History Archives - Golf Hotel Whiskey

Pegasus House: The former HQ of the Bristol Aeroplane Company is restored

The Gazette and ThisIsBristol.com have both ran stories on the restoration of Pegasus House, the Grade II listed art deco building in Filton which once housed the Bristol Aeroplane Company. That restoration is now complete with the Duke of Gloucester taking part in the official ceremony yesterday to mark the completion.

Designed by Austen Hall and inaugurated in 1936 as headquarters of the Bristol Aeroplane Company, Pegasus House once housed hundreds of aircraft personnel (mostly draughtsmen), but only founder Sir George, the directors and their guests (including various royals along with Winston Churchill and Hollywood star Cary Grant) could use the imposing A38 front entrance and the ornate, specially commissioned, black and gold iron gates.

According to a local historian, the basement housed the wages and accounts offices, the ground floor contained the directors’ rooms, the first floor held the conference room (with a high ceiling and five tall window bays containing 10 plaster of Paris murals depicting the natural history of flight), the second floor had a projector and cinema room and the third floor was used as an exclusive director’s dining room.

However, the building had been left derelict for nearly two decades when it was damaged by two fires, the damp and repeatedly vandalized by squatters, but then Airbus decided to restore it to its former glory. Renovation work began 18 months ago and now the restored building forms part of the manufacturer’s £70 million Airbus Aerospace Park.

A total of 300 employees will be based at Pegasus House and they are scheduled to move in over the weekend with another 2,500 engineers are set to work from Barnwell House on the site when it officially reopens in December.

Most of the property’s stunning art deco features were preserved, including the 1930s reliefs, marble flooring, columns and most special of all – the three story art deco stained glass window covering one of the large façades. The window was designed to illuminate the building with natural light and depicts the depicts the history of the company. It was specially commissioned and designed by Jan Juta who was famous for his work with stained glass.

In addition, the floor mosaic in the main lobby representing the signs of the zodiac was also restored. Apparently, the Zodiac was the company’s very first aircraft, but it was “no good and never actually went into production” according to Sir George White, whose great-grandfather had started the company.

Amelia Earhart’s birthday (and the lawsuit over the search for her plane)

Amelia Earhart was born 116 years ago today on July 24, 1897 while the anniversary of her July 2, 1937 disappearance was just a few weeks ago. To this day, we still don’t know for certain what happened to her, but you might not know that from a lawsuit that’s been filed against the group searching for her lost aircraft.

According to a local Wyoming paper (Side note: The construction of a cabin intended to be Earhart’s summer home in the state was never completed due to her disappearance), local Timothy Mellon (the son of Paul Mellon, as in the Mellon banking fortune and Carnegie Mellon University) is suing The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) for withholding the news of the discovery of Earhart’s aircraft in order to squeeze $1 million from him to pay for a later, superfluous search.

Earhart’s aircraft being found may come as news to history buffs, but the lawsuit asserts that video footage from a 2010 expedition near Nikumaroro, an island in the South Pacific, shows wreckage of her Lockheed Electra (and speculation that she died as a castaway on the island is a very plausible scenario).

Apparently, Mellon thinks he sees “human remains, a toilet and a toilet seat, a banjo and case and toilet paper rolls” in some of the pictures or videos posted on the TIGHAR website. However, TIGHAR Executive Director Richard Gillespie has told the Star-Tribune:

“I have looked at that video 100 times, and there’s nothing there but coral, I wish there was! I’ve been searching for Amelia Earhart for 25 years. If there was anything there, I would be all over it.”

TIGHAR’s attorneys have filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

Rare radio chatter clip of a WWII Lancaster bomber engaging a German fighter

Hat tip to the Aviationist blog for finding and posting this video containing a rare radio chatter clip from a British Lancaster Bomber flying a mission over Germany during World War Two when its attacked by a German fighter. The crew sounds like they are panicking as the fighter engages them with the captain at one point shouting: “Okay, don’t shout all at once!” Eventually, one of the gunners brings down the German fighter:

Audio clips from World War II aircraft are rare since radios were not so advanced then – making this audio clip rather interesting to history buffs. And as one commenter on YouTube pointed out:

No single “f***” in the whole conversation. Compare it to modern soldiers in Iraq.

Remembering the “Dambusters” mission

Earlier this month, aviation enthusiasts and military veterans alike gathered outside Sheffield to mark the 70th anniversary of one of World War II’s most memorable air assaults: Operation Chastise, otherwise known as the "dambusters" mission.

