloping up gradually from the Yeovil & Taunton branch railway. It seemed perfect.’ The upshot was that seventy-five acres were purchased by a specially formed small private company. Another of the twins’ brothers, John, who was an architect, produced plans for a housing scheme, adjoining the foundry and factory, for employees. One afternoon in 1913 Percy took his wife and two small daughters to this field for the first turf-cutting ceremony. Because the site was located to the west of Yeovil, Mrs Petter gave the name ‘Westland’ to this new development. The foundry and the first part of the machining and erecting shops were completed during early 1914. Today, 100 years later, that building is still in use.

Following the outbreak of the First World War on 4 August 1914, the export side of Petter’s business almost disappeared. However, as all talk of ‘exports’ died, the words on everyone’s lips were ‘military markets’. Soon this new business became more rewarding. During the autumn of 1914 many people in Britain believed that the war would be over by Christmas, but their hopes were soon shattered. On 21 December a German aeroplane made the first air attack on Britain, dropping two bombs into the sea near Admiralty Pier, Dover. A second attack, on Christmas Eve, resulted in a bomb exploding near Dover Castle. It was not until 31 May 1915 that a German Zeppelin, LZ 38, made the first attack on London, killing seven civilians and injuring twice that number. But before then, during early April, Prime Minister David Lloyd George had revealed to a shocked House of Commons that there was a serious shortage of materials and equipment with which to continue fighting the war, and called for action to remedy this.

This news was received with some alarm in Yeovil and the Petter brothers made an immediate response. They proposed to their Board of Directors that their entire manufacturing facilities should be offered to the Government for the production of whatever was needed. There was only one dissenter so a letter was sent to the War Office – which ignored it – and another to the Admiralty, which immediately asked for a meeting with the Petter brothers. Within days the twins found themselves in London, talking with three Lords of the Admiralty and two high-ranking civil servants. Ernest recorded that the expressed need was for floatplanes, and that he and Percy were asked if they would produce them. Ernest wrote:

We explained that our experience and factory were not exactly in line with their requirements but that we were willing to attempt anything which would help the Country. ‘Good,’ said they. ‘You’re the fellows we want; we will send you the drawings and give you all the help we can. Get on with it.’ So we got on with it.

The Admiralty instructed the company to send representatives to the Short Brothers’ factory at Rochester to see the type of work to be undertaken at Yeovil. Almost certainly it was Oswald Short who explained the techniques involved in the construction of aeroplanes, particularly the Short 184 floatplane. Percy Petter later confessed that when he saw the nature of the work ‘My heart nearly failed me’, but his brother John and Mr Warren, a Petters foreman, had no doubts that they could organise production of such machines. However, an experienced aircraft engineer was required to head this new Petters venture and, after a diligent search, 46-year-old Robert Bruce joined the company to manage it. Bruce had been manager of the British & Colonial Aircraft Co. at Filton, Gloucestershire, but, as a Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve Lieutenant, he had become an Admiralty inspector with the Sopwith Aviation Co.

Bruce’s immediate task was to build twelve Short 184 floatplanes powered by 225hp Sunbeam engines. It was to take all of his skills and experience to convert Petters’ workforce to aircraft manufacturing. This was not so much a milestone in Petters’ history as more of a signpost that was to point the path of the company’s future in two directions. Petters’ board decided that the new business would operate as a separate, but still wholly owned, unit with Bruce controlling the commercial, technical and production activities. As such, it needed a new name rather than to appear to be just another department of Petters. There is a rather romantic little episode which Sir Ernest Petter described in the company’s house magazine in September 1936:

Twenty-one years ago last April three men walked down to the corner of a field outside Yeovil where there was a small farm hut. One of the three – the author of this little story – opened the door of the hut and solemnly said, ‘This is the Westland Aircraft Works.’

