Hawker buys Siddeley

In 1935 Hawker Aircraft, the Kingston firm built on the bones of Tom Sopwith’s First World War company, did something very bold for a fighter maker: it bought J. D. Siddeley’s empire, including the engine builder Armstrong Siddeley and the aircraft maker Armstrong Whitworth, along with A. V. Roe (Avro) and the Gloster Aircraft Company. The result, Hawker Siddeley Aircraft, was overnight one of the biggest aviation concerns in the world. Each member kept its own name and design office while sharing work across the group, so for almost three decades the name Hawker Siddeley hardly ever appeared on an aircraft.

The Battle of Britain group

It was everywhere in the war that followed. In the Battle of Britain, Hawker Hurricanes outnumbered all other British fighters combined and were credited with 55 per cent of the enemy aircraft destroyed. Avro’s Lancaster became the backbone of Bomber Command, Armstrong Whitworth built Whitleys and Gloster delivered the Meteor, the only Allied jet fighter to see combat in the Second World War. Thomas Sopwith, chairman of Hawker since 1920, presided over it all; he would remain associated with the group, as its founder president, until nationalisation and beyond.

Canada’s third-largest company

In 1945 the group bought Victory Aircraft in Malton, Ontario, from the Canadian government and renamed it A. V. Roe Canada. Avro Canada grew at astonishing speed, into engines, steel, mining and rolling stock, and by 1958 it was Canada’s third-largest company, employing more than 14,000 people directly and providing 45 per cent of the parent’s revenue. Its CF-100 Canuck went into full production; its supersonic CF-105 Arrow did not. When the Arrow was cancelled in 1959, the Canadian empire began to unravel, and in 1962 A. V. Roe Canada was dissolved.

Forced together

By the late 1950s the British government had decided that some fifteen aircraft firms were too many, and made future contracts conditional on mergers. Hawker Siddeley swallowed Folland in 1959, then de Havilland and Blackburn in 1960, leaving it as one of just two big British airframe groups alongside the British Aircraft Corporation. In 1963 the old names were finally dropped: the de Havilland 121 became the HS.121 Trident, the DH.125 the HS.125, the Avro 748 the HS.748. The group also diversified into railways, buying the Brush locomotive business in 1957, and even ran a small nuclear reactor at Langley.

The jump jet

The group’s greatest single achievement came from Sydney Camm’s Kingston design office and Bristol Siddeley’s vectored-thrust Pegasus engine. The P.1127 first flew in 1960, led to nine Kestrels for a tripartite British, American and West German squadron, and then to the Harrier, which entered RAF service on 1 April 1969 as the first operational jet with vertical and short take-off and landing. That May two Harriers flew in the Daily Mail Transatlantic Air Race between St Pancras station in London and central Manhattan, with air-to-air refuelling. The US Marine Corps bought 110 AV-8As — built in Britain because Congress judged it cheaper than a US production line.

The Trident and the Hawk

Not everything flew so high. The Trident airliner was scaled down during development, flew in January 1962 and entered service in April 1964 — two months after its rival, the Boeing 727, which had been designed to the Trident’s original, larger specification. Only 117 Tridents were built, against 1,832 727s. The Trident pioneered automatic blind landing in airline service in 1965, but the type is also remembered for the Staines disaster of 18 June 1972, when a BEA Trident entered a deep stall after take-off and all 118 people aboard were killed. The HS.125 business jet, the Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft and the Hawk trainer, first flown in August 1974 and later the mount of the Red Arrows, were longer-lived successes.

Nationalised

The end came by act of Parliament. Under the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Act 1977, Hawker Siddeley Aviation and Hawker Siddeley Dynamics were nationalised on 29 April 1977 and merged with BAC and Scottish Aviation to form British Aerospace. Aviation was by then only a quarter of the group’s business; the rest, from locomotives to switchgear, carried on as Hawker Siddeley Group plc until BTR bought it for 1.5 billion pounds in 1992. The Harrier, the Hawk and the 125 kept flying for decades under other badges, and the 125 line alone ran to 1,720 aircraft by 2013.

Fabrieken

• Kingston upon Thames · Richmond Road, Kingston, Surrey — Main aircraft factory and headquarters from 1948; Hurricane, Hunter and Harrier lineage
• Dunsfold · Dunsfold, Surrey — Flight test airfield for the Kingston types; P.1127 and Kestrel trials
• Malton (Avro Canada) · Malton, Ontario — Ex-Victory Aircraft, bought 1945; home of the CF-100 and CF-105
• Brush works · Loughborough — Locomotive and electrical business bought in 1957

Mensen

• Thomas Sopwith · chairman, founder president — Chaired Hawker from 1920; consultant to the nationalised business until 1980
• Sydney Camm · chief designer — Hurricane, Hunter and the P.1127 that led to the Harrier
• Roy Dobson · managing director and chairman — Listed among the group’s managing directors and chairmen
• Arnold Hall · managing director and chairman — Listed among the group’s managing directors and chairmen
• Bill Bedford · chief test pilot — Flew the P.1127’s first conventional flight in 1961 and the first Kestrel in 1964
• John Fozard · engineer — Listed among the group’s key designers; associated with the Harrier
• Ralph Hooper · engineer — Drew the initial P.1127 layout around the Pegasus engine

Records en primeurs

• Hurricanes credited with 55 per cent of enemy aircraft destroyed in the Battle of Britain (h1)
• Harrier: first operational V/STOL combat jet, RAF service from 1 April 1969 (h2)
• Trident: first airliner to make a blind landing in revenue service, 1965 (h3)
• Avro Canada was Canada’s third-largest company by 1958 (h1)