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Grahame-White

Grahame-White Aviation Company Ltd.


History

Claude Grahame White (no hyphen) was born on 21 August 1879 in Bursledon, Hampshire, the son of John Reginald White and Ada Beatrice White (née Chinnock). He was educated at Crondall House School, Farnham, and Bedford Grammar School.

Claude Grahame White’s (he had yet to append his middle name to his surname) aptitude for engineering was obvious at school. At the age of 16 he convinced his parents to let him train as an engineer. Apprenticed to a firm in Bedford, he built his own bicycle before buying his first car. In 1897 he became one of the founder members of Frederick Simms’s Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland and, the next year, went to work for his uncle, Francis Willey, a Yorkshire wool magnate at the Shipley Wool Combing Company, where he had several successes, including introducing lorries to replace the company’s Shire horses. Recognising the potential of the motor vehicle as a means of public transport, Claude left Shipley’s to form the Yorkshire Motor Vehicle Company at the Vaughan Works, Bradford. Unfortunately the business failed due to a lack of skilled drivers, but he managed some notoriety, being prosecuted on 4 April 1901 for 'furious driving' at the astounding speed of between 14 and 16 miles per hour!

In 1900 Claude met the wealthy land-owner George Wilder and his wife. They paid him to buy new cars on their behalf, and teach them how to drive. For three years he was the agent for their 20,000 acre estate, Stanstead Park. Following nine months travelling in South Africa he returned to London circa 1907 to set up his own motor car dealership at No.1 Albemarle Street, importing cars from France. He traded as C. Grahame-White and Co, apparently the first use of the hyphenated 'Grahame-White' surname.

Aviation was in its infancy in the early years of the 20th century. Grahame-White had his own balloon but he disliked being at the mercy of the elements, and soon his attention turned to heavier-than-air flight. He was a member of both the Aéro-Club de France and the Aero Club of Great Britain, and during 1908, while in France on business, he witnessed Wilbur Wright fly. The next year, inspired by Louis Blériot's crossing of the English Channel in 1909, he attended the Reims aviation meeting, at which he met Blériot. He agreed to buy the Type XII Blériot was demonstrating, immediately after the meeting, but the machine unfortunately crashed and was destroyed. Blériot promised him the next available Type XII.

Grahame-White assisted in the construction of his own machine at the Blériot works and took delivery at Issy-les-Moulineaux on 7 November 1909, naming it 'White Eagle'. Although having no flying training of any kind, he succeeded in making several successful flights. He moved to Blériot's school at Pau on 24 November, but unfortunately the machine was wrecked on the 28th, while being piloted by Blériot, with Grahame-White as passenger. Blériot offered to replace it with two of the more conventional Type XI. Flying one of these, Grahame-White qualified for his Aviators Certificate, No. 30, from the Aéro-Club de France, on 4 January 1910, the first Englishmen to do so. He then purchased a further six of the Blériot machines and went on to establish a flying school at Pau. He also gained his RAeC Aviators Certificate, No 6, flying his own Blériot at Pau. This was awarded on 26 April 1910, but the qualifying flight must have been well before this, as he had returned to England by then.

Grahame-White returned to England in January 1910, one of the reasons for which was to find a permanent site for his flying school on British soil. He discovered several hundred acres of pasture near Hendon, and acquired an option to purchase it. Returning to France, he determined to compete for the £10,000 prize offered by the Daily Mail newspaper for the first flight between London and Manchester in less than 24 hours. To this end he required something more reliable than the Bleriot and purchased a Farman III biplane. He returned to England on 15 April and his only competitor, Louis Paulhan, a few days later. Ironically Paulhan chose to base his aircraft at the very place that Grahame-White had surveyed for his flying school. The race itself began in the early hours of 27 April. Although Paulhan won the prize, Grahame White's achievement was widely praisedbeing the first aviator to make a night flight, and he now became a celebrity in England. On 2 July 1910, flying his Farman, he won the £1,000 first prize for Aggregate Duration in Flight (1 hr 23 min 20 secs) at the Midlands Aviation Meeting at Wolverhampton.

July 1910 saw the first aircraft built to Grahame-Whites own specifications, a modified Sommer biplane, which was built by the Windham Detachable Motor Body Co., with which he was hoping to fly from Paris to London. Little more is known.

Grahame-White’s exploits didn’t go unnoticed in the United States.  J V Martin of the Harvard Aeronautical Society came to Europe in the summer of 1910 seeking aviators to compete in the Boston-Harvard Meet, and he wanted Claude Grahame-White. He got his man with the promise of a $50,000 retainer and all expenses paid. In Boston Grahame-White claimed the blue ribbon event, the 33-mile race from the airfield to Boston Light (in Boston Harbour), for which he won $10,000.

