Frank McClean Read online

  During the storm it is probable that we travelled south instead of north as calculated on by us. This would account for our very big error in position, as our speed at that time was tremendous.

  The greater part of our food and drink had gone overboard, but the locker remained, and our spare clothes and sleeping sacks, in addition to a certain amount of sand.

  The Bohemians were most delightful people to land among, though somewhat inquisitive. The process of changing one’s socks gave them the greatest joy, in spite of all protest. Most of them were barefooted.

  Having got the Planet into a cart, we walked to the house where the Mayor lived, and from there took a carriage to Kopidlno station. Once again difficulties of language arose, but in the end we found ourselves at Prague with the balloon safe, and we celebrated our return to civilisation by a hot bath and a Bohemian dinner.

  McClean later looked back on the adventure as ‘an unpleasing trip with obnoxious moments’.

  Self-taught aviator

  On 6 October the Shorts wrote to the Wrights, stating that, apart from the engine, ‘the No 2 machine is completely ready… We should like to know if you could let McClean have the machine because he has his shed adjoining our works… he is very cautious and we are sure it would be to your advantage that he should have one of the earliest machines…’. In the event Short-Wright No 2 went to Ogilvie, but on 16 October Short-Wright No 3 was delivered to McClean, and he set about learning to fly it. Here he was at disadvantage compared with Rolls and Alec Ogilvie, the owners of Short-Wrights Nos 1 and 2 respectively, as they had both acquired Wright-type gliders on which to gain some advance experience of the control system. McClean managed a straight flight after a launch on 2 November (his own notes record ‘four runs on Wright machine’ that day), and more on the following day (‘First crash on Wright machine’). He made further runs on the 5th, but on the 6th he crashed again after a 150-yard flight. In its 16 November issue The Aero reported:

  … after three trips along the starting rail merely to get used to the balance, Mr McClean, at the fourth attempt, turned his elevator upwards to rise at the end of the rail, but, lifting too much, lost the way of the machine [i.e. stalled], swung round sideways, and landed broadside on, with the result that he pulled the skids from under the machine, which sat down on the rear of the wings. It speaks well for the construction of the machine that nothing else was damaged, except for a broken wire or two, although the propeller blades were forced nearly a foot into the ground. They had to be dug out, because any misplaced effort in attempting to lift the machine bodily would probably have broken one or other of them, or would, at any rate, have bent the propeller shafts. The machine flew about seventy yards before it landed, and, short as the flight was, it was quite instructive to watch.

  The reporter added that the aircraft was ready for use the next morning.

  This accident was also reported in the Sheerness Times and General Advertiser for Saturday 13 November 1909, the newspaper’s account making the damage appear greater than it evidently was:

  On Saturday last… Mr McClean made some practice with his Wright biplane. Leaving the rail, he flew just off the ground for a distance of 150 yards, and his machine then went up perpendicularly and fell to the ground with a smash. The aviator fortunately escaped injury, but the machine was extensively damaged. The aeronaut, calmly smoking a cigar, watched the removal of the damaged biplane to Messrs. Short’s factory.

  The differing estimates of the distance travelled are noteworthy.

  By the end of the month, however, he was gaining experience, and it was reported that he had accomplished ‘several short flights up to about a quarter of a mile in length’. McClean later recalled:

  It must be remembered that there was no one to teach; that one’s only experience had been as a passenger with Wilbur Wright for some six minutes; and that the machine was without stability, depending entirely on its controls to keep it in any position. Also, one had to learn quickly, as the only way to get past a tree was to go round it.

  When The Aero’s reporter visited the ground he had found it ‘practically under water’, and the site was clearly unsuited to year-round use. Moreover, the number of dykes intersecting the site made it impractical. Horace and Eustace Short, finding that their Leysdown aerodrome was rapidly becoming inaccessible owing to the bad state of the roads, traversed the whole of the Isle of Sheppey in an ancient 7hp Panhard car, ‘whose distinctive feature was its ability to negotiate dykes and marshes’, in search of a more suitable site. They eventually discovered a large flat tract of unbroken country about three miles from Shellbeach. Hearing of this, McClean bought the 205-acre site, Stonepitts Farm, Eastchurch, in November, and gave free use of it and the buildings to members in return for a fixed rent of one shilling per year from the Club. Initially described as the Aero Club’s ‘auxiliary flying ground’, the site was ‘very level and free from ditches’, and a great improvement on the earlier site. The Leysdown pioneers quickly migrated to the new location, which was soon to replace Shellbeach altogether, most of the sheds at Leysdown being dismantled and reerected there. McClean had a shed erected to house his aircraft, and took over a small bungalow named ‘Stonepitts’.

  McClean flying Short-Wright No 3 in December 1910. He has just left the rail, and, as he recounted in 1931, the picture was obtained ‘by getting a photographer to lay on the ground just in front of him and, by the Grace of God, he just missed the photographer who thus got a beautiful photograph’. This print, inscribed by McClean, was sent to someone as a Christmas and New Year greetings card in 1910. (AUTHOR)

  He later wrote:

  The actual agreement between McClean and Aero Proprietary [the limited company that ran the RAeC] for the tenancy of Eastchurch flying-ground did not commence until 1st January, 1911, but from the end of 1909 it was being run by the Aero Club. The first lease was for six years, but later this was altered to 21 years.

