Manufacturer

Hawkridge Aircraft Co

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Formed by E.P. Zander and H.E. Bolton in 1945, the company initially took office space at 68 Victoia St, London. A small workshop was established at Bolton’s home in Denham, Buckinghamshire, and a factory was later acquired in High St, Dunstable, to build and service gliders.

A two-seat side by side training sailplane known as the venture was designed and built by the company, also, a small batch of primary gliders and two Grunau Baby gliders. Repair and service work was carried out on a wide variety of gliders, including the Slingsby Gull 3. This sailplane was extensively modified and repaired, and was, for sometime afterwards, referred to the Hawkridge Kittiwake in company advertisements. Only one example was produced, and another new type, known as T.M.2, apparently only reached the project stage.

Zander left the company in 1947 and emigrated to Canada, but the firm continued under Bolton. By early 1950 the Dunstable factory had been closed and all the work was carried out at Denham. The last company advertisement appeared in ‘Sailplane and Gliding’ in March 1952 after which the company dissolved. Bolton emigrated to America, and in the meantime Zander travelled to Argentine then retired near Christchurch on the South coast of England.

Hawker Siddeley

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The 1957 Defence White Paper was also a preface to the first major “rationalisation ‘, overhaul of the British industry, which took place in 1960 and caused the disappearance of so many pioneering aviation names. From this process, achieved by a simple, Govern¬ment ruling that with one or two exceptions (such as the Westland Helicopter Company), official contracts would only be placed with rationalized companies, nearly all the historic organizations in British aviation were swal¬lowed by two large aerospace groups. The British Aircraft Corporation combined Bris¬tol, English Electric, Hunting and Vickers-Armstrong/Supermarine, while Hawker Siddeley absorbed com¬panies as Avro, Armstrong Whitworth, Black¬burn, de Havilland, Folland, Gloster and Hawker.
In mid-1963 the Hawker Siddeley Group incorporated the Hawker, de Havilland, Avro, Armstrong Whitworth, Folland and Blackburn companies into Hawker Siddeley Aviation, the aircraft products of each company becoming known as Hawker Siddeley aircraft.

In 1962, the Hawker Siddeley Group formally dissolved A.V. Roe Canada and transferred all A.V. Roe Canada assets to its newly-formed subsidiary Hawker Siddeley Canada. Avro Aircraft was closed.

Final products under its own name were the HS 125 corporate jet (first flown August 1962); HS 748 turboprop airliner (first flown June 1960), Trident short/medium-range airliner first flown January 1962), Harrier and Sea Harrier, Buccaneer, Nimrod maritime patrol jet (first flown May 1967), and Hawk jet trainer.
Merged into British Aerospace in April 1977.

Hawker

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Sopwith started World War 1 building aircraft in a shed at Brooklands in Kingston and ended with an output of 90 ships a week at Kingston alone. Overnight it ended, so the busi¬ness had to liquidate and the Sopwith Company ended. Sopwith wanted to stay in aviation and couldn’t start a company with the same name. So he called the new company the Hawker Company, with a capital of 20,000 pounds.

In 1921 former Sopwith test pilot Harry Hawker took over the premises of the former Sopwith Aviation Company. Although he died that same year in a crash, the reestablished company began building a series of military aircraft, beginning with a single Duiker monoplane, followed by the Woodcock fighter.

Harry George Hawker, an Australian pioneer in aviation, won fame as a pilot and aircraft engineer during World War I. he founded the Hawker Engineering company, which became part of the Hawker Siddeley group; a leading British aircraft manufacturing company.

Hawker was born at South Brighton (near Moorabbin), in Victoria, Australia. He learned to fly in Britain in 1912, and soon became a leading test pilot. He was killed in an aeroplane crash near London in 1921.

Under the design leadership of Sydney Camm (later Sir), produced such aircraft as the Tomtit trainer biplane and the Horsley bomber/torpedo- bomber, Mk 1 versions of which were the last allwooden aircraft built by the company. Best known of all H. G. Hawker products were the Hart/Demon/Audax/Osprey two-seaters and the Fury single-seat fighter; all had entered production before the company reorganized and the name was changed to Hawker Aircraft Ltd. in 1933.
Following 1933, the concentrated on fighters, and the first production Hurricane, a monoplane development of the Fury, first entered service in late 1937. The Typhoon, initially none too successful, proved effective as a fighter-bomber and saw the peak of its development in the Tempest, Fury and Sea Fury which served with RAF and Fleet Air Arm during late 1940s and early 1950s, and with foreign air arms well into the 1960s. In early postwar period Hawker developed the Sea Hawk shipboard fighter, progressing to the Hunter, the single Mk 3 version of which, produced by modification of the original prototype, gained the world speed record at 1,170.96km/h in 1953. Such was the success of the Hunter that refurbished aircraft were later exported. Hawker’s greatest innovation was in the field of VTOL fighters, first with the experimental P.1127 Kestrel, which led to the Hawker Siddeley Harrier.

Scottish Aviation, British Aircraft Corp, and Hawker Siddeley Aviation joined British Aerospace in 1978.