VISIT TO BROOKLANDS MUSEUM, WEDNESDAY, 25th JUNE 2008
About 14 members visited the Brooklands Museum and Concorde Experience on a bright but breezy day, we naturally assembled in the coffee shop and having refreshed our inner beings, we under the guidance of Reg our excellent Museum Guide covered the driving/racing history and toured the various garages, shed, including a wide range of racing and vintage cars (pictures are thanks to Sue Hunt) the banked driving circuit, etc and at each stop had an interesting potted history outlining the brief high lights.
The Brooklands concrete banked driving circuit, 100 feet wide travelling about 60 mph the cars would be about half way up whilst the top speed of 125 mph about four feet from the top, although this was exceed to 143.
The Access bridge to spectator area, although in the past there were two tunnels.
We then proceeded into the aero section, again with full explanation, covering a multitude of airframes and engines, such as the Jet powered Hawker Aircraft Sea Hawk (with bifurcated wing air intakes), parts of a Hunter being refurbished, Harrier Jump Jet, VC10 (complete with two double beds for the Sultan of Brunei, show below) although the majority were used for troop transport or converted to tankers for flight refuelling, a Vanguard in cargo format, and the highly successful Vickers Viscount and the highlight of a Wellington bomber restored after 40 odd years in Lock Ness after a 1940 accident.
This was a extensive look around with Reg's instruction that after lunch all were worth a second visit at our leisure, assuming our energy level was capable? So of to lunch and a rest period, a nice selection of food available at a price in the vintage club house of 1906 vintage (picture below of us on the steps)
Interestingly the upper offices were used by Vickers Aircraft during and after WW11 as their advance project office under the guidance of Barnes Wallace famous for the design of the bouncing dam busting bomb. He is lest well known for the advanced swing wing aircraft design concept called the Swallow, dropped by the British Government but revised by the USA and used in an advance fighter aircraft called the F111 and of course purchase by the UK Air force.
After lunch, the party (less Jean and Phil Hall who casually mentioned that they had already flown to Washington, USA by Concorde and had the Tee shirt to prove it!) we proceeded to visit the Concorde Experience. The opening talk lasted a few minutes in the Concorde transit coach and we then transferred to and into the aircraft, of course Pat Hunt lost his luggage but what can you expect from a committee member!
Inside we started aft in the baggage hold, but no sign of missing luggage, the centre section is partly stripped to show the airframe structure and the window cooling system, the starboard side showing items from the Concorde, including the Kevlar panels fitted to the fuel tanks after the Paris accident where debris left from a previous aircraft take off punctured the fuel tanks with a resulting fireball and loss of life. For those technically minded this aircraft used advanced machining techniques such as integral milling or as known today as CNC machining where the components are not fabricated from parts with rivets but machined from a solid billet of material via CAD (Computer Aided Design)
Then we were ushered into the front seated area for a video from one of the pilots, below the Probus Club of Epsom on their private charter supersonic Concorde flight to destination unknown?
Les Robinson looks glum as no caviar or champagne was served!
Has anybody seen the pilot, never mind we have a Club member who is a pilot!
So we disembarked but where were we? Sadly our guide said it was Brooklands, oh dear, still very interesting, so smile all.
This was an interesting and well organised visit, so congratulations to Ken Robinson and the activities committee.
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History of Brooklands
From the very first attempts to fly in Britain through an exceptionally varied cavalcade of aircraft, Brooklands, the famous aviation site at Weybridge in Surrey, has witnessed and realised a greater range of aeronautical technology than anywhere else in the world.
In April 1907, the Hon. Charles Rolls, later of Rolls-Royce fame, passed gently over Weybridge in his hot-air balloon and beneath him he viewed of the new Brooklands Motor Course then nearing completion.
This was the World's first purpose-built motor racing circuit and was the realised dream of a wealthy local landowner, Hugh Fortescue Locke King. A Frenchman, Bellamy was the first man to attempt flight at Brooklands, based on his study of birds' wings and it is known that crows, jays, rooks and pigeons were collected for him by Hugh Locke King's gamekeeper, Mr. Boxall, in return for a 'drop of whisky'. Possibly Monsieur Bellamy had been tempted by the challenge of the Brooklands Automobile Racing Club Committee which in December 1906 announced that the first person to fly round the Track before the end of 1907 would win a grand prize of £2,500. Although no-one managed to beat this deadline, A.V. Roe came closest. The offer of the prize had attracted him to Brooklands in 1907 to build his own aeroplane shed and assemble his No. 1 biplane scaled up from a prize-winning model.
The following year on June the 8th after many difficulties and living on a diet of kippers and dates, Roe and his fragile aeroplane with its 24hp engine briefly took to the air for the first time - and he became the first Englishman to fly in a powered aeroplane of his own design.
In 1909, wealthy newspaper proprietor and aviation promoter George Holt-Thomas encouraged Hugh Locke King and Clerk of the Course Major Lindsay Lloyd to create one of Britain's first aerodromes in the middle of the Track Soon, other pioneers and the first aircraft companies arrived - in February 1910, the British and Colonial Aircraft Company, later renamed The Bristol Aeroplane Company, took premises at Brooklands and offered flying lessons.
