Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, yes, they went up tiddly up and down tiddly down in would you believe in the Highlands of Perthshire.
It may surprise you to learn that the War Office had to put out a statement in 1907 dismissing rumours that the Balloon Factory near Farnborough Common was to be transferred to some remote spot in the vicinity of Dunkeld. The reason being, that during tests of new military airships at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, the crowds were so great, and the photographers so persistent, that some quieter spot was imperatively necessary, if indiscreet and secret revelations were not to be made.
On 5 October 1907, the first British flight by a powered airship, British Army Dirigible, Nulli Secundus flew from Farnborough to Crystal Palace in London. It was piloted by Samuel Franklin Cody with Colonel J. E. Capper on board.
A small working party of Royal Engineers from the Army Balloon Factory was sent northwards to conduct certain work in connection with the fitting of machinery to a new airship, but not to Dunkeld, the out-of-the-way spot was in fact on the Duke of Atholl’s estate at Blair Atholl. These top-secret tests they hoped would lead to the first engine powered British military aeroplane.
A delicate aircraft was put in a railway carriage at Farnborough in July 1907 and transported under great secrecy up to Blair Atholl, then carted from the station up to Glen Tilt, just north of the village. Here the aircraft was assembled and camouflaged from inquisitive eyes by having white stripes and dark patches painted on the upper surfaces.
The Tailless ‘Aircraft’
The aircraft design was of a swept back arrowhead planform design with no movable vertical surfaces. Starting with the glider, Dunne D.1-A, the aircraft configuration was tested at Glen Tilt, launched from a 4-wheel trolley, and flown by Colonel Capper, it achieved some success, but was heavily damaged on landing, hitting a wall. Repaired and brought closer to Blair Atholl, power was added to it with two 12hp Buchet engines. The now modified John William Dunne designed aircraft; the D.1-B, piloted by Lieutenant Lancelot Gibbs, first for one successful 8-second flight on 29 September 1907. It was again damaged on landing wrecked when it rolled off the chassis of the trolley gear. This was not an uncommon event in the early days of flying.
Certain parts of the test aeroplane were sent the next day by train to Farnborough for minor alterations and repairs. They were packed at daybreak and loaded onto two railways wagons ready to be attached to the afternoon express from Inverness.
These experiments had validated the stability Dunne considered so indispensable to flight. Dunne had concentrated his efforts on tailless designs, and he produced inherently stable aircraft, capable of flying steadily, even with the controls locked on a straight course, all by itself.
The Marquis of Tullibardine (heir to the Duke of Atholl) told the press in an interview that everything pointed to success. “Even if people like myself, who are sceptical concerning the utility of these things as fighting machines, have been convinced. Personally, and in common with many other soldiers, I would rather they were unnecessary, but while other nations are at work on them it would be poor tactics for Great Britain to lag behind. Lieutenant Dunne wishes his inventions to be at the disposal of the British Government, he is actuated purely by patriotic motives. I have ascertained that the model tested in the valley of the Tilt will glide, drive, or hover, and that stability in a marvellous degree has been attained.”
The Marquis also spoke of the loyalty of his retainers, “the gillies have been without sleep night after night and have questioned everyone who lingered on the road. They are trained men, and even the shepherds can signal by semaphore.” The popular recounting of Dunne’s flying episode asserts that such great clandestineness was observed that “the [Duke’s] tenants were enrolled as a sort of bodyguard to prevent unauthorized persons from entering”.
John William Dunne
In 1905, Dunne had been appointed to the Army Balloon Factory at South Farnborough, England, then under the competent leadership of Colonel John Edward Capper. Capper was the pilot at Blair Atholl of the Dunne aircraft and was slightly injured in the glider flight.
John William Dunne was born at the Curragh Camp in County Kildare, Ireland, on 2 December 1875. He became a soldier at the outbreak of the Second Boer War and volunteered for the Imperial Yeomanry as an ordinary Trooper fighting in South Africa. In 1900 he was caught up in an epidemic of typhoid fever and was invalided home. He recovered and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Wiltshire’s. He went back to South Africa in March 1902, and he again fell ill, diagnosed with heart disease. He was again invalided home.
