Ultralights for RAF
Headset review
Ultralights for the RAF
Did Establishment ‘spin’ create the myth that popular, non-military light aviation was born at Lympne? Peter Eveleigh reports… Pictures from the collection of Arthur W J G Ord-Hume
I
n aviation circles, Lympne (pronounced Limm), a former airfield near Ashford, in Kent, is shorthand for a series of competitions held almost a century ago to find the ideal light aeroplane for newly established light aeroplane clubs. They were allied to a government scheme to provide members of the public the opportunity to learn to fly at a subsidised rate. However, the better-informed observer will know that the aeroplane ultimately chosen for the job, the DH.60 De Havilland Cirrus Moth, had not even competed in the two-seater competition in 1924 because its designer, Geoffrey de Havilland, had considered the aims of the competition to be misguided. The subsequent success of the Moth series of aeroplanes confirmed this view in the minds of commentators and historians, including Terence Boughton, whose book Story of the British Light Aeroplane (1963) has been so influential on modern thinking. The conventional wisdom is that as the Moth and its successors proved so successful in the following decades, its selection must, clearly, have been right. The selection of a Lympne Trials winner would thus have been
24 | LIGHT AVIATION | March 2021
Above The traditional view is that the de Havilland Cirrus Moth was selected for the Light Aeroplane Clubs because it was superior to those which competed in the Lympne Trials. In fact it was chosen reluctantly because it could be supplied immediately.
wrong. Although the Moth was far too large and heavy to have qualified for Lympne, it was characterised as the practical light aeroplane, while the Lympne aeroplanes, under-powered, fragile and unreliable, were simply not fit for purpose. Furthermore, the argument goes, if the Royal Aero Club (RAeC) was going to choose a heavier aeroplane ultimately, why did it spend two years searching for something much lighter than was practical? RAeC thinking had been confused, ‘muddle-headed’ and a waste of money, time and effort. The best that could be said for the competitions was that they stimulated creativity in some of the companies involved, which would go on to become legendary, like English Electric, The Bristol Aeroplane Company, Westland, and Supermarine etc. The Lympne Trials were organised by the Royal Aero Club after an aristocrat, the Duke of Sutherland, put up a large financial prize, ‘having realised the possibilities of the light plane’. The Daily Mail put up a substantial prize of its own ‘for the encouragement of flying with small motor power’. They characterised the visionary Duke as
