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Fishtailed
17th May 2008, 11:21
An article in June Pilot mag states-
'on 8th June1908, A V Roe flew his 24hp biplane and briefly took to the air becoming the first Englishman to fly a powered aeroplane of his own design. On 16th October 1908 S F Cody achieved what is now recognised as the first powered aeroplane flight in Britain.'

Can someone explain why Roe's flight isn't recognised?:confused:

windriver
17th May 2008, 13:43
Interesting question Fishtailed... There were claims and counter claims, and debate about what actually constituted a flight. Who was the better publicist even!

It was the Royal Aero Club who had the unenviable task of establishing the fact for the record... and I can do no better than reproduce an account of their deliberations from the excellent Jubilee Book Of The Royal Aero Club "Fellowship of the Air 1901-1951"

<quote>
Consequently, on March 13th 1928, Captain J. Laurence Pritchard, Secretary of the Royal Aeronautical Sosic,, wrote an innocent-looking letter to the Royal Aero Club. This letter started a rumpus in the aviation world, the rumblings of which can still be heard, faintly, even to-day.

He wrote to ask if the Club would join with the Society, which already had the co-operation of the Air League and the Society of British Aircraft
Constructors, in giving a banquet to Mr. A. V. Roe on June 8th, 1928, " on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the first fight in England ".

Captain Pritchard asked that this proposal should be put to the Committee as soon as possible, and added : " As the flight was the first technical success in England it appears it would be a suitable occasion for the Royal Aeronautical Society to honour Mr. Roe in this way, in co-operation with
the other three bodies."

In a personal note to Harold Perrin, to express his views to the Committee in session, Mr. Handley Page wrote a cautionary note, indicating that
Roe had made " hops " in 1908, adding: " I think we must be extraordinarily careful that we do not celebrate something ,which will call down on our heads a lot of criticism a.s to whq,in fact we are celebrating. . . . When we give Roe a celebration, as he undoubtedly deserves, do not let us give a celebration which somebody may call in question."

On April 13th Mr. Griffith Brewer wrote to Perrin in far more forthright terms. He said: " The meaning of the first flight is the first successful
flight; otherwise, it would include the first unsuccessful flight. A flight to be successful must be controlled and sustained; not a leap into the air due to gathered speed. It is clear that a leap or hop of 25 yards which, after many attempts to improve it, is only increased, to 33 yards in the course of a year, is not ' flying ' in the genera1 acceptance of the term ' flight '. It would make the Royal Aero Club ridiculous if it defined such early hops as successful flights."

He referred to Roe's splendid record of progress in British flying " but could not agree that the first hops were in the category of flight.
On April 16th, Roe wrote a modestly-worded letter to Perrin, enclosing three photographs of flights made at Lea Marshes, and mentioned another, also in 1908, taken by the Editor of The Motor on July 22nd. He remarked that he presumed the photo of July 2nd as all the evidence required " although a number of flights were made before that date ".
By this time, the breeze as to who had flown first was blowing stifily, and Pritchard wrote again to Perrin on April 18th. He reported that the Royal
Aeronautical Society Council had considered the matter again,and it was thought that the evidence of the flights on June 8th, 1908,is so incomplete that it is inadvisable to make these flights the outstanding feature of the function".

The Royal Aeronautical Society consequently amended the terms of the banquet occasion to read as : " In recognition of A. V. Roe's pioneer work on a machine of his own design and construction and of the immense debt which British aviation owes him during the past twenty years."
Mr. Ker-Seymer, who it .will be recalled was the leading official of the Aero Club at the Blackpool Aero Meeting of 1909, then entered the lists.
On May 23rd, 1928, he wrote a personal note to Perrin, hoping that the Club would not " accept blindly a claim made in The Times of May 17th,
1928, of a flight of 60 yards in 1908 ". He pointed out that when he was organising the Blackpool Meeting he went thoroughly into all the performances of British experimenters, as this was the question deciding whether or not to grant use of a shed. He had had long talks witb A.V. Roe, the brother and constant companion of Alliot, and no such claim of flight in 1908 was then made " although the Press was clamouring for news of any British performance, and such an achievement would have been a valuable help at a very critical time". He went on to recall that he had persuaded the Blackpool Committee to give Roe one of the General Merit prizes, although Roe's total contribution to the meeting was a hop of 15 feet against the wind.

Five days later, Ker-Seymer wrote again, this time making a most interesting point. " In the early months of 1908 prolonged hops wire made
daily by the French at Issy; they looked like flights, but when we went along the track of the flight immediately afterwards we seldom failed to see traces of the skids, often more than once, during the-flight. . . ." He added that A. V. Roe had no more sincere admirer than himself, and had nothing but regret that " his splendid record of achievement should let us say be belittled, by the claim made in The Times and Evening News of a record . which I, at least, can never accept ".

The banquet took place, and the controversy abated, not a whit. It was therefore decided to form a committee to investigate early flights; and
hearing of this Sir Malcolm Campbell wrote on September 21st, 1928, concerning his early flights " down a large strawberry field near Orpinton, '
in November, 1909 ".

Then came a dark horse: a Mr. A. H. Phillips of Elm Grove Road,Farnborough, who was " positively convinced " that he could " easily establish and prove a claim to be the first man to be lifted from the ground in a heavier-than-air machine ". The alleged flight was at Harrow in 1893! Perrin acknowledged his claim of September and, and 'extracted a further claim a week later, in which Phillips said the experiments were kept a close secret, with fields " secretly hired ",

Finally, the Club Committee' asked Lord Gorell to take charge of an investigation into the claims of British subjects to early aeroplane flights, in the British Isles, and to ascertain the date of the first flight. Lord Gorrell was chairman, and there were two other members: Captain G. de Havilland & and Lieut.-Colonel W. Lockwood Marsh.