Undoubtedly he had remembered the name Percy’s wife had first chosen for the proposed housing and works development. The foregoing story marked the parting of the ways for Petters’ diesel engine business and its aircraft interests. The history of the former business is not for these pages; suffice it to say that, having weathered numerous associations, take-overs, the closure of certain Yeovil-based undertakings in 1939, several moves, amalgamations and near closure, diesel-engine manufacture was vested in the hands of Lister Petter Ltd in Dursley through a 1988 merger with this long-established Gloucestershire engineering company.

To meet the 1915 order for floatplanes Bruce needed a workforce. Some employees moved from the Nautilus factory and a number of woodworkers and engineers were recruited from local companies. One of the early pieces of equipment, which Robert Bruce had installed, was a ‘wind channel’, or wind tunnel, for the technical office. An important appointment was that of Arthur Davenport, a Petters engine designer who joined the new company in June as Chief Draughtsman. He was soon sent to the Royal Naval Air Station at Sheerness to measure and examine a Short 184 floatplane. In addition to Westland Aircraft Works, representatives of four other manufacturers who had been given contracts to build these aeroplanes were also there. They were Frederick Sage & Co. of Peterborough, Mann, Egerton & Co. of Norwich, Phoenix Dynamo of Bradford, and S.E. Saunders Ltd on the Isle of Wight. Their task was to make drawings of the structure and components so that their companies could build these floatplanes.

Production of Short 184 by Westland began early in July with the first aircraft being completed in time for delivery on 1 January 1916. It was dismantled and taken on horse-drawn carts to Yeovil Junction from where it went by rail to Hamble on the shores of Southampton Water for assembly and test-flying. It is believed that this particular aircraft was delivered to the Royal Naval Air Station on Calshot Spit. The fourth Westland-built Short 184, and the only one of its type still surviving, has a special niche in the history of naval aviation. On the afternoon of 31 May 1916 this aircraft took off from the seaplane carrier HMS Engadine during the opening phase of the Battle of Jutland. Despite very limited visibility the pilot, Lt F.J. Rutland, and his observer Assistant Paymaster C.S. Trewin, identified three enemy cruisers and ten destroyers whose position and course were reported to the British fleet. This reconnaissance flight proved a major milestone in naval air warfare. The pilot, who was subsequently awarded the Distinguished Service Order, became quite a celebrity in the Royal Navy and was dubbed ‘Rutland of Jutland’. He was commissioned in the Royal Air Force after its formation on 1 April 1918 and became an authority on aircraft carrier operations. However, MI5 records recently made public have revealed that, from around 1934 until the beginning of the Second World War when he was living in the United States, Rutland spied on the US Navy for the Japanese. He returned to Britain and was interned until around 1944 when he was released.

Before the twelve Short 184s had been completed, Westland was given an order for twenty Short 166 floatplanes which were similar to the Type 184 but of an earlier design. Unfortunately Shorts was not able to provide a full set of drawings for the Type 166 and Arthur Davenport wasn’t given the opportunity to measure a Short-built example. In addition, the twenty Westland 166s were to be built without the under-fuselage torpedo-carrying gear, which meant that Bruce and Davenport had to undertake some redesign work.

Westland had become an aircraft company.

2 The WestlandRailway Siding

Derek Phillips

‘The movement of materials, spares and often, complete aircraft was necessary once aircraft manufacture began on the Yeovil site. In 1915 the movement of such goods was very different to the network of road transport and courier services now available.

From the outset Westland maintained its own railway siding, which remained in operation until 1967, when the Yeovil to Taunton line closed.’ – Working Yeovil to Taunton Steam by kind permission from the author, Derek Phillips.

Original drawing by Stan Seagar, Westland designer 1922.

