Rotary-wing flight in Britain did not begin suddenly with post-war military helicopters; it grew through half a century of experiments stretching from early Clyde tether trials and the Cierva autogiro to the Weir helicopters of the late 1930s, wartime naval trials and the Bristol Sycamore. Charles E. MacKay's The Sycamore Seeds: Early British Helicopter Development traces that history up to 1960 across 219 pages and more than 300 rare photographs and technical drawings, researched from company records and contemporary aeronautical reports.
From the Denny Mumford helicopter to Juan de la Cierva
Scottish engineering enters the rotary-wing story before the First World War with the Denny Mumford helicopters at Dumbarton up to 1914, a thread that also connects to Clydeside Aviation: Volume One The Great War. In the inter-war years, practical rotary-wing flying was carried forward by Juan de la Cierva and the Autogiro, which the book follows up to Cierva's death in an airliner crash.
The operational record of the Cierva C30 in Royal Air Force service is examined in detail, including wartime radar-calibration flights and the extraordinary 1943 encounter in which Norman Hill, flying a Rota I, was intercepted over Hawkinge by two Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighters and survived through evasive manoeuvres. The book also details the deck trials of Cierva and Reggie Brie from Italian cruisers.
G & J Weir, the W5 and W6, and the giant Cierva Air Horse
In Scotland, G & J Weir played a decisive role in moving from the autogiro to the true helicopter. Building on work also seen in Clydeside Aviation Volume Two Between the Wars, the book investigates the Weir W5 and W6 (the first practical British helicopters) before taking the story past the Second World War to the Cierva W9 and the giant three-rotor Cierva Air Horse.
Drawing on the company records of Weir, Cierva and H. Morris & Co., MacKay explains the evolution of the tailless rotor system on the Cierva W9 and the Weir Company's invention of the Fenestron tail fan. The Air Horse, designed by Jacob Shapiro, is followed from firsthand accounts of those who worked on the programme through to the crash that claimed the lives of Alan Marsh and H. A. 'Jeep' Cable, supported by an appendix on Cable and the rotorcraft he flew.
German wartime rotorcraft and the Allied Hoverfly schools
Early British helicopter development did not happen in isolation from continental Europe or the United States. A dedicated chapter covers Focke-Achgelis, Doblhoff and Lioré et Olivier, including Hanna Reitsch's test flights in the Fw 61 (Fa 61), wartime German helicopter production, NACA and Royal Aircraft Establishment reports, and how Focke patents were infringed.
Across the Atlantic, the book follows the Sikorsky Hoverfly, the setting up of the combined Royal Navy and United States Coast Guard unit and Joint Helicopter School at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, anti-submarine trials aboard the merchant vessel Daghestan, and Project Ivory Soap deploying Hoverflies from aircraft-repair supply ships.
Glasgow woodwork and the Bristol Sycamore
A distinctive industrial link runs between rotorcraft engineering and Glasgow furniture manufacturing. H. Morris & Co. Ltd (Morris Furniture of Glasgow), whose full company history is told in Shavings for Breakfast: The History of the Morris Furniture Company, Glasgow, manufactured wooden rotor blades for the Flying Jeep, the single-pilot Rotachute, the Sikorsky Hoverfly and the Bristol Sycamore. The book carries the Bristol story from the Sycamore through to the twin-rotor Bristol 192, alongside an examination of the finances and intelligence intrigue surrounding Power Jets and Weir/Cierva.
Read the full story
For a primary-source account of pre-1960 rotorcraft, from Denny Mumford, Cierva and the Weir W5/W6 to Focke-Achgelis, the Sikorsky Hoverfly, the Cierva Air Horse and the Bristol Sycamore, read The Sycamore Seeds: Early British Helicopter Development. Pair it with Clydeside Aviation Volume Two Between the Wars for the inter-war Scottish context and Shavings for Breakfast: The History of the Morris Furniture Company, Glasgow for Morris Furniture's wartime rotor-blade work.