I think we should add Neville Shute Norway to Genghis The E's list. Model marine engineer, soldier, yachtsman, rigid airship engineer, mathematician, aeronautical design engineer (Airspeed Oxford, the over-top-deadcentre undercarriage lock), toolmaker, gentleman farmer and gifted fiction author.

Much of which is very well described in his autobiography "slide rule", which personally I think that everybody in our industry should read at some point.

G

My apologies all.

Barnes Wallis was partly responsible for the Vickers Wellington aircraft and the type of alloy construction that allowed it to be shot to sh*t then fly home and he designed some very big bombs.


Back to history class for me :ouch:

Ernie Gann didn't do too badly, even though most of his inventing was with a typewriter.

Then there was Benny Howard, whose homebuilt "Mister Mulligan" was the only plane ever to win both the Bendix Trophy (cross-country) race and the Thompson Trophy (closed-course). After losing a leg and nearly his life in a 1936 accident, he developed a line of DGA personal transports, helped Donald Douglas optimize the DC-3 design, then flew initial test flights of the DC-4, DC-6, and A-26 (and also the Budd Conestoga and some Fairchild military transports). In later years he built a low-speed wind tunnel and refined Carroll Shelby's racing car bodies. Also a very witty guy! :cool:

Try

F. Stanley Nowlan

and

Howard F. Heap