A novelist in a bus garage

In 1931 two engineers from the R100 airship project, Hessell Tiltman and Nevil Shute Norway, set up an aircraft company in half of an empty bus garage on Piccadilly in York. Norway would become far better known by his forenames, as the novelist Nevil Shute, author of A Town Like Alice and On the Beach. His fellow directors included Sir Alan Cobham and Lord Grimthorpe, and the aviator Amy Johnson subscribed for shares. Their first product, the AS.1 Tern, was the first British high-performance sailplane, built in a few months to win publicity with gliding records. Shute flew it himself.

Portsmouth, Couriers and the Spanish war

In March 1933 Airspeed moved to a purpose-built factory at Portsmouth’s new airport. There it built the AS.5 Courier, among the first British aircraft with a retractable undercarriage, an innovation that earned Shute a Fellowship of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and the twin-engined Envoy, chosen for the King’s Flight. Sales were thin, and Shute’s defence of unsold aircraft in the books earned him a reputation as unscrupulous. He was proved right: in 1936 most unsold Couriers and Envoys found their way to the Spanish Civil War, the demonstrator paid for in cash. The loss of the Wolseley Scorpio engine that year, after Lord Nuffield walked away, was a heavy blow.

The Oxford: classroom of the Commonwealth

The Envoy’s descendant saved the company. The AS.10 Oxford, first flown by Percy Colman on 19 June 1937, was a twin-engined trainer for navigators, wireless operators, bomb aimers, gunners and pilots, and the Empire went to war with it. By the end of production 8,751 Oxfords had been built, 4,411 at Portsmouth and the rest at Christchurch, by de Havilland, Percival and Standard Motors. Amy Johnson, ferrying an Oxford for the Air Transport Auxiliary, was lost in the Thames Estuary in January 1941. De Havilland bought the company outright in June 1940, but Airspeed kept its own identity.

Horsa gliders at Pegasus Bridge

Airspeed’s other war winner had no engine at all. The AS.51 Horsa, a wooden glider able to carry up to 30 troops, first flew on 12 September 1941, just eleven months after the specification was issued. About 3,800 Horsas were built. In the first minutes of D-Day, 6 June 1944, Horsas landed the troops who captured Pegasus Bridge in Normandy; Jim Wallwork flew the first to touch French soil. Three months later Horsas went to Arnhem in Operation Market Garden.

The Elizabethan and Munich

After the war Airspeed converted surplus Oxfords into Consul light airliners and built the elegant AS.57 Ambassador, first flown at Christchurch on 10 July 1947. British European Airways called its twenty the Elizabethan Class, in honour of the new Queen. On 6 February 1958 one of them, G-ALZU, crashed on take-off at Munich carrying the Manchester United team, the Munich air disaster. By then Airspeed itself had gone: it was fully merged into de Havilland in 1951, which stopped Ambassador development after 23 had been built. The original York factory was demolished in November 2015.

Továrny

• Piccadilly bus garage · York — First workshop, 1931; demolished November 2015
• Portsmouth Airport works · Portsmouth, Hampshire — Main factory from March 1933; built 4,411 Oxfords
• Christchurch shadow factory · Christchurch, Dorset — Built 550 Oxfords; Ambassador first flight 1947
• Fairmile Manor design office · Cobham, Surrey — Dispersed design office opened around 1943

Lidé

• Nevil Shute Norway · co-founder and managing director; novelist — 1899–1960; former R100 airship deputy chief engineer
• Hessell Tiltman · spoluzakladatel a designér
• Sir Alan Cobham · director
• Amy Johnson · original shareholder — Killed flying an Oxford in January 1941
• George Errington · chief test pilot — First flight of the Ambassador, 1947

Rekordy a prvenství

• AS.1 Tern: first British high-performance sailplane, built to set British gliding records
• Horsa prototype flew 11 months after the specification was issued
• Elizabethan Class reached 2,230 flying hours per aircraft a year by December 1955, the highest in BEA’s fleet