A private siding agreement dated 29 March 1913 was made between the Great Western Railway (GWR) and the well-known Yeovil firm of Petters Ltd, makers of stationary, portable and traction petroleum engines, combined pumping engines, electric lighting and power transmission plants. By 1912, Petters were running out of room at their Nautilus works in Reckleford, Yeovil, and so they purchased some land on the western side of Yeovil, near the GWR Yeovil to Taunton branch at Hendford, on which they built a new factory. This was named ‘Westland’. The firm began to trade as Westland Aircraft Works, Westland Foundry, and the ‘Petters’ name was reserved for their famous engines. During the First World War munitions were made at the factory, and the first aircraft – seaplanes designed by Shorts – left by rail, as the airfield wasn’t ready until sometime in 1917. In the 1920s the Petters oil-engine business was moved to Westland from the Nautilus works.

The first locomotive purchased by Petters was a Manning Wardle 0-4-0 saddle tank, named ‘EVA’ and dating from 1866, which arrived sometime in 1920. Petters followed the GWR tradition and painted the engine green with yellow lining and a brass chimney cap. A Fowler diesel mechanical 0-4-0, works number 19425, was purchased in 1931, and fitted with a Petters ‘ACE’ three-cylinder engine. The locomotive was subsequently named ‘ACE’. The Manning Wardle tank, ‘EVA’, was kept until 1935 and then sold for scrap. In 1935 Westland Aircraft Ltd was formed to take over the aircraft production from Petters, and more changes took place in 1938 when John Brown and Co. Ltd gained control of Westland Aircraft Ltd and Petters. Shortly after the takeover Petters was sold to Brush Electrical Industries Ltd, and the oil-engine division went to the Brush factory at Loughborough in 1939. The Fowler diesel, ‘ACE’, was transferred to the Brush sidings at Loughborough and stayed there until 1962. To replace her, Westland Aircraft Ltd purchased a four-wheel Howard locomotive to shunt the sidings. This locomotive was purchased second hand, and after a history of breakdowns, its engine was replaced by one from a Fordson tractor. Various engines were loaned to Westland by the GWR during periods when the Howard was out of service in the Second World War, when production was at its peak. These included, in 1940, an 0-6-0 saddle tank, No. 2195, built by Avonside in 1905, and in 1945 a Terrier AIX 0-6-0 Tank, No. 5 ‘Portishead’, was on hire from the GWR from 14 to 19 July.

This locomotive, built by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB & SCR) in 1877, and originally named ‘Gypsy Hill’, had been sold to the Weston, Clevedon and Portishead Light Railway (WC & PLR) in 1926, was renamed ‘Portishead’ and became ‘No. 3’. After closure of the WC & PLR:, it was sold to the GWR in 1940, kept its nameplate, but was renumbered ‘No. 5’. The engine was based at Taunton, and later at Newton Abbot, before going into store at Swindon and then finally being scrapped.

When the branch was lifted from Curry Rivel Junction to Hendford in 1965, the line was cut just past Westland’s siding gate, leaving the remaining stub to Pen Mill for freight traffic to Hendford goods and Westland’s siding. The Howard locomotive lasted until the end of the railway services to the siding in 1967, and was then scrapped.

3 The RAeS at Yeovil

Dr G.S. Hislop

There has been a branch of the Royal Aeronautical Society, centred around Westland at Yeovil, since 1926. The branch represents a focal point for qualification and technical standards throughout the profession; many of the branch members have received some of the society’s prestigious awards and medals.

The branch celebrated its 70th anniversary in 1986 with a gala dinner, and the branch president, Dr G.S. Hislop, who on this occasion was also in fact president of the main society, delivered an after-dinner speech that described the way in which the branch has developed in Yeovil.

The Royal Aeronautical Society, the oldest aeronautical organisation in the world, was founded 120 years ago, in 1866, in London. Sixty years later in 1926, when the total membership was 1,049, Coventry and Yeovil were the first two branches to be formed. There are now 13,000 members worldwide. Yeovil, which started with 113 members, continues to be one of the most active of the 30 branches functioning in the United Kingdom. Membership of the Yeovil branch continues to increase and is now at over 700, its highest level ever. The membership of the main society within the Branch has more than doubled in the last 10 years and now stands at 70 per cent of the total.

