Sidney Cotton

Sidney Cotton (1941)

Frederick Sidney Cotton OBE (born June 17, 1894 in Allensleigh , near Bowen , Queensland in Australia , † February 13, 1969 in East Grinstead , Sussex , Great Britain ) was an Australian pilot , aviation pioneer , spy and photographer. During the First World War , he invented a flight suit that protected against hypothermia in an open cockpit . He was instrumental in the development of British military photogrammetry during World War II .

Private life

Sidney Cotton was the third child of farmer Alfred John Cotton and his wife Annie Isabel Jane, nee Bode. Sidney Cotton went to school in South Port , Queensland, and when he and his family went to Great Britain in 1910, he attended college in Cheltenham . In 1912 the family returned to Australia.

After his school education he was a so-called Jackeroo in Cassilis in New South Wales . A jackeroo is training to become an agricultural manager.

On October 16, 1917, he married 17-year-old Regmor Agnes Joan Morvaren Maclean in London. They had a son together before they separated in 1925. In 1926 he married Millicent Joan Henry, 18, with whom he had a daughter. This marriage ended in divorce in 1944. On August 1, 1951, at the age of 56, he married 25-year-old Thelma Olive Brooke-Smith, his former secretary.

pilot

He came to Great Britain during the First World War . There he held on November 26, 1915 a position as a flight sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Air Service . After five solo flights, he patrolled the English Channel , then he was deployed as a bomber pilot.

After the end of the First World War, he worked in his father's factory in Tasmania and returned to Great Britain in 1919. In February 1920 he failed his first flight from Great Britain to Australia. In July 1920, he crashed an airplane in a British flying race. He then went to Newfoundland , Canada for three years . There he worked as a cargo pilot and also acquired land.

In 1927 he was involved in the search for the French aviation pioneers Charles Nungesser and François Coli ; who were lost on their Atlantic crossing. In 1931 he led the search operation for the pilot Augustine Courtauld in Greenland , which led to success.

Inventor and businessman

In the winter of 1916–1917 he developed the Sidcot Suit , a pilot's fur that protected against hypothermia and was used in civil and military aviation until the 1950s.

In the late 1920s he was doing business with US patent rights and their use in the UK. His investments in color photography technology from the French company Dufaycolor failed.

Cotton was known to Winston Churchill , Ian Fleming, and George Eastman . He also had contacts with high-ranking National Socialists . Sidney Cotton wanted to fly Hermann Göring , whom he knew, to Great Britain for talks before the attack on Poland began. When Hitler forbade this, Cotton flew the last civil aircraft out of the war-ready Third Reich .

In 1939 he undertook reconnaissance flights over the German Reich and the Middle East for the British Secret Intelligence Service , photographing military installations. He took pictures of Soviet oil fields for Operation Pike , which was planned for the summer of 1940 . With the equipment he designed, he improved British aerial reconnaissance through high-resolution photographs. He was commissioned to equip British aircraft, such as the Bristol Blenheim bomber aircraft and later the Spitfire fighter aircraft, with these aerial reconnaissance equipment. He was appointed head of the Royal Photographic Development Unit at Heston Airfield near London . Cotton was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his achievements in aerial reconnaissance .

Photo of the Lockheed 12A that Sidney Cotton used after the war.

After the end of the Second World War he devoted himself to his private economic interests. He maintained a few Lancastrian aircraft . In 1948 he set up an airline to Hyderabad , India. In the Middle East he tried to acquire a license to extract oil.

Autobiography

He wrote the book Aviator Extraordinary: the Sidney Cotton Story , which was published shortly before his death in 1969, about his life together with co-author Ralph Barker .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Guide to the papers of Frederick Sidney Cotton at awm.gov.au (English). Retrieved January 14, 2015
2. ↑ ^{a b c} John McCarthy: Cotton, Frederick Sidney (1894–1969) on adb.anu.edu.au (English). Retrieved January 13, 2015
3. ↑ Sidcot pilot suit ( Memento of the original from January 15, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on vafm.org (English). Retrieved January 14, 2015 
4. ↑ Picture-perfect Spy , on defences.gov.au (English). Retrieved January 14, 2015