From Boston, Grahame-White went on to Belmont Park, Long Island, New York, to compete for Britain in the Gordon Bennett Aviation Cup race, which he won and for which he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Aero Club. On 14 October 1910, while in Washington, D.C., Grahame-White flew his Farman biplane over the city and landed on West Executive Avenue near the White House. Rather than being arrested Grahame-White was applauded for the feat by the newspapers. Grahame-White remained in America for another month, basking in the limelight.

While in the USA, Grahame-White arranged for an aircraft to be built to his specifications by the Burgess Co., of Marblehead, Mass. This, the 'Baby', was a modified and scaled down Farman type. It arrived at Hendon in January 1911 and made its first flight in February.

On 18 December 1910, Grahame-White was badly injured chasing a prize, offered by Baron de Forest, for the longest nonstop flight from England to the European mainland by a British pilot in an all British aeroplane. He decided to quit competitive flying and invest his money into developing his land at Hendon into London’s first aerodrome. By October 1910 a large area had been cleared and other organisations were using the airfield, including a school founded by Louis Blériot.  In the beginning of 1911 Claude Grahame-White leased 207 acres of the land at Hendon and created an oval airfield two miles in circumference with associated hangars, workshops and an office block, which quickly became Hendon Aerodrome.  There, he transferred his flying school from Brooklands, where it had temporarily relocated from Pau earlier in the year, and formed the Grahame-White Aviation Company to cover his aviation interests.

Grahame-White was also a propagandist. He was always looking for ways to highlight Britain's vulnerability from the air. On 12 May 1911 he gave demonstrations to the Parliamentary Aerial Defence Committee, dropping flour bombs on the painted outline of a battleship, for example. In the summer of 1912 he flew around the country in his 'Wake up England!' campaign. He also wrote widely on the subject, including The Aeroplane in War (1912), with the Daily Mail's air correspondent Harry Harper.

Grahame-White returned to America in August 1911 and on 26 September, at an International Air Meet at Nassau Boulevard Long Island New York, won a prize of $600 in a speed contest for flying his monoplane ten miles at a speed of 61.5 miles per hour. However, his flying in America was cut short. The Wright brothers had filed suit, accusing Grahame-White of breaching their patent. The brothers demanded a full accounting of his 1910 earnings in America. He was summoned to appear before a circuit court judge, who enjoined Grahame-White from any further flying in America.

The Grahame-White Aviation Company had begun building Blériot monoplanes and Farman type biplanes during 1910-11, but it was not until 1913 that a machine of original design was produced. This was the Type VI Military Biplane, the design of which had been initiated by Horatio Barber, who had joined Grahame-White  after the closure of the Aeronautical Syndicate Ltd. The design was completed by John Dudley North, who had been an apprentice at the Aeronautical Syndicate, and was to become Grahame-White Aviation chief designer until he departed for the Austin Motor Co. as superintendent of their aeroplane division in 1915. One exception was the Type IX, designed by Rowland Ding. In 1913, Grahame-White acquired the manufacturing rights for the Morane-Saulnier Types G & H, which were built as the Type XIV. The companies' final design before the outbreak of war was its most successful, if anachronistic. The Type XV was an updated version of the 1910 era Farman 'Boxkite' which, with continuous improvements, remained in production until 1917.

Following the outbreak of WWI, Grahame-White offered his services and received a temporary appointment as Flight Commander in the Royal Naval Air Service on 10 August 1914.  Hendon Aerodrome and the hangars, workshops and aircraft of the Grahame-White Aviation Company were requisitioned under the Defence of the Realm Act, becoming a station of the RNAS.

Initially limited to aircraft repair, in October 1914 the company was awarded its first wartime contract for production of the BE2c aircraft and began a huge expansion programme, reportedly employing 1,000 staff by August 1915, and resulting in the construction of a new factory on the Hendon site which opened in 1916.

Meanwhile, on the night of the 5th/6th September 1914 Grahame-White and Richard Gates made the first night patrol over London in response to the threat of bombing from German airships. Grahame-White saw further action when he participated in the attack on Ostend and Zeebrugge. This was the biggest raid of the war to date, with squadrons from Dunkirk, Dover and Hendon taking part. In appalling flying conditions he was forced to ditch into the sea five miles off the Belgian coast and was eventually picked up by a French minesweeper. On returning to England he heard conflicting reports that he had drowned in the Channel or been shot as a spy in the Tower of London!