It happens that 1986 is also the 70th anniversary of entry into squadron service of Yeovil-built aircraft, the 50th anniversary of the first flight (12 June 1936) of the Lysander and also the 40th anniversary of Normalair Garrett. In his after-dinner speech, at the Golden Jubilee, ten years ago Mr O. Fitzwilliams said: ‘I have to start by clearing up a discrepancy which is probably greater than is generally realised – because this Jubilee celebrates the Anniversary of a meeting which was held on the 18th October 1926 and the body which was founded at that meeting was the Westland Aircraft Society:’

It is true that less than two months later the Westland Aircraft Society became the Yeovil Branch but throughout its life it was very much a company affair and, to begin with, one of its main and very successful objects was to hold lectures for Ground Engineers to meet the examination syllabus which had been published by the Air Ministry shortly before.

It was a very vigorous Society, and it held at least twenty-six and sometimes as many as thirty meetings in each six-month season up to at least 1933, but from the beginning it also contained a faction whose chief interest was to bring it under the wing of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and to the best of my knowledge we represent the only case of an already existing body which continued its own separate existence after being accepted as a Branch. To be specific, at a meeting held on 14 December 1926 the Council ‘agreed to accede to the request of the Westland Aircraft Society to become the Yeovil Branch of the Royal Aeronautical Society’ and on that day we became the 2nd Branch, following the formation of the Coventry Branch (who were mainly Armstrong Whitworth people) at about the beginning of March in the same year.

Under that arrangement the Yeovil Branch was entitled to retain its original identity and it did so up to the last war, with Rules and Procedures quite at variance with the normal practice of Branches. For example, throughout that period all correspondence from this end was on notepaper with Westland Aircraft Society across the top in large letters and Yeovil Branch, etc. in small print underneath and its Rules openly stated that Executive Directors of the Company were ex-officio members of the Committee.

As you can imagine Col Pritchard, the Secretary of the Parent Body, was absolutely opposed to that situation but in spite of that our relations with him and with the Society were excellent and you may like to know that on 21 March 1934 (about 7½ years after our foundation) Pritchard wrote to Victor Gaunt, who had been our founding Hon. Secretary, saying ‘I really must congratulate you all upon the excellent show you always put up in every way. The Yeovil Branch is the envy of all other Branches and the standard to which they aim.’

The Westland Aircraft Society benefited greatly from its status as the Yeovil Branch, particularly from the fact that a large number of its lectures were published in the Journal. For example I found fifteen solid pages of Yeovil lectures in the Journal for January 1928. They were very good lectures and the lecturers who came here were amongst the most prominent figures in British Aviation at that time. Men like Rubbra, Fedden and Dowty were typical of that standard. The Yeovil Branch was also very appreciative indeed of the great help and consideration it received from Col Pritchard.

After the war, all reference to the Westland Aircraft Society was dropped but in 1963 it was realised that some distinctly odd Rules and Practices were still being followed. That discovery came about at a Committee meeting when Raoul Hafner, who was chairman in that year, found that Philip Tweed (who was then our Treasurer) had received the Branches Subsidy Cheque, made out to the Yeovil Branch, and was about to pay it in to a Yeovil bank account labelled Westland Aircraft Society. Having a certain Teutonic logic, Hafner naturally lifted that stone to see what was wriggling about underneath it and because of what he saw all our Rules and Procedures were, in that year, completely revised and approved by the Society, so that we became a fully respectable Branch.

Arthur Davenport was very anxious that the membership be brought to appreciate the great debt which is owed, not only by the Branch and the Westland company, but also by the Town of Yeovil and the whole surrounding district, to the Petter family for the decision they took to remain in the aircraft business after the First World War.

The membership should also appreciate the debt, which is owed to Messrs Fearn, Mensforth, Davenport and Wheeldon at board level and at a working level to such people as Fitzwilliams and Widgery, who steered the company into helicopters and cabin atmosphere control after the First World War!

So it is that during this centenary year, we celebrate nearly ninety years as a branch of the Royal Aeronautical Society, which as a learned body strongly influences the professional standing of our engineering staff and the way in which we are qualified.

