Handley Page Ltd. 1909-1970 60 Years of Achievement
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Handley Page Ltd. 1909-1970. 60 years of Achievement. A.H.Fraser-Mitchell. F.R.Ae.S. Synopsis After a brief introduction, the six decades during which the Company operated are taken in turn, with the principal designs and events for each illustrated and discussed. It is shown that Handley Page was always in the forefront of the technology of the time, in design and production. The company was strong in research for the large structures in the early days, and renowned for the development of the aerodynamic slot principle. Later, they were perhaps the principal UK experts for laminar flow control and for flutter model techniques. Having won design competitions for RAF logistic (HP 111) and assault (Military Herald) transports, orders for these were vetoed on political grounds, leading to the firm’s eventual failure in 1970, early in the development of the HP 137 “Jetstream”. In other hands, the Victor tanker and the Jetstream have continued to serve, the Victor until 1993 and the Jetstream until 1997 with the RAF, and still in service Figure 1. Frederick Handley Page. with the Royal Navy. (1913, “Flight”) th Born at Cheltenham 15 November 1885 Early History. Second son of Frederick Page and Eliza Frederick Handley Page was trained as an electrical (neé Handley). engineer, graduating in 1906, but, inspired by the Graduated 1906 Electrical Engineer, Finsbury exploits of the Wright brothers, he began Tech. Joined Aero. Soc. In 1907. experimenting with, initially, flapping wings, and then Set up own business in 1907 supplying small parts and propellers to Weiss’ design. with glider models. th This eventually led him to relinquish his job as Chief Formed Limited Company 17 June 1907. Designer for Johnson and Phillips, Electrical Engineers, and in 1908 he decided to set up for He had met the elderly Jose Weiss in 1907 through himself, using a small office in Woolwich, supplying the Aeronautical Society. parts for aeronautical engineers, and wooden Weiss had remembered his boyhood observations of propellers to a patented design by a certain Jose eagles soaring in the Austrian Tyrol in 1870 Weiss, whom he had met earlier. eventually to come up with a wing design having He decided to reform his business activities into a camber and twist, which he had patented in 1908. private limited Company, and on 17th June 1909 he Though he had spent some 2 years studying science registered “Handley Page Ltd.” for the express and engineering at Lille, he was no engineer and had purpose of Aeronautical Engineering, the design and become a landscape artist. His pictures sold well, and manufacture of aircraft. He always claimed that his the proceeds enabled him to experiment with a large was the first such company in the UK, but this was number of glider models, including a larger one to be something of a technicality, since by this time Short flown by a 17-year-old Eric Gordon England, who Bros. were well established as manufacturers of the later became a pilot for Bristol, and even designed Wright biplanes under licence. However, they were a built and flew his own design, the G.E.1 at Filton, Partnership, not a Company. finally becoming Managing Director of General It is also possible that he was preceded by a small Aircraft Ltd until 1942. outfit set up by Horatio Barber in March 1909, The The structure of Weiss’ gliders was deficient, Aeronautical Syndicate, makers of “Valkyrie” constructed, as they were, of bamboo poles lashed monoplanes, and offering, according to their together. advertisement, all types of aeronautical engineering, On the other hand FHP was a trained engineer, and with “propellers a speciality”. However, they did not his charm was such that the older man allowed him to manufacture their aircraft; these were built by Howard use his patented wing. No money seemed to have Wright, so perhaps HP can rightly claim precedence. changed hands for the use of the patent, though FHP In any case, he bought them up in 1912 ! would say that in return he had applied sound engineering to the structure, improving it. He set up his “Works” in a couple of large tin sheds at Barking Creek, lodging with Mr and Mrs Hamilton at The shape of the wing with its sweepback and 60 Cecil Street, Barking. He started on the washout was such that it possessed positive inherent construction of a tractor monoplane, Type A, which he longitudinal and some lateral stability christened “Bluebird”. Unfortunately it did not show much in the way of bird-like qualities and crashed all FHP spent some time at Weiss’ home near Amberley too frequently. in Sussex, seeing glides made from the top of a hill by young Eric Gordon England, all firing his inspiration. 