| Claude Grahame-White | |
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Claude Grahame White in 1910 |
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| Full name | Claude Grahame-White |
| Born | 21 August 1879 Bursledon, Hampshire |
| Died | 19 August 1959 (aged 79) Nice, France |
| Nationality | British |
| Spouse | Dorothy Taylor (1912, dissolved 1916), Ethel Levey (1916) |
Claude Grahame White (21 August 1879 – 19 August 1959) was an English pioneer of aviation, and the first to make a night flight, during the Daily Mail sponsored 1910 London to Manchester air race.
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Claude Grahame-White was born in Bursledon, Hampshire in 1879. He learned to drive in 1895, was apprenticed as an engineer and later started his own motor engineering company. In 1909 he learned to fly in France, and became one of the first Englishmen to qualify as a pilot. In 1912 he married his wife Ethel.
Grahame-White became a celebrity in England in April 1910 when he competed with the French pilot Louis Paulhan for the £10,000 prize offered by the "Daily Mail" newspaper for the first flight between London and Manchester in under 24 hours. Although Paulhan won the prize, Grahame White's achievement was widely praised. On July 2, 1910, Claude Grahame-White, in his Farman biplane, won the £1,000 first prize for Aggregate Duration in Flight (1 hr 23 min 20 secs) at the Midlands Aviation Meeting at Wolverhampton.[1] In the same year he won the Gordon Bennett Aviation Cup in Belmont Park, Long Island, New York, for which he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Aero Club. [2] On October 14, 1910 while in Washington, D.C. Grahame-White flew his Farman biplane over the city and landed on Executive Avenue near the White House. Rather than being arrested Claude was celebrated for the feat by the newspapers. His noted achievements though were centred in the commercialisation of aeronautics. He was also involved in promoting the military application of air power before the First World War with a campaign called "Wake Up Britain", and experimented with fitting various weapons and bombs to planes. During the war itself he mounted the first aerial defence of a city.
In 1911 he established a teaching school at Hendon, which quickly became Hendon Aerodrome. The Aerodrome was lent to the Admiralty (1916), and eventually taken over by the RAF in 1919. Grahame White's aerodrome was purchased by the RAF in 1925, after a long and protracted legal struggle. After this he lost his interest in aviation, eventually moving to Nice in his old age, where he died in 1959 having made a fortune in property development in the UK and US.
Hendon Aerodrome later became RAF Hendon but after flying ceased there in the 1960s it was then largely redeveloped as a housing estate which was named Grahame Park in tribute to Grahame-White. An original World War I Grahame-White aircraft factory hangar relocated a few years ago at the RAF Museum houses the museum's World War I collection and is named the Grahame White Factory.
In 1911 a company was formed to cover his aviation interests, including the aerodromes and developed some aircraft. One of the designers was John Dudley North who would become Boulton & Paul's chief designer.
As well as his success in aviation Claude Grahame White was a published author whose works include:
The Story of the Aeroplane;
The Aeroplane, Past, Present, and Future, 1911;
The Aeroplane in War;
Aviation, 1912;
Learning to Fly, 1914;
Aircraft in the Great War, 1915;
Air Power'', 1917;
Our First Airways, their Organisation, Equipment, and Finance, 1918;
Books for Boys;
Heroes of the Air;
With the Airmen;
The Air King’s Treasure;
The Invisible War-Plane;
Heroes of the Flying Corps; Flying, an Epitome and a Forecast, 1930
He also made many contributions to the daily papers, reviews, and monthly magazines dealing with the subject of aeronautics in its military and commercial aspects.
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