Slide Rule (19 page)

Ten years after these events when I was in the Navy I was drafted to a technical department of the Admiralty which was staffed by over a hundred temporary officers of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. As civilians in uniform we found the Admiralty system to be better adapted to conserving money in peace time than to getting quick production in time of war. We found in many instances that the only way to get things done quickly was to short-circuit the system, getting verbal authority by telephone conversations with the various departments affected and letting the paper work tag along three weeks later. These methods required senior officers of the regular navy to give verbal decisions which might involve expenditures of thousands of pounds without any paper
cover, and naturally made us very unpopular. These naval officers were as brave as lions, and would have risked their lives in a destroyer torpedo attack without any second thought, but to be asked to risk their jobs on a verbal decision involving public money often seemed to them unfair.

Now and again, we would find some cheerful young commander or captain who was not affected by these scruples, who was as brave in the office as he was at sea. Commenting on such a regular officer and on his way of doing business we would say, “He’s a good one. I bet he’s got private means.” Invariably investigation proved that we were right. The officers who were brave in the Admiralty were the officers who had an independent income, who could afford to resign from the navy if necessary without bringing financial disaster to their wives and children. It started as a joke with us to say that a brave officer in the office probably had private means, and then it got beyond a joke and turned into an axiom. These were the men who could afford to shoulder personal responsibility in the Admiralty, who could afford to do their duty to the Navy in the highest sense.

Such men invariably gravitate towards the top of any government service that they happen to be in because of their carefree acceptance of responsibility. They serve as a leaven and as an example to their less fortunate fellows; they set the tone of the whole office by their high standard of duty. I think this is an aspect of inherited incomes which deserves greater attention than it has had up till now. If the effect of excessive taxation and death duties in a country is to make all high officials dependent on their pay and pensions, then the standard of administration will decline and that country will get into greater difficulties than ever. Conversely, in a wealthy country with relatively low taxation and much inherited income a proportion of
the high officials will be independent of their job, and the standard of administration will probably be high.

I do not know the financial condition of the high officials in the Air Ministry at the time of the R.101 disaster. I suspect, however, that an investigation would reveal that it was England’s bad luck that at that time none of them had any substantial private means. At rock bottom, that to me is probably the fundamental cause of the tragedy.

The disaster to R.101 marked the end of all airship endeavour in England. At the time it seemed a cowardly decision to abandon airships altogether because of one disaster, even though the Secretary of State for Air himself had perished in it. Looking back over the years, the decision to abandon airship development was right, though whether it was taken for the right reasons I rather doubt.

At the end of 1930 the full impact of the depression in the United States was beginning to be felt in England, and a reduction in government expenditure was becoming essential. I think this was the main reason for abandoning the programme; it was one of the frills of government expenditure which so far had not turned out too well, and which it was reasonable to prune.

In fact, the decision was a right one because the performance of the aeroplane was to increase so greatly in the next few years. At the time it did not seem possible that the cruising speed of an airship could ever much exceed eighty miles an hour, for various technical reasons. Developments of the aeroplane were to make this speed seem trivial, but I doubt if these developments were in sight at the end of 1930. It was not till 1933 that the Douglas D.C.1 astonished the aeronautical world with its revolutionary design based on the new controllable propeller, the retractable undercarriage, and the new conception
of the use of flaps. I doubt if any serious technician forecast the commercial use of aeroplanes to cross the Atlantic till that machine appeared, and in fact it was not till about 1945 that farepaying passengers were flown in aeroplanes across the Atlantic on a scheduled service. We could have made a start with airships by about 1934, but it would have been a dead-end venture, for the aeroplane would have put us out of business in a few years.

At the end of 1930, therefore, the airship staff at Howden was dispersed and we all got the sack. I made an attempt to sell ourselves as a design unit of a dozen men to a well known American concern, without success; airship experience was at a discount in those days. It was a troublesome time for me to be out of a job, because I had got myself engaged to be married during the summer while I was somewhat tied up with other occupations of less importance. Frances Heaton was a young doctor at that time on the staff of the York Hospital, and I must say she took the loss of my job remarkably well, as she has taken all the succeeding crises in our lives.

A senior technician in an industry that suddenly evaporates to nothing finds himself in an unusual position. Although I was still a young man I had become a big frog in a little puddle, too big a frog to be easily absorbed back in to the aeroplane industry as it was in those days. After the responsibilities that I had been carrying I should not have relished the return to a drawing office on half the salary I had been earning; I had grown too accustomed to making quick decisions and seeing them carried out. Moreover, I had very definite ideas about the design of aeroplanes. My piloting experience was meagre in hours of flying time for it had all been carried out at my own expense, but it included the experience of flying practically every type of small personal aircraft in use in England at that date; no new type ever came to Sherburn-in-Elmet
aerodrome but I had a go on it if it was humanly possible to do so.

In these circumstances I decided that before seeking another job I would try my hand at starting a small aeroplane manufacturing company of my own. I was well placed to do this, in some ways. When Wallis went to Vickers Aviation to work on the design of geodetic aeroplanes we had attracted a very senior designer from de Havillands, Mr. Hessell Tiltman, to take charge of the drawing office and act as chief designer. He knew little of airships when he came to us early in 1930 but he was a great artist on the drawing board; the aeroplanes produced to his designs were both beautiful and efficient. I went into conference with Tiltman and found that he was game to try it with me. We had a nucleus of drawing office staff and foremen with good aeroplane experience who had confidence in us and who wanted to go on working with us; as a technical unit to build aeroplanes we had a good deal on our side. The thing we hadn’t got was any money.