1 The Work of the Company. It is convenient to split up the work of Handley Page Ltd. into six periods of approximately ten years each. The products, significant events and research in each period are shown and discussed. 1909 – 1919 In this period the firm grew from “one-man-and-a-boy” to one of the foremost in the UK, mainly from the impact of WW 1. FHP’s first powered aircraft, the “Bluebird” was powered by a 20hp “Advance” air-cooled Vee-four Figure 4. Type F/70. Hendon 1912. engine, and made the first of its few straight “hops” on 26th May 1910, but crashed every time FHP initiated a It was HP’s first fatal crash, and it was said this so turn. Surviving these without substantial damage to upset him that he became determined to find a himself, he wisely decided henceforth to employ solution to the problem, which was then claiming professional pilots for his aircraf t. many lives. He set to work in his own wind tunnel, perhaps the earliest company-owned facility in the U.K., and in 1919 took out a patent for the invention of the “aerodynamic slot”, applied to both leading and trailing edge flaps. In 1928 the “Automatic Slot” was adopted by the Air Ministry as a mandatory fitment to all RAF aircraft, irrespective of the manufacturer. Though the patents have long expired, the use of the slot principle in modern aircraft designs is widespread. The Type “F” was the last aircraft built at the Barking Creek Works. In 1912 the War Office had banned the use of monoplanes by the Royal Flying Corps, offering only the BE2a to manufacturers. FHP built three but these were said to have poor workmanship and the small amount of high quality steel that was required was very costly. So FHP, with Volkert, set about designing Figure 2. FHP in "Bluebird". April 1910. his own biplane, the Type G/100, based upon the Type “E” , with the top wing raised above the fuselage, and a smaller lower wing slung beneath it. The engine was a 100hp Anzani ten cylinder air -cooled radial. In a lecture, delivered on 15th January 1913(1), he compared monoplanes and biplanes, concluding that for wing areas of up to 250 sq.ft. monoplanes should be superior, but that above this, the biplane wins. The area of the G/100 was 384 sq.ft. Figure 3. HP Type E "Yellow Peril" Brooklands, July 1912. The Type “E” which flew first on 26th April 1912 was his first really successful aircraft. In the next two years it flew a total of several thousand miles including a flight across London from Fairlop to Brooklands, and it gave flights to several hundred passengers. Powered by a reliable 50hp Gnome rotary air-cooled engine, it was initially controlled in roll by wing warping, à la Figure 5. Type G/100 at Hendon, 1914. Wright Bros., but the addition of ailerons, the first task Prior to Channel Crossing assigned to George Volkert, one of FHP’s students from the Northampton Institute, gave a significant It was very successful, making its first flight on 6th improvement in handling. November 1913. It scored several “firsts” for FHP. It was the first The next aircraft, the Type F/70, was a monoplane aircraft of his ow n design to be sold to a private with side-by -side seating, crashing on 15th December customer, Lindsay Bainbridge, whose pilot, Roland 1913 after a stall and spin at low altitude, killing the Ding, made several remarkable flights in it. pilot, Lt Wilfred Parke, RN, and Arkell Hardwick, These included one across the English Channel, FHP’s General Manager. This was during a flight to chartered by a Princess Lowenstein-Wertheim, and assess the aircraft as an observation machine for the so impressed was she by the aircraft that she Royal Navy. commissioned FHP to make a larger aircraft for her 2 and Ding to attempt a non-stop Atlantic crossing for really the first “strategic” bomber. Over 550 were built the Daily Mail prize of £10,000, putting down a by HP and several other manufacturers, including deposit. She changed her mind a few days later, but some in the USA. It was used in several war theatres, her cheque had already been cashed! particularly the Middle East. The aircraft, Type L, about which little is known, is In 1918, HP had designed and built an even larger believed to have had a span of 60 ft, and was largely bomber, the V/1500 with four Rolls-Royce “Eagle” complete by 1914, but all aero engines were engines of 360 hp each, in two tandem pairs. It commandeered by the War Office at the outbreak of weighed 30,000 lb. and had a top speed of 100mph.