The strongest challenger, in a friendly manner, to Roe's claim was Lieut-Colonel J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon, who joined the Club on December
21st, 1902. On December 27th, 1928, he wrote to Perrin that he had only given the name of one witness, ,the renowned Oswald Short, as he had
been informed that " a witness of the standing of Mr. Short would be sufficient".

Another allenger, by proxy of William McGregor Ross, a civil engineer,was Sir Hiram Maxim. Ross submitted detailed information, witb photogographs,
of experiments in 1890-94.. He frankly admitted that Maxim had not made "free flight" but claimed it was still flight. If the fact that Maxim, at the dates given;was an American citizen naturalised much later, and because of his American citizenship was debarred, then Ross submitted
that Maxim had taken with him two mechanics who were-British subjects who had flown with him.

Roe strove hard to support his claim, and he was staunchly supported by H. H. Morris. He entered attestations by two men from Weybridge who
certified they had seen him fly at Brooklands for about 75 feet on June 8th, 1908 : these statements being made on June 2nd, 191 2, four years after the claimed event. He also brought other, indirect, evidence to support his claim. Even his wife, unknown to him, sent a telegram and followed with a , message which stressed that " A. V." was always modest in his experiments , ,and " the last person to exaggesate his own achievements ".

The committee had an unenviable task. Even Cody was a late challenger (though deceased) but in fact he had not been a British subject in May, 1909, which was the critical period. For Moore-Brabazon had the incontestable evidence of Oswald Short of a flight on May 1st, 1909. Roe had certainly made flights towed by a motor car in 1908, but that was hardly free flight.

The following definition governed the decision. " Free flight in an aeroplane oecurs when the machine, having left the ground, is maintained in the air by its own power on a level or upward path for a distance beyond that over which gravity and air resistance would sustain it."

The Phillips claim was dismissed for lack of any corroborative evidence. Roe's evidence was indirect except for the two workmen who had signed a
statement four years after the events to which they attested. Oswald Short,however, gave very convincing testimony. He remembered Moore-
Brabazon's flight for the simple reason that it was the first he had ever seen.

He gave graphic details of the take-off, and the point-to-point distance flown a flight which ended in a crash. This flight was reported in Flight
and Automtor, May 8th, 1909.

The conclusion of the Committee was that Moore-Brabazon truly held this credit, with a flight made at Shellbeach on Sunday, May 2nd, 1909, this
date going on record as the date on which a British subject first made a flight in the British Isles. It may be mentioned here that Lord Brabazon's car bears the registration number FLY 1.

The question of aviators' certificates is a sore point with most of the original aviators. The fact appears to be that great uncertainty exists as to whether any or which of the first flyers took the scale of tests laid down as standard for qualifications.

The Committee did not deal with ,this matter satisfactorily. On February 8th, 1910, with Roger Wallace in the chair, it made the following
resolution: " It was unanimously resolved that the Club issue aviation pilot certificates. The conditions were drafted and the Secretary instructed to
forward them to the Committee so that they could be finally approved at the next meeting."

Exactly a month later, there is direct evidence that the conditions had not been fulfilled by Moore-Brabazon, but that he or a sponsor had suggested
that in view of his work in aviation and possibly especially because of his flights in France he should be given a special dispensation. The verbatim
record of the minute is: " Mr. J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon asked the Committee to reconsider their decision with regard to his-pilot aviator's certificate, and after discussion it was resolved that pilot aviator certificates be granted to Mr. J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon and the Hon. C. S. Rolls.

It was also resolved that a new rule be added to the existing rules giving the 'Committee power to grant certificates to well-known aviators at their discretion." (The point at issue is that the tests had to he officially "observed". Aviators may have made equivalent flights, but only flights properly observed by Club Officials could be recognised.)
In this way, then, Moore-Brabazon received certificate No. 1, and Rolls No. 2. It also accounts for the fact that many aviators received their
certificates through the post, among them Claude Grahame-White and Sir Francis McClean. Grahame-White, at the time, was abroad, running
the world's first school of flying instruction at Pau, in France.

He did make, on December 16th, 1909, and before witnesses, all the tests which were required by the Aero Club de France-which, in parallel with the Aero Club in Englad, was under the F.A.I. However, Grahame-White asserts that he never completed the series of tests laid down by the Aero Club of the U.K. or-the Royal Aero Club. His certificate, No. 6, dated April 26th, 1910, came through the post from Harold Perrin.

Likewise, Sir Frank McClean recalls that he, although obviously in the very front rank of the pioneers, was abroad when the first British certificates
were mooted and then issued. It was therefore with some degree of annoyance that he found himself omitted from a most justifiable pride of seniority, and through the post was eventually awarded certificate No. 2. Incidentally, it is probable, though by no means certain, that Group
Captain G. Bowman, now a director of Heston Aircraft, was the first member of the R.A.F. to fly. He was a cadet in the Officers Training Corps of Haileybury College, in camp near Laffans Plain in 1907. Bowman was then such a little nipper that he was graded as too small to carry a rifle, and was in the Corps as a bugler, with drummer's badge on his arm. The wind was not very strong on the day he by chance visited Cody's camp, and to his astonishment Cody grabbed him by the arm and thrust him into the cage of a man-lifihg kite in which he flew for about 15 minutes. Bowman joined the Club in 1916.
<end quote>

Tarnished
19th May 2008, 10:56
I am trying to find a set of line drawings/plans of the A V Roe I aircraft. My Google searches have drawn a blank so far (apart from finding this thread). Got some pictures, but no drawings.

Any help out there?

Regards

Tarnished