It was then that Dunne instigated his study of the science of aerodynamics and flight in earnest, commencing with observations of avian flight and the Alsomitra Macrocarpa, the seed of the Javan cucumber, also known as the Zanonia. A Zanonia seed is swept-winged and displays an inherent stability when dispersed by the wind. He became convinced that a safe aeroplane needed to have inherent aerodynamic stability.
H. G. Wells
Dunne growing up was inspired by a Jules Verne story at the age of 13, he envisaged a machine that could fly, one that did not require steering, that would right itself irrespective of wind or weather. Fortified by the encouragement of a family friend, the writer of science fiction H. G. Wells, Dunne designed and built several prototypes based on a ‘tailless’ design. At that time when Dunne first took up the study of aviation, no one had yet flown in Europe, and he could therefore receive little benefit from the results achieved by other pilots and constructors.
Development continued
In the spring of 1909, the War Office support for Dunne’s airplane development was withdrawn. Dunne left the Balloon Factory, taking the D.4 with him. He continued his work under the aegis of the Blair Atholl Aeroplane Syndicate Ltd., formed in 1910 by the Marquis of Tullibardine. Like its predecessor, the D.4 was camouflaged, it was fitted with two 15hp Buchet engines and later a single 25hp R.E.P. engine. Dunne regarded the D.4 as ‘more of a hopper than a flier’. The best flight of the D.4 was 120 feet (36.58m) on 10 December 1908.
In 1910 the Dunne designed aircraft D.5, built by Short Brothers, was demonstrated on a flying field at Eastchurch, Isle of Sheppey. The same airfield that five years later on 30 June 1915, Preston Watson from Dundee and experimented flying from Erroll in 1905, took off from on his final flight. He crashed and died 20 miles from his destination at Eastbourne. Charles Richard Fairey became the General manager of the Blair Atholl Syndicate at Eastchurch, working with Dunne on his tailless aircraft. A Fairey Gannet, carrier-borne aircraft sat outside at Erroll airfield for many years. The Gannet featured a tricycle undercarriage, a feature pioneered by John William Dunne and others in that early pioneer era of aviation.
John William Dunne was not only a pioneering aeronautical engineer, but he was also a philosopher and the author of, An Experiment with Time in 1927. A treatise on precognition, consciousness, and the concept of time. Dunne argued that past, present, and future were in fact simultaneous and only experienced sequentially because of our mental perception of them. Dunne also published a book on dry-fly fishing: Sunshine and the Dry Fly in 1924, discussing a new method of making realistic artificial flies.
Dunne vision of tailless aircraft design was finally realised with the construction of ‘flying wings’, such as the 1920s’ Westland Pterodactyl, which Dunne helped design, the 1929 Waldo Waterman Whatsit, the 1940s’ Northrup Flying Wing, and the modern stealth aircraft like the Northrop Grumman B-2. This aviation legend also pioneered many other aircraft features which were not destined to reappear for many years.
John William Dunne FRAeS (1875–1949) died at Banbury in England on 24 August 1949, aged 74.
Notes: The test flying at Blair Atholl was five years, almost to the day, since the Wright Brothers’ epic flight travelled almost the same distance at Kill Devil Hills, Kitty Hawk, North Carolina USA. Preston Watson had also been attempting to get off the ground with his designs since the summer of 1903 at Erroll, and later in 1909 at Forgandenny. Frank and Harold Barnwell were experimenting at the same time at Causeway Head. They managed to achieve a flight of just 80 yards on 28 July 1909, this was regarded as the first successful powered flight in Scotland. A year later they flew for one mile, again at Causewayhead. In France, Santos Dumont, the Brazilian aviation innovator, had been astonishing the world in 1906 with his flying feats at the Château de Bagatelle near Paris and on 25 July 1909, Louis Charles Joseph Blériot crossed the English Channel, landing at Northfall Meadow, close to Dover Castle.
Experimental Aircraft Designed by John William Dunne
D.1-A Glider. Built in 1907 – limited success in a single flight.
D.1-B Powered Airplane (modified D.1-A). Built in 1907 – crashed during its first flight.
D.2 Training Glider. Designed in 1907 – never constructed.
Dunne-Huntington. Gas Powered Triplane.
Designed in 1907/8 – flown successfully in 1911.
D.3 Person-carrying Glider. Flown successfully in 1908.
D.4 Powered Airplane. Flown in 1908 – partially successful.
