Cranfield

History

Cranfield University was formed in 1946 as the College of Aeronautics, on the then Royal Air Force base of RAF Cranfield. The establishment of an RAF airfield at Cranfield dates back to the expansion scheme of the mid-1930s. The airfield was built on over 100 acres of farmland acquired by the Air Ministry in June 1935 and took over two years to complete. With the outbreak of WW2, the facilities at Cranfield expanded quickly. Most significantly, throughout the winter of 1939-40 work was undertaken to replace the grass landing strip with three properly hardened surfaced runways, and by August 1941, Cranfield had become a very well-equipped station, home to No. 51 Night fighter Operational Training Unit.

No.51 OTU eventually disbanded in June 1945, and all of Cranfield's aircraft had left by the end of August. Flying did return to the airfield in November 1945, when the Empire Test Pilots School (ETPS) transferred to Cranfield from Boscombe Down. By the time they moved on to Farnborough in 1947, the future of the airfield had already been assured by its selection as the site for the new College of Aeronautics.

Of those who championed the cause of the College, one of the most influential and significant contributors was the notable aeroengine designer, Sir Roy Fedden. In 1942 he was appointed Special Technical Adviser to the Minister of Aircraft Production, and with the appointment of a new minister, Sir Stafford Cripps, Fedden was asked to lead an extended fact-finding mission to the United States, where Fedden's team were impressed by leading US Institutes of Technology at Massachusetts and California. These institutes were turning out very high-quality graduates for industry and government.

As a result, on 6 May 1943, Stafford Cripps wrote to Professor Sir Brian Melville Jones, Chairman of the Aeronautical Research Council (ARC), in order to ask the ARC to investigate the concept of a School of Aeronautical Science. Concurrently, the Royal Aeronautical Society held two open meetings on 25 June and 23 July 1943 on the subject of ‘The education and training of aeronautical engineers’. The importance of these meetings is reflected in the eminence of the speakers who included leading figures in the industry such as Sir Frederick Handley Page, and the Chairman, Dr. Harold Roxbee Cox. The ARC issued its report on the 10 August 1943, which laid out a series of recommendations for the future of aeronautical education.

The ARC’s report and the accompanying proposal from Stafford Cripps to establish a postgraduate aeronautical school was referred in September 1943 to the Lord President’s Committee of the War Cabinet. This was chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, and also included other ministers such as Ernest Bevin and Herbert Morrison. The Government’s response was to establish an interdepartmental committee, charged with preparing and submitting to the Minister of Aircraft Production detailed proposals for a School of Aeronautical Science. The committee was chaired by Fedden himself.

The Fedden report, as the document is now commonly known, largely accepted the earlier ARC recommendations. The primary plan outlined by the report called for an all-new purpose-built college, equipped from the outset, at a level not far below that of existing research establishments, but the report also outlined a second, short-term compromise proposal, which instead of providing for new buildings, suggested that the College could be located in a converted air station.

Following the Government's acceptance of the compromise proposals outlined in the Fedden report, a Board of Governors was appointed under the Chairmanship of Sir Edgar-Ludlow Hewitt (Air Chief Marshal Sir Edgar Rainey Ludlow-Hewitt, GCB, GBE, CMG, DSO, MC, DL (9 June 1886 – 15 August 1973)), and this met for the first time in June 1945. The Board established three committees responsible for finance, building and staffing, and selected the College's first Principal, E.F. Relf, a distinguished and experienced aerodynamicist from the National Physical Laboratory. The allocation of college buildings took place at an Air Ministry meeting in February 1946. Initially two hangers were converted into large laboratories, and the subsequent departure of the Empire Test Pilots School in July 1947 placed more buildings under the College's control.

In June 1953, the first Chairman of the Board of Governors, Ludlow-Hewitt resigned, and was replaced by Sir Frederick Handley Page. The constitution of the Board was altered to allow for the appointment of additional committees and three Deputy Chairmen, who along with Handley Page himself were effectively to lead the decision-making process. Harold Roxbee Cox was appointed one of the three new Deputy Chairmen. The death of Handley-Page in April 1962 saw the now Sir Harold Roxbee Cox appointed as Chairman in August that year.

