After Everest

In April 1933 two young Scottish airmen, David McIntyre and the Marquess of Clydesdale, flew open-cockpit Westland biplanes over the summit of Mount Everest, the first people ever to do so. They came home famous and full of ambition. On 9 August 1935 they incorporated Scottish Aviation Limited with a mission statement as large as the mountain: to establish the aviation industry in all its branches in Scotland. They bought 157 acres of flat land at Prestwick on the Ayrshire coast, with 190 more held for expansion, and began building an aerodrome.

The pilot factory

Flying training began in February 1936, and as war approached the company became a factory for airmen rather than aircraft. With a fleet of more than 120 training aircraft, by 1941 Scottish Aviation had trained 1,334 pilots, 1,994 air observers and about 1,200 wireless operators — according to the aviation press, five times as many as any other UK company. Prestwick’s fog-free record made it the RAF’s terminus for transatlantic ferry flights, and after the war American Overseas Airlines began regular services from there to New York in 1945.

A palace for a hangar

The company’s factory had a grand past. Its main building was the Palace of Engineering from the 1938 Empire Exhibition in Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park, dismantled after the show and re-erected at Prestwick, where it still stands. During the Second World War, Scottish Aviation took on maintenance work from 1938 and serviced and converted aircraft for the war effort, including the Consolidated Liberator bombers that crossed the Atlantic. McIntyre also set up a post-war airline, Scottish Airlines.

Pioneers of the short strip

Then the company began to design. The Prestwick Pioneer flew in 1947, and once re-engined with a 520 hp Alvis Leonides it could take off in 225 feet and land in 200. The RAF used Pioneers for casualty evacuation in Malaya, Aden and Cyprus. The larger Twin Pioneer flew on 25 June 1955, but in 1957 fatigue failures caused wings to detach in two fatal crashes. In the second, near Fezzan in Libya on 7 December 1957, all six aboard died, among them David McIntyre himself. In November 1958 the company announced redundancies affecting almost 800 of its 2,500 staff.

Bulldogs and Jetstreams

Scottish Aviation survived by adopting orphans. When Beagle Aircraft collapsed, it took over the Bulldog trainer with a Swedish order for 78; the RAF ordered 130 in 1972, and Bulldogs taught a generation of University Air Squadron cadets. When Handley Page failed, it took over the Jetstream turboprop and built it at Prestwick, including navigation trainers for the RAF. Between 1964 and 1966 it even designed a little electric car, the Scamp. In 1977 the company was nationalised into British Aerospace, which developed the Jetstream 31 at Prestwick.

Factories

• Prestwick works (former Palace of Engineering) · Prestwick Airport, Ayrshire — Building moved from the 1938 Empire Exhibition in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow

People

• David Fowler McIntyre · co-founder — Born in Govan; Everest flier 1933; killed in a Twin Pioneer crash in Libya, 7 December 1957
• Douglas Douglas-Hamilton · co-founder — Marquess of Clydesdale, later 14th Duke of Hamilton; chief pilot of the 1933 Everest flight; received Rudolf Hess’s peace overture in 1941

Records and firsts

• Founders made the first flight over Mount Everest, 1933
• Trained five times as many aircrew as any other UK company by 1941