(In Dunne’s words, “more a hopper than a flyer”).
D.5 Powered tailless biplane. Flown successfully in 1910.
D.6 Monoplane. Built in 1911 – never flown.
D.7 Monoplane. Built in 1911 – flown successfully.
D.8 Biplane. Several built and flown in 1912-13.
D.9 Sesquiplane. Begun in 1913 – never fully constructed.
D.10 Biplane. Built in 1913 – a complete failure.
Research by Ken Bruce
John William Dunne, D.5, Eastchurch 14 June 1910
Dunne D.1-A/ D.1-B, 1907 Glen Tilt
Dunne D.5, published in Flight magazine June 1910
Extra notes:
Dunne returned to the Balloon Factory from Blair Atholl in 1908 during the time of a government inquiry into military aeronautics. As a result of its findings the War Office stopped all work on powered aircraft and in the spring of 1909, Dunne left the Balloon Factory. The Duke of Atholl set up the Blair Atholl syndicate to support J. W. Dunne’s activities in building tailless aeroplanes. In 1911, The Duke of Atholl was the Chairman, Dunne became Chief Engineer and Charles Richard Fairey (Fairey Aviation) became General Manager of the syndicate, registered in London and operating from Eastchurch, Isle of Sheppey. In 1914 the great engineering company Armstrong Whitworth decided to move into aeronautics and bought the struggling syndicate’s assets.
Preston Watson from Dundee who experimented with flying machines in the summer of 1903, was killed when the aircraft he was flying from Eastchurch to Eastbourne crashed on 30 June 1915. A Fairey Gannet T.5, XG882 sat outside one of the hangers at Errol airfield for many years. XG882 served at RNAS Culrose, HMS SeaHawk (Heston Cornwall) and RNAS Lossiemouth. It was retired in 1976 but returned to service in 1982 using parts from other aircraft, before being finally retired to Errol.
Samuel Franklin Cody’s real name was Samuel Cowdery. he was born 6 March 1867 at Birdville, Texas. He took adopted in 1899 the name of Cody in honour of his hero, Buffalo Bill Cody, and dressed in a similar cowboy fashion, Stetson hat, buckskins, and cowboy boots. He even grew a similar beard and moustache and had shoulder length hair. Cody was a popular hero in the US and Britain, first as a vaudeville entertainer then as a pioneer aviator and inventor. Cody took his own wild west show to France in 1892.
Cody was killed on 7 August 1913 when his new aircraft Cathedral VI that he was testing came apart near Farnborough. Cody was buried with full military honours in the Aldershot Military Cemetery, the first civilian and only cowboy to lie alongside the greatest British heroes. Cody was much admired by the British public and his mile long cortege of his funeral procession, escorted by Black Watch pipers attracted a crowd of over 100,000 with 50,000 attending the funeral. Cody’s son who is commemorated on a plaque beside his grave, fell in action flying during WW1 in1917 whilst fighting four enemy machines. He is buried at Perth Cemetery (China Wall) in Ypres, West Flanders, Belgium. In 1902 Cody’s wife, Lela (Leila) Marie, became the first woman to fly, using his ‘Man-lifting War Kite’
Cody’s first appearances in Scotland were on 5-13 August 1910 at Springbank Farm Aviation Ground, the Lanark Scottish International Aviation Meeting. Twenty-two competitors took part in competition around a circuit of 1¾ miles. Over 250,000 people came to Lanark to observe the spectacle. A railway terminus was constructed for the event at the racecourse. Fourteen special trains a day helped move around 50,000 people a day who were attending. First Class passengers were unsurprisingly given preference. Some £8,060 was awarded in prizes to the competitors – a value today of about £900,000. Cody, it appears, did not take part in the competition, preferring to remain on terra firma. His huge 1¼-ton biplane was severely underpowered. Cody explicated that he wanted to get used to the single engine before fitting a twin-engine configuration. Cody’s ‘Flying Cathedral’ having failed to take off at Lanark received a new name, ‘The Hedge Trimmer’
During the event, when fire broke out in an adjoining hangar, Cody bravely rushed in with a fire extinguisher, just in time to prevent any serious damage and save the day. (Hangars in those days were known as garages.) It was after Lanark that the British military establishment put in an order for 60 planes that went on to form the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), which in 1918 became the Royal Air Force (RAF).