The pioneer, who was to leave the greatest and most enduring mark on Brooklands and on British aviation as a whole, was Thomas Sopwith, a wealthy young man determined to teach himself to fly. This he achieved by the end of 1910, but not without mishap - however with relatively low flying speeds involved, as he later recalled "you could do quite a lot of crashing without hurting anybody at all". He later had premises in the new Flying Village at Brooklands. This was a group of wooden sheds housing a growing community of sportsmen and aircraft designers. They were immortalised in the memorable 1960s film 'Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines' which was based around an event held at Brooklands in July 1911 - The Daily Mail Circuit of Britain Air Race - one of the greatest British aeronautical events of those years The Brooklands Flying Village at was populated by most of the greatest pioneers of British aviation before the start of World War 1 and witnessed an impressive range of aviation firsts.
Hilda Hewlett became the first woman to gain her pilot's licence at Brooklands in 1910.
In 1911 the world's first flight ticket office was built at Brooklands close to the Blue Bird Restaurant. This consisted of a simple brick hut operated by Keith Prowse Ltd up to World War 1. Here passenger flights in biplanes around Brooklands cost about a pound.
Other important visiting pioneers were Claude Grahame-White, Gustav Hamel, Louis Bleriot - and also H.P. Martin and George Handasyde who together formed the Martinsyde Aircraft Company. Adolph Pegoud became the first man to loop-the-loop at Brooklands - this was also the first aerobatic display in Britain.
A new Sopwith Aviation Company was formed in late 1912 with flight sheds at Brooklands and offices and additional premises in an old roller-skating rink in nearby Kingston upon Thames. Harry Hawker became the Sopwith Company's test pilot replacing Tom Sopwith himself and at the same time became Sopwith's most devoted colleague. In April 1914, Sopwith entered a Brooklands-built Sopwith Tabloid biplane - the prototype of all future single seater fighters (especially much later the Spitfire shown below) - in the Schneider Trophy Sea Plane Contest held at Monaco and won at over 86 mph.
The Vickers name was to hold centre stage at Brooklands through an outstanding five decade progression of famous aircraft until it became the Weybridge division of the British Aircraft Corporation and ultimately a major part of British Aerospace.
By August 1914, with the declaration of war on Germany, the 'days of ease and innocence' ended.
Brooklands and all its services including the race track were taken over by the war office and a Military Flying School was formed which employed instructors and aeroplanes from many of the existing schools.
In 1915 Vickers started aircraft manufacturing at Brooklands, taking over the 'Itala Motor Works' which had premises on the edge of the Track.
The first aircraft type built by Vickers at Brooklands was the BE2c biplane, 75 being made from 1915-1916 for £975 each.
5 FE8 biplanes were also built in 1916 followed by 1,650 Royal Aircraft Factory SE5A fighters particularly designed to combat the German Zeppelin threat. The former Itala Works were progressively extended by Vickers for military contracts and with the increased demand for labour, women moved in to replace the men who had been called away to serve in the war.
The first true Vickers fighter to go into production at Brooklands was the Gunbus, the world's first aircraft specifically designed to mount a machine gun.
This was followed by the twin-engined Vimy designed as a long-range bomber; the war ended before the Vimy had a chance to enter operational service, although the type soon made its name in pioneering long distance flights across the world.
When peace came, aircraft production was cut off almost overnight and factory workers, now mostly men, had to turn their hands to manufacturing other products, for example Bleriot and Sopwith made light cars and motorcycles and Vickers were producing such diverse products as perambulators, fishing-rod cases and brick-making machinery.
Harry Hawker also became a familiar sight on the Brooklands Race Track which re-opened in 1920 for a new season of motor racing.
Over the next 20 years up to the outbreak of World War Two, the Vickers factory at Brooklands produced a broad range of military and civil aircraft types including the Vixen, first flown in 1923 and the Vespa, built in 1925 and which later set a new world height record of 43,976 feet in 1932.
Vickers survived in the aviation business through innovation and good management and despite the economic depression and lack of major orders for Britain's small peacetime air force and fledgling airline industry, the company came to specialise in large biplane bombers and transports for the RAF including the Virginia, Victoria and Valentia.
The most notable aircraft to which Barnes Wallis later applied geodetic construction was the Wellington which played such an important part in World War Two.
Parallel to Vickers re-establishing itself in the aircraft business after World War One, Sopwith Aviation was restructured (as Hawker Aircraft) in 1920 at Kingston and Brooklands when Tom Sopwith was forced to liquidate his original company only to re-form as the H.G.Hawker Engineering Company to re-condition war-surplus aircraft with Tom Sopwith himself as engineering director.
Sadly, Harry Hawker - Sopwith's great friend, valued colleague and skilled pilot was killed on 12th July 1921 in a flying accident at Hendon, although the Hawker name has carried on in aviation ever since, until is became part on BAC
Numerous Hawker aircraft types produced and test flown at Brooklands in the interwar years include the classic high speed Hawker Hart bomber, first flown at Brooklands in 1928 with its Rolls-Royce engine later to be named the Kestrel.
