De Havilland Aircraft Company ltd - DE HAVILLAND ENTERPRISES: a history

Graham M Simons

First Published in Great Britain in 2017 by

Pen & Sword Aviation

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire S70 2AS

Copyright Graham M Simons

ISBN 9781473861381

eISBN 9781473861404

Mobi ISBN 9781473861398

The right of Graham M Simons to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Since the early 1970s I have being tramping the airshow circuit, both here in the UK and further afield, regularly seeing the same old faces - that used to be young faces - that have, in many cases, become firm friends. Three such gentlemen are Ian Oliver, John Stride and Barry Dowsett. These three have been involved in all things De Havilland for many years.

I have been actively supporting the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden in Bedfordshire - usually with a trade stand - for the past thirty years or so, and often we were next door to other De Havilland groups, supported by John Stride and his father Cyril. They worked with the British Aerospace Mosquito RR299, the De Havilland Moth Club and the De Havilland Aircraft Heritage Centre known by many under its former name of the Mosquito Aircraft Museum.

Cyril and John worked tirelessly, doing all they could to preserve the name and in many cases a number of De Havilland products, and even after Cyril passed away, John continued with this. The thought was always in the back of my mind that although they never sought it, they both never received the recognition they deserved. John himself latterly worked on Comet G-ACSS, before passing away not long after research for this book started, but not before he was able to provide me with a large selection of photographs that could be used.

So I would like to dedicate this book to all the many volunteers that strive to support the vintage and veteran aircraft preservation movement, and to John Stride in particular - you are all an inspiration!

A bit of fun at Old Warden, 2003. Left to right: Ian Oliver, John Stride and Barry Dowsett aboard a very strange looking Bleariot!

Introduction

Ahhh!... De Havilland! For many years that phrase was a logo, a slogan, a concept.

Look back, and there was a time when every small biplane was a Moth, an entire air force trained on a Tiger and a new Elizabethan age dawned with the introduction of the worlds first jet airliner.

De Havillands were without doubt the most prolific of all British aircraft manufacturers owing their success to the vision, energy and genius of a small but highly dedicated team led by the founder and first designer, Captain Geoffrey de Havilland Kt, OM, CBE, AFC, RDI, Hon FRAeS, Hon FIAS who was knighted for his services to British aviation in 1944.

The story of how he and Francis Trounson Hearle CBE, FRAeS, MIProdE, Charles Clement Walker CBE, AMICE, Hon FRAeS, Wilfred Ernest Nixon, Francis Edward Noel St. Barbe, Arthur Ernest Hagg FRAeS and Alan Samuel Butler guided the companys fortunes from 5 October 1920, the day it moved into Stag Lane, is an epic of true British resourcefulness and could fill several volumes ten times the size of this book.

It begins at Seven Barrows in Hampshire, moves to Hendon in North London amongst the military aeroplanes of the First World War, spends fifteen years at Stag Lane to investigate civil and military prototypes between the wars, to witness the birth and growth of the Moth family and the famous wooden utility transports, and moves finally to Hatfield, Chester and elsewhere to record thirty years progress towards the jet transport descendants of the incredible Mosquito - the famous wooden wonder of the Second World War.

The core - and indeed the main body - of this book is a numeric listing of all aircraft designs that carried a De Havilland type number - this also includes the design projects that never reached the hardware stage, and also reference to the duplicated contemporary Handley Page project numbers that by mutual agreement between the two companies were not used by De Havilland.

Darryl Cotts delightful air-to-air of one of the most beautiful of the De Havilland products, DH.88 Comet G-ACSS, not long after its restoration to fly - the aircraft is in the care of the Shuttleworth Collection, Old Warden. [DH via BAe Hatfield]

Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, the founder of the Enterprise, with His Royal Highness Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. The occasion was the handing over of the first Heron for the Queens Flight at Hatfield on 18 May 1955. [DH via BAe Hatfield]

The story touches on the De Havilland Technical Schools T.K. series and the products of the De Havilland companies in Australia and Canada are listed as they were all generically De Havilland types - the Cierva C.24 cabin autogiro is included for the same reason.

Many of the aircraft featured in this book deserve books written about them in their own right - indeed, I have done just that with Mosquito, the original Multi-Role Combat Aircraft and Comet! The worlds First Jet Airliner for Pen & Sword Aviation and a number of other monographs.

This book brings together in one place the concise details of every aircraft and every design conceived by the company to the point where it was absorbed into the Hawker Siddeley Group conglomorate.

Graham M Simons
Peterborough
6 September 2016

The Men...

Without a shadow of a doubt the De Havilland Aircraft Company was the most prolific of all the British aircraft manufacturers.

It was founded by Capt Geoffrey de Havilland on 25 September 1920 with the aid of some finance from George Holt Thomas, his former employer at Airco and the man who founded Brooklands aerodrome. De Havilland became director and chief designer. Other key people from Airco who joined as directors included Arthur E Turner, Charles Clement Walker as chief engineer, long-term friend and brother-in-law Frank Trounson Hearle as the general and works manager, Wilfrid Ernest Nixon as company secretary, and Francis Edward Noel St Barbe as sales manager. Chairman was Alan Samuel Butler. Geoffrey de Havilland had as his chief designer an old colleague from the days of The Aircraft Manufacturing Company at Hendon the remarkable Arthur Ernest Hagg, who was responsible for so many successful DH designs, in particular the Moth series culminating in the fourengined Albatross.