Oil engines and a field called Westland

In 1913 the Petter family of Yeovil bought a parcel of land at West Hendford for a new foundry. The Petters made stationary oil engines, and twins Ernest and Percival had even built a motor car in 1895. Then war came, and in 1915 the government asked for seaplanes. The foundry site became an aircraft works, and Mrs Petter supplied the name: Westland, after the new land in the west of the town. The first order was for 12 Short Type 184 seaplanes, followed by 20 Short Type 166s, then Sopwith, Airco and Vickers designs built under licence. By 1917 the engine makers were drawing their own aeroplanes, starting with the N.1B.

Over the top of the world

Between the wars Westland found its feet with the Wapiti, a sturdy general-purpose biplane that first flew in March 1927 and sold more than 550 copies. Then came the stunt that made the name. In April 1933, financed by the fiercely patriotic Lady Houston, two Westland biplanes flown by Lord Clydesdale and David McIntyre made the first flight over Mount Everest, observers photographing the summit from open cockpits. Clydesdale was then the RAF’s youngest squadron leader, and his reserve squadron flew Wapitis. Two years later, in 1935, Petters split off its aircraft side as Westland Aircraft Ltd.

The black Lysanders

The Second World War gave Westland a strange mixed record. Its Whirlwind of 1938 was Britain’s first cannon-armed fighter and fast, but Rolls-Royce could not supply enough Peregrine engines and only 114 were built. The high-altitude Welkin was built for a German threat that never came. Yet the slow, ungainly Lysander, designed as an army co-operation aircraft, found a second life no one had planned. Painted matt black and flown by moonlight from Tempsford and Tangmere, the Lysanders of 138 and 161 Squadrons landed in French fields marked out by torches and, by one count, carried 101 agents in and brought 128 out.

Goodbye wings, hello Sikorsky

Westland also kept the Spitfire family alive at sea. When the navy needed a carrier version, Yeovil became the main Seafire works, building 870 of the 1,220 Seafire IIIs plus large batches of other marks. After the war, though, the board made a decision that changed the company: no more fixed-wing aircraft after the Wyvern strike fighter. Instead Westland signed up to build Sikorsky helicopters under licence. The S-51 became the Dragonfly, first flown at Yeovil in October 1948. Chief designer Teddy Petter, son of the founder, disagreed and walked out to English Electric, where he designed the Canberra and laid out the early Lightning.

Five companies, one helicopter maker

The licence model worked. The Dragonfly was followed by the Whirlwind, more than 360 of them, and then the turbine-powered Wessex, 382 built, which served the RAF until 2003. At the turn of the 1960s the government forced Britain’s twenty-odd aircraft firms into a handful of groups, and helicopters went to Yeovil. Westland swallowed Saunders-Roe in 1959 and the helicopter arms of Bristol and Fairey in 1960, inheriting the Skeeter, the Belvedere, the Rotodyne and factories at Weston-super-Mare, Hayes and East Cowes. From the Saro P.531 came Westland’s own Scout for the army and Wasp for the navy. By 1961 the merged group was Westland Helicopters, Britain’s only helicopter maker.

The Lynx and the record nobody has beaten

An Anglo-French agreement in February 1967 traded work on the Puma and Gazelle for French participation in a new Westland design, the WG.13 Lynx. It first flew on 21 March 1971, could loop and roll, and in 1972 set speed records with Roy Moxam at the controls. Then in August 1986 the company demonstrator G-LYNX, fitted with uprated Gem engines and experimental BERP rotor blades, was flown by Trevor Egginton to 400.87 km/h, the official FAI speed record for a helicopter. Four decades later nobody has gone faster in a conventional helicopter. Alongside it Yeovil built 344 Sea Kings under Sikorsky licence; the Royal Navy flew its last in 2018.

The affair that shook the Cabinet

Success did not mean profit. By 1985 Westland was in trouble and two rescues competed: one led by Sikorsky and Fiat, the other a European consortium championed by Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine. The row went public, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher appeared to back the American option, and in January 1986 Heseltine walked out of a Cabinet meeting and resigned. Trade Secretary Leon Brittan followed over a leaked letter. Thatcher survived, Sikorsky got its stake, and the Black Hawk order it hoped for never came. GKN took full control in 1994, and in 2000 Westland and Agusta merged as AgustaWestland, now Leonardo Helicopters, still building in Yeovil.

Factories

• Yeovil works · West Hendford, Yeovil, Somerset — Original 1915 site on land bought by the Petters in 1913; now Leonardo Helicopters
• Weston-super-Mare · Weston-super-Mare, Somerset — Former Bristol helicopter factory taken over in 1960; the site now houses The Helicopter Museum
• Hayes · Hayes, Middlesex — Former Fairey works; built Wasps and Scouts in the 1960s
• East Cowes · East Cowes, Isle of Wight — Saunders-Roe and British Hovercraft Corporation site; kept by GKN in 2000

People

• Ernest Petter · co-founder — With his twin Percival ran Petters Ltd, which created the aircraft works in 1915
• W. E. W. “Teddy” Petter · chief designer — Designed the Lysander; left over the move to helicopters and designed the Canberra at English Electric
• Harald Penrose · chief test pilot 1931–1953 — Flew Westland types from Wapiti to early helicopters; aviation author
• Eric Mensforth · chairman 1953–1968 — Led the transition to a helicopter company
• Sir John Cuckney · chairman from 1985 — Brought in during the rescue; proposed the Sikorsky link
• Trevor Egginton · test pilot — Flew G-LYNX to the 1986 helicopter speed record

Records and firsts

• First flight over Mount Everest, April 1933, by two Westland aircraft
• Whirlwind: Britain’s first cannon-armed fighter, first flown 1938
• Lynx: 15 and 25 km speed record of 321.74 km/h, 1972, pilot Roy Moxam
• Lynx G-LYNX: 400.87 km/h on 11 August 1986, still the FAI speed record for conventional helicopters
• Lynx: first combat firing of the Sea Skua missile, Falklands, 3 May 1982