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During aviations pioneering years Francis Kennedy McClean used his vast inherited wealth to help the now famous Short Brothers company become established as one of Britains greatest aircraft manufacturers and, in doing so, he helped the Royal Navys first pilots into the air. In effect, he was Godfather to British naval aviation.But McClean did much more than even that. He was himself a balloonist and pioneer aviator, flying with Wilbur Wright in France in December 1908. He provided the Royal Aero Club with one of the first flying grounds in the UK; personally purchased no fewer than sixteen aeroplanes from Short Brothers before the First World War, and also acted as the companys unpaid test pilot. Convinced that aviation was destined to play a vital role in the nations defence, he made his own aeroplanes freely available for training and ensured that the Navy had a suitable site from which to fly, founding Englands first naval flying school, at Eastchurch in Kent. His flight up the Thames to Westminster on 10 August 1912, during which he flew between the upper and lower spans of Tower Bridge and passed beneath the other bridges, caught the public imagination, but despite all these achievements he remained unassuming, modest and reticent. This is a fascinating and informative account of McCleans great influence on early aviation, and his achievements and significant contribution to naval aviation are revealed here for the first time.
"Letters to the Editor" issued as Part 2 and separately paged from v. 148, 1967. Beginning in 2009, the Letters published only online.
A high-flying tour of British aviation history—and the sites where trials and triumphs took place. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, Britain was at the forefront of powered flight. Across the country, many places became centers of innovation and experimentation, as increasing numbers of daring men took to the skies. In 1799, at Brompton Hall, Sir George Cayley Bart put forward ideas that formed the basis of powered flight. There were balloon flights at Hendon from 1862, though attempts at powered flights from the area, later used as the famous airfield, don’t seem to have been particularly successful. Despite this, Louis Bleriot established a flying school there in 1910. It was gliders that Percy Pilcher flew from the grounds of Stamford Hall, Leicestershire, during the 1890s. He was killed in a crash there in 1899, but Pilcher had plans for a powered aircraft which experts believe may well have enabled him to beat the Wright Brothers in becoming the first to make a fixed-wing powered flight. At Brooklands, unsuccessful attempts were made to build and fly a powered aircraft in 1906—but on June 8, 1908, A.V. Roe made what is considered the first powered flight in Britain from there—in reality a short hop—in a machine of his own design and construction, enabling Brooklands to call itself the birthplace of British aviation. These are just a few of the places investigated in this intriguing look at the early days of British aviation, which includes the first ever aircraft factory in Britain in the railway arches at Battersea; Larkhill on Salisbury Plain, which became the British Army’s first airfield; and Barking Creek, where Frederick Handley Page established his first factory.
"A review of astronomy" (varies).