Guns, ships and a Dutch designer

Armstrong Whitworth was a name for heavy industry long before it was a name for aircraft: the Tyneside group of Sir W. G. Armstrong Whitworth built guns, warships and locomotives. In 1912 it opened an Aerial Department in Newcastle upon Tyne, and from about 1914 to 1917 employed the Dutch designer Frederick Koolhoven, whose initials gave the early types their F.K. names. His F.K.8, first flown in May 1916 and nicknamed the Big Ack, became a Royal Flying Corps workhorse; two Victoria Crosses were won by its crews, one by Second Lieutenant Alan McLeod on 27 March 1918. The department also built airships, including the R33.

The Siddeley years and the Siskin

In 1920 Armstrong Whitworth bought the Coventry car and engine maker Siddeley-Deasy, and the aircraft interests became the Sir W. G. Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Company, with engines going to Armstrong Siddeley. When the parent merged with Vickers in 1927, John Siddeley bought out the aircraft and engine firms, which is why Britain ended up with both Vickers-Armstrongs and Armstrong Whitworth. The inter-war star was the Siskin, first flown in May 1919: the first all-metal fighter in RAF service, with 485 built. The Atlas army co-operation biplane followed in 1925, and the three-engined Argosy of 1926 opened Imperial Airways’ London–Paris passenger service that July.

Whitley: the bomber of the first nights

In 1935 Siddeley retired and sold the company to Hawker, creating Hawker Siddeley, though Armstrong Whitworth kept its own identity. Its great wartime type was the Whitley, first flown from Baginton on 17 March 1936. Whitleys dropped leaflets over Germany on the first night of the war, flew Operation Haddock, the RAF’s first raid on Italy, on 11–12 June 1940, and on 10–11 February 1941 carried the paratroops of Operation Colossus, Britain’s first airborne operation. Paratroops leapt through a floor hatch and sometimes hit its lip, an injury they called the Whitley kiss. 1,814 were built by July 1943, and the company went on to build 1,328 Avro Lancasters.

Flying wings and a first ejection

After the war Armstrong Whitworth gambled on the future. Wartime research on laminar-flow wings led to the A.W.52 jet flying wing, a test bed for a proposed flying-wing airliner. On 30 May 1949, diving the first prototype at 320 mph, test pilot Jo Lancaster hit violent pitch oscillation and pulled the handle of his Martin-Baker seat: the first genuine emergency ejection by a British pilot. The Apollo turboprop airliner, first flown from Baginton on 10 April 1949, lost out to the Vickers Viscount after engine troubles, and only two were built.

Building everyone else’s jets

What paid the bills in the 1950s was building other people’s designs. At Baginton and Bitteswell Armstrong Whitworth produced 281 Avro Lincolns between 1945 and 1951, then Gloster Meteors, including the night-fighter versions it redesigned itself, Hawker Sea Hawks, Hunters and Gloster Javelins for the RAF, Royal Navy and Belgium. Its last design was the AW.660 Argosy, a twin-boom freighter first flown on 8 January 1959; 56 went to the RAF and 17 to civil operators. In 1961 the firm was merged with Gloster as Whitworth Gloster Aircraft, and in 1963 Hawker Siddeley dropped the old names, so the Argosy became a Hawker Siddeley.

Заводы

• Newcastle upon Tyne · Tyneside — Home of the Aerial Department from 1912
• Whitley Abbey and Baginton · Coventry — Whitley production; final assembly at Baginton Aerodrome
• Bitteswell · Leicestershire — 1950s jet fighter production

Люди

• Frederick Koolhoven · designer, c.1914–1917 — Dutch designer behind the F.K. series
• John Siddeley · owner — Bought the company out in 1927 and sold it to Hawker in 1935
• Alan Campbell-Orde · chief test pilot — Flew the Atalanta and Whitley on their first flights
• Jo Lancaster · test pilot — First British pilot to eject in a genuine emergency, A.W.52, 1949

Рекорды и первые достижения

• Siskin: first all-metal fighter in RAF service
• Whitley: first RAF bombing raid on Italy, 11–12 June 1940
• A.W.52: first genuine emergency ejection by a British pilot, 30 May 1949
• Ensign: largest airliner built in Britain in the inter-war period