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 !!!!! 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