Roxbee Cox led the drive for the college to diversify, with the Cranfield University School of Management being established in 1967. In July that year, the College presented the Privy Council with a Petition for the grant of a Royal Charter along with a draft charter for a new institution to be called Cranfield Institute of Technology, which was granted in December 1969. Roxbee-Cox became its first chancellor, seeing it through its change of name to Cranfield University in 1993, until his retirement in 1997.

In the 1960’s Nick Carter, the then manager of the British Aerobatic Team, and Peter Little, an ex-student of the College of Aeronautics, asked Cranfield if they would consider the use of student effort to design an aerobatic aircraft for competitive work. On investigation it was discovered that such a task was sufficiently demanding to prove a challenge. Two 1968/69 students, Bob Ward and Graham Potter, were given the task of completing a preliminary design study under Professor Denis Howe's supervision as part of their work leading to a MSc degree. The specifications for such a machine were largely drawn up by the late Neil Williams, many times British Aerobatic Champion. Following the successful design process, construction of the prototype was initiated in 1971. Lack of finance stopped any major work until 1975. when the project was assisted by Mr Alan Curtis. The result was the Cranfield A.1, flown for the first time on 23 August 1976.

The College by necessity always had close ties with industry, and the next Cranfield design to be produced was the A.2 Machan, an unmanned flight research vehicle for GEC/Marconi, funded largely by the Ministry of Defence. Design was once again under the leadership of Professor Howe.

In support of Operation Ability, in 1986 the College designed the Cranfield A3 is an aircraft designed specially to meet the needs of training a student who is unable to walk, stand or lift. These include providing an upward opening nose section, to enable the disabled trainee to enter the front cockpit by reversing his retractable-wheel wheelchair into it, and a 'tailored' cockpit design which meets the exact needs of the disabled pilot during all flight manoeuvres. Unfortunately, this did not come to fruition, and the A.3 designation was re-used for the Observer, a small man portable research vehicle with a broad delta planform with wing tip fins and rudders, produced for the British Government and built by Tasuma Ltd. It successfully completed its first flight on 11 March 1999.

In 1995 the College established a full-time Masters programme in Aerospace Vehicle Design, the focus of which is the Group Design Project (GDP). This programme is a three-year part-time M.Sc. course, which comprises the same major elements as the full-time course. The students attend lecture modules, perform a piece of individual research and work on a GDP, It was this last element that particularly attracted the launch and predominant customer for the course, the then Military Aircraft Division of British Aerospace (BAe), now BAE SYSTEMS.

The course was launched in February 1995 with 15 students, all from Bae Military Aircraft. The GDP that they were presented with was to work on modifications to Cranfield‘s own single seat A.1 aerobatic aircraft to provide a two-seat aerobatic trainer. This provided the realistic possibility for a project to progress through to manufacture and flight. The choice of the A.1 was prompted by the fact that Cranfield held complete design information and had already made significant moves towards the certification of the aircraft. Following re-assembly in its two-seat configuration, the aircraft was readied for its official Roll-Out at Graduation Day on 13 July 1998. The official first flight took place on 30 September 1998, following naming of the aircraft the Cranfield A.1-200 Eagle.

Intake 2 of 1996 was tasked with improving the A.1’s lateral stability and control characteristics. The major modification selected for progression to manufacture was the design of an increased thickness rudder and matching fin removing the step at the end of the rear fuselage. This required modifications to the control circuits for rudder and elevator in the Hear fuselage area, of the dorsal fin and fin to tailplane fairings. Slingsby Aviation Ltd were chosen to manufacture the composite components incorporating metal hinges and brackets etc. produced within BAe.