Grahame-White resigned his commission on 29 June 1915 and focused his efforts on aircraft production, expanding his factory and employing more staff. Orders were received for Breguet V bombers, built as the Grahame-White Type XIX. Further contracts followed for construction of the Avro 504 and DH.6 aircraft and by the end of 1917, after further expansion, the factory site covered 50 acres. In April 1917, having trouble finding sufficient accommodation for his employees, Grahame-White gained approval from the Welfare Department of the Ministry of Munitions for a proposal for an ambitious housing scheme to the west of the aerodrome. Named Aeroville, only one square was built, as the company was in no position to proceed with the rest of the development in the climate of uncertainty over the future of Hendon following the end of the war.

During WWI, the Grahame-White Company encountered many problems along the way: checks were made by Naval personnel rather than aircraft specialists leading to the rejection of perfectly sound components. The contract for the DH.6 turned into a fiasco when sources for silver spruce dried up, and they were supplied with totally unsuitable swamp cypress by the Government. Having borrowed heavily from both his uncle and the Admiralty to fund wartime expansion, Grahame-White faced mounting debts as his factory stood idle due to shortage of raw materials. The cumulative effect of years of relentless hard work and successive frustrations contributed to a nervous breakdown in December 1917, and a period of six weeks spent in hospital.

The summer of 1918 saw several government contracts changed or cancelled, and following the Armistice of November 1918 all outstanding contracts were suspended or cancelled pending a decision on the future of the Royal Air Force. This was extremely costly and frustrating for Claude who had claims of over £400,000 lodged with the Treasury. Out of necessity, one of his hangars became an auction house for war-surplus vehicles, and he turned his wood-working department to furniture production. In this way he was able to keep his factory fully operational and all of his staff in employment. He also discovered a lucrative business in refurbishing war-surplus Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost chassis.

In 1919 a young man called Francis Lewis Wills (b. 3 Aug 1893, d. September 19180), who had served as a RNAS Observer, approached Grahame-White with an idea for a new kind of business, which would keep them both in the air. Despite his financial difficulties, Grahame-White somehow had the capital to help found a new company, Aerofilms Ltd, which was registered on the 9th May 1919. His contribution to the venture was to provide £3,000 and premises at Hendon. By the end of 1920, the young firm had taken nearly 2,400 aerial photographs for their clients, everything from south coast seaside resorts for postcard manufacturers, to factories for captains of industry. By 1939 Aerofilms had used nearly 63,000 glass plate negatives to capture unique views all over Britain and Ireland.

The company had some small success with post-war plane designs to the design of M. Boudot, but effectively that side of Grahame-Whites business was over and company ceased aircraft manufacturing operations in 1920. In the same year the company was renamed the Grahame-White Company Ltd. Like many other aircraft companies in the post war slump, Grahame-White turned to the production of automobiles. By 1919 he had ready the GW Buckboard, priced at £95, but Grahame-White's attempts to make a truly simple vehicle coincided with the announcement of the £100 Carden, and no more was heard of the Buckboard. The company then set about turning it into a slightly more sophisticated cyclecar. Unfortunately very few were made, and Grahame-White ceased its operations completely in 1924.

Meanwhile, the London Flying Club at Hendon opened its doors on the 1st July 1919, but it was a flying club without an airfield as that was still in the hands of the government. During a visit to the USA in 1922, Grahame-White heard that without notice the Treasury had appointed a Receiver to his company, taken possession of his factory and discharged his employees. Grahame-White countered with a legal action intended to recover his own wartime losses, as well as the purchase price for Hendon. Although he eventually won this case, the Treasury would not settle until Grahame-White threatened to expose the facts in the Daily Mail.

Grahame-White had got his money but decided to leave aviation behind him. His post-Hendon life involved extensive travel, often aboard his private yacht Ethleen, and time spent living abroad. In 1925 he became agent for Baby Gar speed boats, an American company, he wrote several books on aviation with Harry Harper, and branched out into property and real-estate investment. His only role during the Second World War was as a fire-watcher during the air raids.

Hendon Aerodrome was purchased by the RAF in 1925 and 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 was relocated to the Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon, where it houses the museum's World War I collection and is named the Grahame White Factory.

Claude Grahame-White died on 19 August 1959 in Nice, France.

Company References
  1. Claude Grahame-White, Graham Wallace (Putnam, 1960)
  2. British Aircraft Before The Great War, Michael H. Goodall and Albert E. Tagg (Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 2001
  3. Who’s Who 1938 (A & C Black, London, 1938) and at https://airminded.org/biographies/claude-grahame-white/
  4. https://www.thebookseller.com/feature/claude-grahame-white-hero-air-338445
  5. https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/glamour-boy-58384522/
  6. https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1393789
  7. https://www.uniquecarsandparts.com.au/lost_marques_grahame_white



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V1.4.4 Created by Roger Moss. Last updated August 2020