Alcock
John (later Sir John) William Alcock was born on 5 November 1892 at
Seymour Grove, Old Trafford, Stretford and attended St Thomas's primary school in Heaton Chapel, Stockport. He first became
interested in flying at the age of seventeen and in 1910 he became an assistant to Works Manager Charles Fletcher, an early
Manchester aviator and Norman Crossland, a motor engineer and founder of Manchester Aero Club. As a Captain in the Royal Air
Force in 1917, while stationed at Moudros, on the island of Lemnos in the Aegean Sea, he conceived of and built a fighter
aircraft out of the remains of other crashed aircraft. This came to be known as the Alcock Scout. Alcock was never to fly
it as he was taken prisoner in September 1917, before the completion of the machine. It first flew in October, 1917, but was
wrecked early in 1918.
On 14 June 1919, Alcock, together with navigator Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown, piloted
the first non-stop transatlantic flight from St. John's, Newfoundland to Clifden, Connemara, Ireland.
On 18 December
1919 Alcock was flying a new Vickers Type 54 Viking to the first postwar aeronautical exhibition in Paris when he crashed
in fog at Cote d'Everard, near Rouen, Normandy. He died before medical assistance arrived.
Company References - British Aeroplanes
1914-18, J.M. Bruce (Putnam, 1957)
Project Data
Project No | Type
No | Name | Alternative Name(s) | Year | Spec
(Requirement) | Status | Qty | Description | References |
| A.1 |
Scout |
|
1917 |
|
Proto |
1 |
1S,
1E biplane fighter | 1,2,3 |
Project References - British Aeroplanes
1914-18, J.M. Bruce (Putnam, 1957)
- Warplanes of the First World War: Fighters, Vol.1, J.M.
Bruce (McDonald, 1965)
- British Fighter Since 1912, Francis K. Mason (Putnam 1992)
- British Naval
Aircraft since 1912, Owen Thetford (Putnam, 1978)
One aircraft only, no c/n or serial.
Total Alcock Production 1
|