The College had for many years worked for and along with the UK Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) on development of all the aspects surrounding small Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs), particularly for surveillance purposes, so for the 3rd Intake of the Part-Time MSc course in 1997, it was decided to utilise this experience to assist in the production of a UAV, to be designed from scratch, which would provide a tool for the investigation of the characteristics and suitability of various flight control laws and strategies when applied to unconventional aircraft configurations. The result was the Eclipse jet powered UAV.

A major research programme into advanced UAVs was begun in June 2004 by BAE SYSTEMS and their partner, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), to develop technologies which would support the design of low cost (both to acquire and operate) flapless UAV’s, under the name FLAVIIR (Flapless Air Vehicle Integrated Industrial Research). Cranfield was tasked with managing the complete project (with BAE Systems) to deliver the benefits of these joint activities. The result, developed from the earlier Eclipse, was the Demon.

Cranfield Aerospace (now Cranfield Aerospace Solutions (CAeS)) was formed in 1997 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Cranfield University, and holds civil and military approvals to design, build and fly manned and unmanned aircraft. It has worked on projects for major OEMs, such as Boeing, Airbus, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. It also designed and built the X-48 dynamically scaled jet-engined blended-wing demonstrator for Boeing/NASA and worked with Airbus and Rolls-Royce to develop the hybrid E-Fan X converted BAe 146 demonstrator, though that project was cancelled.

On 1 October 2019, CAeS embarked upon Project Fresson, aiming to refit a nine-seat twin-engine Britten-Norman Islander with an electric propulsion system, with CAeS leading a consortium with Britten Norman, Rolls-Royce, Delta Motor Sport, Dennis Ferranti and Warwick Manufacturing Group. In March 2021, the power source was switched from hybrid-electric to hydrogen fuel cells, with wing-mounted fuel tanks, as batteries or range extenders were not viable.

Company References

1. https://www.cranfield.ac.uk/about/history-and-heritage
2. https://library.cranfield.ac.uk/Lord-Kings-Norton-Archive
3. https://www.flightglobal.com/engines/project-fresson-changes-track-in-shift-to-hydrogen-fuel-cells/143087.article
4. Flight testing the Cranfield A.1, A.M. McVitie (RAeS Aeronautical Journal, September 1978)
5. Graduate-Level Design Education, Based on Flight Demonstrator Projects, J.P. Fielding, R.I. Jones (Aircraft Design 3, Pergamon Press, 2000)
6. FLAVIIR, An Innovative University/Industry Research Program For Collaborative Research And Demonstration Of UAV Technologies, Prof. J. P. Fielding, Dr Howard Smith (25th International Congress of The Aeronautical Sciences)
7. Design And Development of the Eclipse and Demon Demonstrator UAVs, A. Yarf-Abbasi, A. Clarke, C. P. Lawson & J. P. Fielding (26th International Congress of The Aeronautical Sciences)
8. Development Of the Demon Technology Demonstrator UAV, J. P. Fielding, C. P. Lawson, R. Pires & G. Monterzino (27th International Congress of The Aeronautical Sciences)

Project Data

Project No	Type No	Name	Alternative Name(s)	Year	Spec (Requirement)	Status	Qty	Description	References
	A.1	Eagle		1969		Proto	1	1S, 1E aerobatic aircraft	2, 3, 7
	A.2					See GEC/Marconi Machan
	A.3	Operation Ability		1986		Proj	0	2S, 1E twin boom pusher aircraft	4
		Eclipse		1997		Proto	1	1E experimental UAV for investigation of flight control laws	7, 9, 10
	A.3	Observer		1998		Proto	6	1E experimental reconnaissance UAV	1, 5
		MinO		2003		Proto	3	1E man portable reconnaissance UAV	1, 6
		Demon		2004		Proto	1	1E experimental UAV for investigation of fluidic thrust vectoring	7, 9, 10

Type No	Name	Qty (New)	Qty (Conv)	Canc'd
A.1	Eagle	1			See Prdn List
	Eclipse	1			See Prdn List
A.3	Observer	6			See Prdn List
	MinO	3			See Prdn List
	Demon	1			See Prdn List

Total Cranfield Production12