British Empire Trophy Race, 1937

Featuring the excitement of corners! And bends!

British Airways advert, 1937

From a 1937 issue of Flight magazine

Featuring a Lockheed 10a Electra

Full size - http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk256/RobLangham/baad.jpg

Thompson Aircraft Refueller Part Two

I've already mentioned the Thompson aircraft refueller, a common sight at airfields and airports in the 1930's, here http://art-deco-uk.blogspot.com/2009/08/thompson-aircraft-refueller.html , and came across this great advert marketing them in the July 1 1937 issue of Flight magazine, still going today and with an online archive of past issues, accessible here http://www.flightglobal.com/

Now the weather is finally improving i'm hoping to make it down to Brooklands before too long, would be nice to get a better photograph of the Thompson refueller, and hopefully the paintwork will be in better condition too

1936 Riley TT Sprite Le Mans

Seen at the Vintage Sports Car Club's Mallory Park race meeting on 23rd August was this superb 1936 Riley TT Sprite. The bodywork is unlike that of most other Riley TT Sprite's because, in 1937, a French team was formed to enter race meetings equipped with three Riley TT Sprite's fitted with this bodywork for streamlining, built by Maurice Pourtout a Paris coachbuilder. As well as entering various high profile races, such as at the Autodrom at Montlhery, they were most well known for entering the 1937 Le Mans.

Unfortunately the original bodywork of these three cars hasn't survived, so this is a replica built using photographs of the team's cars - the attention to detail is superb, including a sign on the dashboard for 'M PourTout'

Mignet Pou-du-Ciel

The Mignet Pou-du-Ciel, known as the 'Flying Flea' in the United Kingdom although the name translates into 'Louse of the Sky', was a home built aircraft, first flying in 1933 with the book containing plans and instructions becoming available in 1934. Powered by a motorcycle engine and needing very little storage space due to their small size, they were at first very popular with budding aeronauts in many country.

However, a series of fatal accidents led to groundings or bans in most countries in which they were flown in, and, although a solution to the problem was solved (they had a tendency to be unable to pull out of shallow dives), the dangerous reputation they had by then received many remained firmly on the ground. This surviving example is on display at the Midland Air Museum, Coventry

RNLI Depot, Borehamwood

This fabulous art deco building is, as shown by the caption, the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) Depot at Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. For those who do not know, since 1824 the RNLI has operated Lifeboat Stations around the coast of the United Kingdom and Ireland to rescue those from the sea (and in the last two decades, inland waters such as the River Thames and Loch Ness). The description on the back of the card, one of 50 from the Wills’ ‘The Story of the Life-Boat’ series tells us;

R.N.L.I. DEPOT, BOREHAM WOOD, HERTS.

In July 1939, the Royal National Life-boat Institution opened a depot outside London to take the place of the storeyard which it had at Poplar from 1882 to 1939. The site at Boreham Wood was chosen because of its excellent facilities for road transport. The depot has workshops and stores covering a floor area of nearly one-and-a-quarter acres, and it is here that the equipment and rigging of life-boats are made and the life-boat engines repaired and tested. At the depot also there is a storeroom for the Institution’s supplies for appealing to the public; it contains 40,000 collecting boxes in the form of life-boats, and the 11,000,000 paper emblems which the Institution uses each year on Life-boat flag days.

The end of the descriptive text mentions the RNLI appealing to the public – the RNLI is a charity, and relies on voluntary donations to continue to exist and save lives, and receives no Government funding like other emergency services, a very worthwhile cause. The RNLI depot was used until 1976, when the depot moved from Stirling Way, Borehamwood, to Poole, Dorset, where it remains to this day. Despite being hit by incendiary bombs in the Second World War, the depot exists to this day, and this article from the Oxford Mail dated 15th August 2001 mentions it being refurbished ‘to offer self-storage units and offices’.

For a recent photo of the building, taken in 2007, click here

Flying Wing

The concept of an aircraft as a 'flying wing', with the fuselage integrated with the wing and sometimes even without a tail, has been a design feature tried and tested for many years, and currently in service with some military aircraft such as the Rockwell B2 Stealth Bomber. During the 1930's, when aircraft designers were trying to think of how to push the barrier of aircraft development, the flying wing was experimented with many times.

This particular example, from the 'Aeroplanes' series of Cigarette Cards by Gallaher Ltd, shows the Cunliffe-Owen OA1. Cunliffe-Owen was founded in 1937 but their flying wing aircraft is actually a licence built American aircraft originally produced by Vincent Burnelli, who was one of the pioneers of flying wing designs, this particular design being a copy of the Burnelli UB-14, of which three were built by Burnelli.

This particular aircraft was powered by two Bristol Perseus radial engines, and the description from the back of the Cigarette Card says;

FLYING WING

The tendency in monoplane design of the last few years has been to increase the size and thickness of the wing relative to the fuselage, storing petrol, luggage, etc. inside the wings. The logical development of htis is the Flying Wing, which has no fuselage, the tail unit being carried on two booms. The machine shown here is the first product of Messrs. Cunliffe-Owen Aircraft Ltd., and accommodates fifteen passengers, the two engines being Bristol Perseus XIIC's, developing 900 h.p. each.



The Cunliffe-Owen OA1 shown, G-AFMB, was the only one built, and became known as the 'Clyde Clipper'. The Second World War halted any further development and G-AFMB was pressed into Royal Air Force service, eventually serving in Africa with the Free French. Unfortunately, it appears the Clyde Clipper met its end as part of a bonfire to celebrate VJ Day in 1945.

For more pictures of the Cunliffe-Owen OA1, including the great advert used by the company, click here