***

In 1988 the Society Of Licensed Aircraft Engineers and Technicians (SLEAT) was incorporated into the Royal Aeronautical Society. The effect of this event was to introduce a whole new skill base. Concurrent with this event was the formation of a branch at Sherborne, which drew much of its membership from ex-SLEAT members. The Sherborne branch remained in being until 1996.

The expansion of Yeovilton led to the formation of another branch drawing its membership from the Royal Navy. The Yeovilton branch has prospered and maintains strong links with the Yeovil branch.

The death of Harald Penrose in 1996 led to the introduction of the ‘Penrose lecture’, a fitting memorial to a famous test pilot and one of the branch founders. The lecture is delivered annually covering subjects devoted to flight testing, engineering development or flight operations.

Another famous branch member has been recognised by the establishment of the Reggie Brie award for the annual young members lecture competition, the prize being generously donated by Elisabeth Brie.

The branch continues to enjoy generous support from AgustaWestland.

4 Saga of a Widgeon

Harald Penrose

In 1927, Westland introduced a two-seat monoplane called the Widgeon; it was a very attractive little aircraft, albeit expensive. Harald Penrose found it particularly attractive and retained one for his personal use throughout his flying career. A keen observer of the life that surrounded him in the air, he recalls the joy he derived from his flights in it, in his book, No Echo in the Sky.

A light aeroplane called the Widgeon became my greatest tutor. Setting the trend for Westland design which was to culminate in the Lysander, the Widgeon was a high-wing monoplane with a span of 36 feet and a top speed of just over one hundred miles an hour. With this machine I skimmed the countryside finding more unhurried view than any other aeroplane could give. From 1928 we flew together, learning secret after secret of the countryside and sky. I was a youth when I took her for her maiden flight on that far day of her first gay summer when they wheeled her, new and glistening, from the workshop. I was twenty years older, still dreaming myself unchanged, when I started her on the last, which ended a few seconds later in the disaster of leaping flames.

No other aeroplane was ever so well-suited for aerial observation, for there was practically nothing to obstruct the downward field of vision. The ‘parasol’ wing was placed on struts high above the body so that the pilot, seated far aft, had superb views, not only below, but upward as well. Yet there was more in the arrangement than unimpeded view. An exceptional degree of stability at the stall enabled the Widgeon to be flown with confidence at speeds slow enough to match the flight of many birds.

I liked to let this little aeroplane whisper through the air with engine almost closed, my gaze ranging far across both sky and ground. If the wind blew strongly it was possible to remain almost stationary over places of interest; yet, when the voyage of discovery was over, only a touch on the throttle was needed to bring her racing home at 100mph.

What tremendous discoveries we made, what wonders we saw! So many of those important and ever remembered first occasions belonged to the Widgeon. Again and again I watched with enchantment England take form from the coloured map in my hand. The buff and green paper picture became soaring brown hills rising from vales patched with meadows and patterned with hedgerow trees. But the map could not show the immensity of space as we sailed far and wide through the skies of youth, nor could it hint at the miracle of seeing this island with a comprehension that a hundred years of travelling on foot could never give. With each successive flight the individual characteristics of every county became more recognisable, until they were patently related to the geological structure of the land.

I began to see the countryside not merely as a cameo of exquisite beauty, but as the expression of the gigantic forces of expansion and contraction unleashed on the world as it grew from elemental form. Its later history was there to read as well; old boundaries of the sea, newer incursions, dried river valleys; turf-disguised mounds and marks of early man; Norman roads and Saxon paths, castles of conquerors uncertain of their hold, side by side with gracious dwellings of a more peaceful age, and the staring council houses of today’s planned state. I saw too the grimness of industrial centres set like scars on the fair face of England, their smoke and fog covering a third of the countryside upon which the sun once shone unveiled through uncontaminated air.