In those days the capital required to start an aeroplane manufacturing company was not large, judged by modern standards. In 1930 the demand for small two and three-seater aeroplanes for personal and club flying was brisk all over the world. These units were small in value, and since wooden construction was still the rule no very great numbers had to be produced to manufacture at a profit; the cost of jigs and tools for a given design was small by modern standards. A capital of thirty thousand pounds would have been reasonable for such a business in those days and would have justified a start with a good prospect of success, while fifty thousand pounds might well have made the venture fairly safe, given good management and technical competence. As the swift years went by the capital required for profitable operation doubled and redoubled
every year as aeroplanes grew larger and as wooden aircraft ceased to sell and had to be replaced by metal construction, but in 1930 forty thousand pounds seemed reasonable capital for such an enterprise.

Our first job, therefore, was to consider the design of a small two or three-seater aeroplane that would represent an advance on anything then flying or that we had heard projected. With Tiltman’s design genius and my own knowledge we were well fitted to draw up a good specification and to produce an attractive drawing; the design that we produced was never built, though if it had been I would say that it would be flying still. It was a very attractive little high wing monoplane with a de Havilland Gipsy motor, seating the pilot in front of a two seater side by side cockpit for passengers, a novel arrangement that permitted a most versatile range of uses for the machine. That drawing, and our own reputation, were the basis upon which we had to seek forty thousand pounds of risk capital.

Much has been written in recent years about the provision of risk capital for industry, but few of the authors who pronounce so learnedly upon this subject have ever had the job of looking for the stuff. Men who start businesses upon a shoe string and battle through to success are frequently reluctant to recall and publicise their early disappointments and rebuffs, or if they have the will they may not have the knack of writing. There seems to be a tendency in England nowadays to consider that risk capital for new companies can be conjured up by civil servants and economists waving a sort of magic wand over the bankers. In my experience nothing could be further from the truth. Risk capital is gambling money such as might be staked upon a horse race, and if I tell the story now of how we started Airspeed Ltd it is in the hope that other young men starting other businesses may benefit from our perplexities and heartbreaks.

At that time, in the autumn of 1930, I was living permanently in the St. Leonards Club in York, a pleasant little club opposite the theatre which was frequented by the leading business and professional men in the city. One of the leading members was a Mr. A. E. Hewitt. Hewitt was a very able commercial solicitor with a great sense of humour, a wise counsellor and a firm friend in every adversity. He would have moved to London to a wider sphere of action if a troublesome ailment had not forced him to restrict his activities; as it was, he was a director of a number of local companies where his knowledge of commercial law and his sane judgment made his advice of value.

Somewhat diffidently, I took my idea for a new company to Hewitt and found, rather to my own surprise, that he took the proposition quite seriously. It must be remembered that in those days aviation was booming, but up till that time there had not been very many investment opportunities in it. R.100 had been built within twenty miles of York and was generally considered to have been a great success, so that we started off with a good local reputation. The depression in America had not affected England very much at the time of our first talks and we were not to know how difficult it would become to find capital for a new enterprise in the succeeding months and years. At that time, in Hewitt’s view, it seemed a fairly easy matter to find forty thousand pounds of risk capital for such a venture as the one that we proposed.

Hewitt had a brother-in-law in the Royal Air Force who was the youngest Group Captain in the service and who was to rise to high command in the second war. He sent me down to Wittering, where this young man was in command of the Central Flying School, and he sent me there for two reasons. In the first place, no doubt, he wanted an assurance from his knowledgeable relative that we
were people of good repute in the aircraft industry and that our proposals were technically sound. In the second place, he knew that the young Group Captain was still uncertain of his future in the Royal Air Force, and he thought shrewdly that his relative might well appreciate the chance of an investment at the inception of a new aircraft company with a view to a seat upon the Board on his retirement from the service. From our point of view, of course, no director could have been more welcome than this young senior officer with such exceptional knowledge of the requirements of the Royal Air Force.

At Wittering I succeeded in satisfying this very keen critic that our proposals were sound and that we were capable of doing what we set out to do. It was agreed that if the company came into being Hewitt would have a seat upon the Board and would hold it for his relative until he had decided whether he wanted to retire from the Royal Air Force or not. This all seemed very satisfactory, for in view of our ignorance of company affairs Hewitt would add great strength to the venture.

In the meantime Tiltman had made contact with Sir Alan Cobham. We were both known to Cobham, but he knew Tiltman better and had, quite rightly, the highest opinion of his design ability. Sir Alan was at a transition point of his career in 1930. His energy and his adventurous spirit had enabled him to carry out a number of pioneering flights about the world during the years after the war, which had brought him a great reputation and a knighthood but not much else. Unwilling to remain merely a pilot all his life, he was at that time considering various business ventures, one of which was to engage the greater part of his attention in the next few years. That was his very successful aerial circus, National Aviation Day Ltd, which was to have considerable impact upon our affairs. A toe in the manufacturing side of the industry
was not an unwelcome idea to Cobham, and after a meeting with Hewitt he accepted the idea of an investment and a seat upon the Board of the infant company.

The next step was to produce the first of a series of draft prospectuses, and in this I was, of course, coached by Hewitt. A prospectus is a full statement of the affairs of the proposed company, with details of the previous careers of the directors, details of the auditors, the bankers, and solicitors, an account of why the company is being formed, what it proposes to do, and what profits it can reasonably expect to make. It ends up with an invitation to the public to subscribe for whatever class of shares is being offered, and discloses any share dealings or offers to other persons, especially to the directors. It is issued in the name of the directors, who certify that it is a full and complete statement of the company’s affairs.