| Former type | Private Ltd |
|---|---|
| Industry | Aeronautical engineering |
| Fate | Merged |
| Successor | de Havilland |
| Founded | 1931 |
| Defunct | 1951 |
| Headquarters | Founded in York, England moved to Portsmouth, England. |
| Key people | A.H. Tiltman Nevil Shute Norway |
| Products | Aircraft |
Airspeed Limited was established to build aeroplanes in 1931 in York, England, by A. H. Tiltman and Nevil Shute Norway (the aeronautical engineer and famous writer, who used his forenames as his pen-name). The other directors were A. E. Hewitt, Lord Grimthorpe and Alan Cobham. Amy Johnson was also one of the initial subscribers for shares.
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Initially producing the AS4 Ferry, a three engined, ten passenger biplane, the company went on to concentrate on transport monoplanes. In March 1933, the firm moved to Portsmouth and, in the following year, became associated with the Tyneside ship builder Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson Limited and became Airspeed (1934) Limited[1] in August 1934. During this period, it developed the AS8 Viceroy for an intercontinental air race.
All Airspeed aeroplanes under manufacture or development in 1936 were to use a Wolseley radial aero engine of about 250 horsepower (190 kW) which was under development by Nuffield, the Wolseley Scorpio. The project was abandoned in September 1936 after the expenditure of about two hundred thousand pounds when Lord Nuffield got the fixed price I.T.P. (Intention to Proceed) contract papers (which would have required re-orientation of their offices with an army of chartered accountants) and decided to deal only with the War Office and the Admiralty, not the Air Ministry.
According to Nevil Shute Norway it was a very advanced engine (and the price struck Shute as low; much lower than competing engines on the basis of power-to-weight ratio), so its loss was a major disaster for Airspeed (and Britain). But when he asked Lord Nuffield to retain the engine, Nuffield said "I tell you, Norway ... I sent that I.T.P. thing back to them, and I told them they could put it where the monkey put the nuts!" Shute wrote that the loss of the Wolseley engine due to the over-cautious high civil servants of the Air Ministry was a great loss to Britain. Shute said that "admitting Air Ministry methods of doing business ... would be like introducing a maggot into an apple .. Better to stick to selling motor vehicles for cash to the War Office and the Admiralty who retained the normal methods of buying and selling."[2]
In June, 1940, formal announcement was made that the de Havilland Aircraft Co., Ltd., had completed negotiations for the purchase from Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson, Ltd., of that firm's holding of Airspeed ordinary shares. Airspeed, retained its identity as a separate company though as a wholly owned subsidiary of de Havilland.
Around 1943, presumably to reduce the risk of Luftwaffe bombing, a new dispersed design office was opened at Fairmile Manor in Cobham, Surrey; little is known of this establishment and nothing survives there today.
Airspeed's most productive period was during World War II. A graceful, twin-engined trainer-cum-light transport aircraft known as the AS10 Oxford which had a production run exceeding 8,500.
Almost 3,800 AS51 and AS58 Horsa military gliders were built for the Royal Air Force and its allies. Many of these made one-way journeys into occupied France as part of the D-Day landings, and later Holland for the Arnhem landing, towed from England behind aircraft such as the Douglas Dakota and Handley Page Halifax.
The company reverted to the company name of Airspeed Limited on 25 January 1944. Postwar it became involved in adapting some surplus ex-RAF Oxford aircraft as AS65 Consuls for the commercial market.
Airspeed went on to produce the superbly streamlined pressurised twin-engined piston airliner called the AS57 Ambassador. This served successfully for some years with British European Airways as their "Elizabethan Class".[3]
Airspeed Limited completely merged with de Havilland in 1951.
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