The publisher who caught the bug

George Holt Thomas made his fortune in magazines, founding The Bystander and Empire Illustrated, and in 1906 caught the aviation bug. Through the Anglo-French Farman brothers he hired the French pilot Louis Paulhan, who in April 1910 won the Daily Mail’s £10,000 prize for flying from London to Manchester. Holt Thomas then set up the Aircraft Manufacturing Company at The Hyde in Hendon, building Farman biplanes and Gnome and Le Rhône rotary engines under licence. The Farmans became trainers for the new Royal Flying Corps.

Enter DH

The decisive moment came in 1914. Holt Thomas learned that Geoffrey de Havilland, then designing at the Royal Aircraft Factory in Farnborough, might be available, and invited him to Hendon as chief designer. Every one of his designs carried his initials: DH. They would make Airco’s name and his own. According to the aviation magazine Flight in 1920, Airco designs made up about 30 per cent of all aircraft built by Britain and the United States between August 1914 and November 1918.

Fighting the Fokker scourge

The first great success was a little pusher. With no British gear yet available to fire through a propeller, de Havilland put the engine behind the pilot and a gun in front. The DH.2 flew in July 1915, and 453 were built; it helped end the Fokker scourge of 1915–16, when German monoplanes with synchronised guns had dominated the Western Front. The DH.6 that followed was a purpose-built trainer so forgiving that it could fly at 30 mph, an unusual idea when most pilots learned on worn-out service types.

One aircraft every 45 minutes

The DH.4 day bomber, first flown in August 1916, was one of the war’s best, and American factories built a modified version by the thousand. Its successor, the DH.9, was ordered in huge numbers — 4,630 before the prototype had even flown — and proved a disappointment, losing heavily over the front. By the Armistice Airco employed between 7,000 and 8,000 people at Hendon, with a wind tunnel and materials laboratory, and was reportedly completing a new aircraft every 45 minutes on average. In December 1918 Holt Thomas advertised it as the largest aircraft company in the world.

London to Paris, daily

Holt Thomas looked beyond the war. His subsidiary Aircraft Transport and Travel became Britain’s first airline, and on 25 August 1919 its DH.16s began the world’s first regular daily international air service, from Hounslow Heath to Le Bourget in Paris. In November 1919 it won the first British civil airmail contract, and on 17 May 1920 an AT&T DH.16 flew KLM’s first London–Amsterdam service.

The sale that went wrong

Peace was brutal. War-surplus aircraft flooded the market and the government, unlike those of France and the United States, offered no support. Holt Thomas sought a buyer, and on 1 March 1920 Airco announced its amalgamation with BSA, parent of Daimler. Within days BSA found that Airco was in a far worse state than Holt Thomas had revealed. He was removed from its board and Airco was placed in liquidation; BSA could not pay a dividend for four years. With Holt Thomas’s help, de Havilland bought the assets he needed and founded the de Havilland Aircraft Company in 1920.

Factories

• The Hyde works · Hendon, north London — Main works, with wind tunnel and materials laboratory; 7,000–8,000 staff in 1918

People

• George Holt Thomas · founder — 1869–1929; publisher of The Bystander and founder of AT&T, Britain’s first airline
• Geoffrey de Havilland · chief designer from 1914 — All Airco designs carried his DH initials; founded de Havilland in 1920
• William Taylor Birchenough · test pilot — Airco test pilot from August 1914

Records and firsts

• World’s first regular daily international air service, Hounslow–Paris, 25 August 1919
• First British civil airmail contract, November 1919
• Claimed the title largest aircraft company in the world, December 1918