Howard Pixton by Stella Pixton

Author:Stella Pixton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Aviation
ISBN: 9781473834941
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2014-07-01T16:00:00+00:00

Long hops – just as Roe had done as his first attempts at flying. However, persistent as ever that they were the first to fly in Britain, Avro now advertised, ‘First off land. First off’.

Dennistoune Burney of the Royal Navy, a pupil of mine and son of Admiral Sir Cecil Burney, was a man of many ideas who was closely linked with Bristol as he endeavoured to connect the aeroplane with the sea. They said of him, ‘He was born with salt in his eyes’. He worked on machines with folding wings for easy deck transport and hydrofoils for take-off in rough seas. His ideas were backed by the Admiralty and patented jointly by Bristol and Burney himself, and were developed in a secret design office, ‘X Department’, with the help of Frank Barnwell. Frank was new at Bristol and was one of the Barnwell brothers who had designed very early experimental machines in Scotland which were not very successful. Neither brother had applied for a flying licence, though Frank intended to do so soon. I had several adventures with Burney, my first when the company asked me to follow up one of his hunches concerning a submarine which had gone down near Portsmouth off Hayling Island. Burney believed we would be able to locate its exact position for the Navy from the air. It was to be the first time that an aeroplane would be used for a naval matter of this nature. So, Burney and I left Amesbury on a Box Kite for Hayling Island. It was a windy day and we made slow progress battling against a strong headwind, then stopping at Durley for lunch and battling on, we eventually landed outside the Royal Hotel on the seafront, and created a sensation. Crowds collected wondering why we’d come, and during the following days more came, many on bicycles, especially to see us.

Farnell Thurston, Bristol’s Sales Representative, Briginshaw and Mackintosh, our mechanics, later met up with Burney and me, but we were unable to do much as the awful weather continued. We camped the machine on the shore close to a tea place, pegging it down securely and pulling up bathing machines to act as a wind screen. Day after day we hung around waiting for the weather to clear but it continued to blow a gale. However, we made one adjustment to the machine which helped to pass the time away. In the event of coming down in the sea during the search, we’d fitted two airbags under the wings but I found they created too much drag, so we took them off and replaced one centrally under the seat which proved better and would provide ample buoyancy. Finally we managed to survey the area and flew out to Nab Lighthouse, but the water was so murky with the sea having stirred up the sand that there was no hope of spotting the submarine. We decided to give it a few more days, then abandoned our task and flew home.

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