The gathering was extra special because vintage aircraft, including a Lancaster bomber, recreated a dambuster mission by performing three runs over the Derwent Dam in Derbyshire which, coincidentally, was used back in 1943 by the 617 Squadron pilots to train in preparation of the daring night missions using “bouncing bombs” against dams in Nazi Germany’s industrial heartland in the Ruhr Valley.

If you want to learn more about the actual mission, a quick look at YouTube reveals the following documentary narrated by Actor Martin Shaw who also talked to the last living RAF veteran of the mission as well as a survivor of the tsunami that was caused by the Moehne dam’s destruction:

The Aviationist blog has posted the following footage from onboard the RAF Memorial Flight Lancaster as it flew over the Derwent Dam:

Finally, PlanesTV has the following footage taken from the ground of the Lancaster flying over the dam:

Welsh engineer wants to recreate a pioneer flight that never was

Wales Online has profiled retired engineer Thomas Merlin Maddock who lives in the same Valleys house on Meadow Street, in Pontycymmer as pit carpenter and would-be aviator pioneer Christopher Carlyon did in 1904. Carlyon is not going to be a familiar name to aviation history buffs, but just months after the Wright brothers took to the air, the 17-year old started building his own flying machine in a shed he built 400 feet up a mountain near Bridgend called Coedcae.

His plan was to build a flying machine to glide across the Garw Valley at its narrowest point of about half a mile. However and after several tests on the slopes below his shed, it and the shed were destroyed by a violent storm in 1910.

Demoralised that his flying machine was destroyed before he could do a full fledged flight, Carlyon never returned to the project. Maddock only learned about the would-be aviator pioneer after his father attended the 59 year old Carlyon’s funeral in 1947.

Today and despite being 78-years old, Maddock, who has spent the last decade researching Carlyon’s plans, is taking up the challenge. He believes that Carlyon was inspired to build his flying machine after reading up on the Wright brothers and studying pictures of their aircraft. He also visited Carlyon’s who lent him a box full of glass slides to build prototypes first with a wingspan of 12 inches, then 24 inches and now eight feet

However, Maddock has no intention of taking the final craft for a test flight over the Garw Valley as he says that Carylon picked the most exposed part of south Wales and could have been killed trying to fly it there. Instead, he has found two pilots willing to fly the aircraft once its built, but it will be towed along on the ground to see if it lifts eight or 10 feet to prove this unsung local aviator pioneer right.

Merlin Maddock in his Pontycymer workshop with the 1/3-size replica of a glider first built by Christopher Carlyon, WalesOnline .

The Corrigan Brothers: An Irish band pays tribute to “Wrongway” Corrigan

An Irish band calling itself the Corrigan Brothers is celebrating the 75th anniversary of Douglas “Wrongway” Corrigan’s flight from Floyd Bennett Field, New York, to Baldonnel Aerodrome in Ireland on July 18, 1938 with the following song or music video:

In case you don’t know the story of Douglas “Wrongway” Corrigan, he learned to fly in the mid-1920s and later worked in an aircraft factory where he was actually responsible for the wing assembly and the installation of the gas tanks and instrument panel on Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St Louis. In fact, he and a colleague increased the lift of the Spirit of St Louis by extending the wing 10 feet (3.0 meters) longer and he pulled the chocks from the aircraft when Lindbergh took off from San Diego to New York to prepare for his historic flight.

Corrigan also wanted to fly across the Atlantic and in 1935, he sought permission from the Bureau of Air Commerce for a non-stop flight from New York and Ireland. His application was rejected and over the next two years, he made repeated modifications to his aircraft and reapplications which were all rejected.

Increasingly exasperated by government red tape and increasing aircraft regulations, its believed Corrigan decided to make an unofficial crossing. In 1938, he filed a flight plan to fly from New York to Long Beach, but instead ended up in Ireland.

Corrigan claimed his unauthorized transatlantic flight was due to a navigational error caused by heavy cloud cover which obscured landmarks along with low-light conditions that caused him to misread his compass. It took a 600 word telegram by aviation officials to list all of the regulations broken, but he received only a 14-day suspension of his pilot certificate along with a couple of ticker tape parades when he returned to the States. He later bought an orange grove in Southern California where he quietly passed away in 1995 – never admitting whether his flight to Ireland was deliberate or not.

As for the Corrigan Brothers, General Aviation News quoted one as saying:

We are hoping to perform the song in the very spot Douglas landed on July 18, 2013, provided we have clearance from air traffic control. We will log our song plan and will not deviate from its course, unlike good old Douglas.

The Corrigan Brothers are also recording their second album (“Our Favourite Irish Songs”), will begin a world tour in October and are researching their family tree in the hopes of finding a link to “Wrongway” Corrigan.