I learned also the trick of height which dwarfs a river to a brook, or a mountain to a molehill: I knew then why the gods were omnipotent. Yet I found that other days could turn the mountain into fearsome walls, low-capped with cloud, where the Widgeon flew ensnared and only faith could find the valley of escape. And in the evening mist the estuary, which from 5,000 feet could be covered by my hand, was from a few feet high, a widespread trap of ugly waves, waiting for me to lose the vague horizon and sink within its shroud.

There were days, too, when the Widgeon took me into the world of cloud. Patiently we climbed, penetrated the overcast and became engulfed in the dark swirling vapour, travelling in a blind eternity that masked all sense of equilibrium. Suddenly the mist would grow luminous, become white, and in another instant we would burst through the top of the cloud into a world of brilliant light. As the little aeroplane climbed higher the clouds stretched wider and wider below, like an endless snowfield glittering under the arch of heaven. There, it was always as though we hung motionless, transfixed by the incandescent disc of sun on which no eye dare rest, so blinding was its majesty. The troubled world of people receded beyond thought and I felt reborn in that sublimity of space, oblivious of the truth that winged man was no more than a moth fluttering round the beacon lights.

Sometimes there were flights in the dusk, with the lights of villages and towns springing one by one in company with the early stars, until it seemed the countryside was scattered with glittering jewels. Sometimes we flew by moonlight, the hills and valleys grown strange and mysterious in the blanched light, and the sea a dusky silver framing the dark loom of the shore.

On many an occasion the Widgeon had borne me along that same coastline by daylight, until I knew the south like the back of my hand, and the east and west passably well. Over every small harbour I had flown, circling while I watched the way of men with ships. In storm and calm, sun and driving rain, at ebb and flood, I had seen the endless changes of the ocean’s face, until at last I felt I understood a little of its power and inappeasable emptiness. We watched, too, the passage of the seasons, slowly flooding the length of these isles with green growth to attain the high tide of summer, and then ebbing to the regeneration of winter days. Twenty times we saw those black months of waiting and brooding on buds anew, until the countryside became suffused with the soft glow of richer colour that presages spring. Then the chess-board of ploughed soil would change texture as the earth grew hidden by thrusting shoots of new grass and tender wheat. Trees would froth into lacy leaf, and in the course of a week or even a day, the land would be transformed into eager, green, proliferous life. From the Widgeon I would see white blossom sweep the hedgerows and the fields grow starred with flowers. Yet to fly a little north could mean passing back from the wave of spring to find the buds still waiting to unfold. But only for a little while; soon the whole land would be verdant and fulfilled and as spring drove ever northwards, summer followed close.

From the air we saw infinitely delicate transitions as summer grew mature. Tree and hedge grew darker, velvet meadows changed to tumbled swathes. Presently there was golden grain. How quickly the flush of spring was forgotten when squares of plough showed once more among the fields of stubble and sere green; and autumn made the landscape glow with bronze, painting the earth with strange dim magnificence, like the tarnished chattels of a once noble house. With the first touch of winter the coloured trappings disappeared, the last leaves fell and trees were transformed into black tracery. Yet as the aeroplane skimmed over the topmost branches I could see that the bare twigs held already in their swelling tip the promise of yet another reincarnation.

So the months and years came and went, with questing and fulfilment, sadness and happiness. All that time the Widgeon carried me on tranquil wings, revealing new beauty in every hour, trying to let me understand at least a little of the mystery, the cohesion, the marvel and the eternity of nature and the cycle of life. Often, of course, we forgot the passing of time and played, for we were light-hearted as the birds. The breeze whispered exciting wordless promises that set veins tingling. The controls were delicate as finger-tips which stroked and read the air. For a little while the Widgeon ceased to be a man-made machine, and I knew only that I had wings. Across the sunfilled sky we glided like skaters over ice, cutting voluptuous curves and airy figures, dropping a few feet above the aerodrome, sinuously twisting and sliding a handspan over the turf. Then up and up, breasting the air, towering like a peregrine after its stoop.