Robert Blackburn

Robert Blackburn (born March 26, 1885 in Leeds , † September 10, 1955 in Devon ) was a British aviation pioneer and aircraft designer .

Live and act

After studying engineering at Leeds University in 1906 , Blackburn went to France . In the leading aviation nation of the time, the young man, obsessed with aviation, wanted to acquire the skills needed to build his own aircraft.

He had made his first contacts with aircraft manufacturers during previous stays in France. He had spent a few weekends at Le Mans and watched demonstration flights there with interest by Wilbur Wright . Blackburn built his first aircraft in May 1909. It is interesting to note that the pilot's seat consisted of a wicker chair he had stolen from his father's garden. The flight attempts of the underpowered machine were not particularly successful. The aircraft was destroyed the first time it attempted a turn.

In 1910 Blackburn rented a hangar and a small apartment building at Filey Airfield in Yorkshire , close to the beach. A small crane was available to him to winch the aircraft from the cliff to the beach. The next construction was the Blackburn Monoplane , which was soon nicknamed "Heavy Type Monoplane" due to its high weight. The aircraft was destroyed during a test flight on May 24, 1910, but this did not prevent Blackburn from venturing into new designs. Another design was initially flown by Blackburn himself, but he left all further flights to employed pilots to devote himself to the further development of his designs. Soon he also founded a flight school in Filey. The pilots were soon able to keep the machine in the air for about three hours.

Blackburn's next design, a two-seat monoplane called the Mercury , was unveiled at the Olympia Aero Show in London in 1911. In the following two years Blackburn developed different versions of this basic model. However, setbacks were inevitable - one of the machines crashed on a flight on the beach, and both occupants were killed. In September 1912 the flight school was relocated to Hendon, one of the centers of the British aircraft industry at the time.

In June 1914 Blackburn founded the Blackburn Airplane Company , which was renamed the Blackburn Airplane and Car Company a short time later . By the outbreak of World War I in the same year, Blackburn's designs were so mature that his company became one of the main suppliers of aerial equipment to the British government for that war. The focus of production at Blackburn in the following years was on naval aircraft such as torpedo fighters, anti-submarine aircraft, flying boats and carrier-based machines. In 1914 Blackburn had developed his first seaplane; at that time his soft spot for this type of aircraft arose.

In 1939 the company was renamed Blackburn Aircraft Ltd. renamed, in 1948 there was a merger with the company General Aircraft to Blackburn and General Aircraft .

Robert Blackburn, whose two marriages had resulted in six children , never lived to see the end of his business, which in 1964 became part of the Hawker Siddeley Group.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kenneth Aitken: Robert Blackburn (Fathers of British Aviation, No.2) . In: Airplane Monthly, April 1993, p. 18