The Hart had many derivatives, namely the Demon, Osprey, Audax, Hardy, Hartbees, Hind and Hector - and the even faster single-seat Fury and Nimrod fighters.
Renamed Hawker Aircraft Limited, the company subsequently became a specialist producer of military fighter aircraft, all through the work of Chief Designer Sydney Camm, who had joined Hawker from the defunct Martinsyde Company in 1923.
He was another example of Sopwith's remarkable skill as a 'picker of men' and he became one of the world's best military aircraft designers.
In 1934 Tom Sopwith established the Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Company. This significant new group of companies was to produce the majority of British fighter aircraft in the 20th century - most notably the Hurricane fighter which played a decisive role in winning the Battle of Britain in 1940.
In the 1930s, Brooklands Aerodrome was a regular venue for aviation events with air races, flying displays, dawn patrols and open days staged.
The 11th Kings Cup Air Race started and finished at Brooklands in July 1932 and a successful Civil Air Display was held in May by the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators. But the fun came to an abrupt end at Brooklands in September 1939 with the declaration of war between Britain and Germany.
On August Bank Holiday Monday the last ever motor race meeting had taken place on the famous track and later in the month the final Brooklands Flying Club event was held before all civil flying ceased. Everything was subordinated to the priorities of wartime aircraft production.
The first 'true' Wellington appeared 18 months later as the Wellington Mk1 (below) which had seen many alterations from the prototype to meet Air Ministry requirements.
To cope with the demand for government orders for the Wellington, Vickers expanded the factory at Brooklands for mass production and to accommodate a larger workforce which would soon include women too.
Of the 11,461 Wellingtons built by Vickers by 1945, 2,515 were built at Brooklands.
The Wellington was Britain's most numerous and successful twin-engined bomber of World War 2 - it served in virtually every command of the RAF. There were 23 different versions in total and all were developed and test flown at Brooklands.
Barnes Wallis' work on 'earthquake' bombs was successfully developed into the 12,000lb 'Tallboy' and 22,000lb 'Grand Slam' bombs. These were the largest bombs used in the war and were designed to be dropped from Avro Lancaster's (below) and to penetrate deep into the ground before exploding.
They were successfully used in the last two years of the war on railway tunnels, viaducts and submarine pens and the 'Tallboy' was instrumental in sinking the 'Tirpitz' battleship.
In the 1950s, following on from the success of the Viscount, Vickers-Armstrong's' next civil airliner was on the drawing boards in their enlarged design office at Brooklands. This was the Vanguard, powered by four Rolls-Royce Tyne turbo-props. It was first flown from Brooklands on a wet afternoon on January the 20th 1959 by Chief Test Pilot Jock Bryce and co-pilot Brian Trubshaw and the type first entered service with BEA in 1961 on its European routes and later with Trans-Canada Airlines.
Larger than the Viscount, 44 Vanguards were built at Brooklands and some of these were later adapted for transporting freight and renamed the Merchantman.
In the 1960s Brooklands entered the commercial pure jet-age with the introduction of Sir George Edwards' design team's Vickers VC10 and for the military the Valiant Nuclear Bomber shown below.
This four-engined long-range passenger (above) Vickers VC10 transport was the largest airliner ever produced in quantity in the UK and required the construction at Brooklands and Wisley of vast new aircraft assembly hangars.
Powered by Rolls-Royce Conway engines mounted at the rear beneath a distinctive T-shaped tail, the VC10 airframe also incorporated the very latest manufacturing techniques including the milling of skin panels from solid metal billets.
Significantly computers were widely used by Vickers at Brooklands in the design and construction process from the early 1950s.
The first flight of the prototype VC10 was made at Brooklands on the 29th June 1962 crewed by Jock Bryce, Brian Trubshaw and Flight Engineer Bill Cairns. The whole factory workforce turned out to witness this impressive event and all 53 production VC10s were subsequently flown out of Brooklands for completion and test flying at Wisley.
Plans were already being advanced for a new exciting collaborative project - the Concorde supersonic transport. Developed and funded jointly by Britain and France, the Concorde programme began with the first meeting between BAC and Sud-Aviation in Britain being held in Sir George Edwards' office at Brooklands in July 1961.
Although a number of factories in Britain and France were involved in its manufacture, together with many subcontractors, more of Concorde was actually designed and manufactured at Brooklands than at any other site.
This manufacturing work was the major project at Brooklands into the mid-1970s and Concorde then entered commercial service with British Airways and Air France on January the 21st 1976, shortly after Sir George Edwards retired from the Chairmanship of BAC.
Sadly today, Concorde is history, having been cancelled and dumped by governments because of the Americans barring its flights into the USA because they had no answer to supersonic commercial flight; our so called special partners have only eyes for the immediate dollar!
With thanks to http://www.brooklandsmuseum.com