  On 20 November Rolls flew his Short-Wright to the new aerodrome, having to make an unscheduled stop en route to adjust his elevator. He was the first person to land there. McClean moved his Short-Wright there the same day, but elected to transport it ‘in pieces’ by road, probably because he had insufficient flying experience to attempt a cross-country flight. By early December he was making ‘good flights’ of up to about a quarter of a mile. On 5 December Maurice Egerton saw him make a ‘flight’ of about 400 yards, observing: ‘He attempted to turn, but was not high enough for the rising ground, so touched a wing, and stopped. I notice that he elevates very slightly, and so does not get clean away but touches 2 or 3 times before rising. He seems to run his engine slower than I do.’ On the 6th McClean broke some wires when trying unsuccessfully to make a turn, and Egerton noted: ‘M’Clean [sic] tells me he used to be quite fagged after a dozen runs down the rail.’ The following day, having heard that Egerton had also suffered a smash on the 6th, he told him that ‘it was no good going on, and that he wasn’t feeling very fit, and went off home in a hurry’. This spell of pessimism was brief; Egerton recorded that, on the 9th, McClean had broken up his skids ‘trying that right-hand turn of his’. His persistence then began to pay. He recorded a ‘circuit’ on the 16th (Egerton described it as a ‘circular mile’), managed a three-mile flight on the 17th according to Egerton, and on the 21st he flew several circuits of the new aerodrome.

  On 30 December McClean rounded off the year by flying Short-Wright No 3 from Eastchurch, rounding Short Brothers’ works at Leysdown and heading back to Eastchurch. ‘A slight mishap’ on the way back, when a connecting rod punched a hole in the engine’s crankcase, ‘caused a hasty descent’ near Capel Creek, which he accomplished ‘without difficulty’. He had flown seven miles.

  CHAPTER 3

  1910: An Accomplished Pilot

  Although flying continued at Eastchurch, McClean was absent. A few days after the Leysdown flight he sailed from England on an expedition he had organised to Port Davey, Tasmania, to witness and report on
a solar eclipse that was due to occur on 9 May 1910. (Thanks to rain and heavy cloud he ‘saw nothing’, though he did produce a report.)

  In his absence, work progressed apace on preparing the Eastchurch Flying Ground, and by the end of January Flight was able to report that all of the ditches would be filled and the necessary draining completed ‘in the course of the next few weeks’. Eight RAeC members already had sheds erected on the site.

  By 1 February the French-made Bollée engine of McClean’s Short-Wright was in the workshop having its crankcase patched. The Aero reported on the ‘temporary loss’ of McClean in its issue of 15 February (the day that the prefix ‘Royal’ was granted to the Aero Club), saying that he was ‘a man who objects strenuously to having his doings made public, but, as he is not now here to resent it, we may say that he acquired a command over his Short-Wright machine just before he left which put him right in the front rank of fliers’. The magazine then described the Leysdown flight more fully. The very day he left England he flew two or three times round the Eastchurch ground, then right across to Shelness, round the ground there right out to the sea wall, and half way back to Eastchurch, where unhappily engine trouble forced him to come down, thus spoiling what would have been one of the finest flights yet done in this country. As it was, the distance covered was between twelve and fifteen miles, which is a flight well worthy of note.’ The writer then said: ‘Mr McClean has unlimited nerve and pluck, and he really understands his machine, so we look forward to some fine performances on his return’.

  The reporter saw the dismantled errant engine from McClean’s aircraft in the Shorts’ factory at Leysdown. ‘It is quite clear,’ he wrote, ‘that the seizing of the big ends was caused simply through lack of proper oil channels in the bearing brasses.’ These French-built Wright engines had many faults, and required much rectification even before the aeroplanes in which they were mounted had flown. Egerton had noted that: ‘None of the bearings have any oil grooves, except the straight ones opposite the oil-outlet in the shaft, nor are the two halves of the bearings backed off at the join, hence the oil cannot travel along the bearings, being a good fit, consequently after 10 minutes or so at high speed a seize is inevitable.’ A remedy was being incorporated in all future engines.

  In its issue for 5 February Flight published an article by Griffith Brewer entitled ‘Aeronautics for the Navy’. In it, Brewer wrote of operating aeroplanes from ships under way, and discussed the value of aeroplane scouts to the fleet. ‘Above all,’ he added, ‘… should the naval authorities give some favoured young officers a chance to see what can be done, let us hope they will not disdain to take advantage of the work already accomplished by others. Thousands of pounds have been spent by the Aero Club and its members, and all knowledge and facilities thus acquired are at the disposal of the services when the authorities realise that the air is an element already invaded by man.’ As we shall see, McClean was to play a leading role in introducing the navy to aviation. A step in this direction was taken that same month, when Commander Curtis and the officers of the Royal Naval Depot at Sheerness intimated that the members of the Aero Club could consider themselves honorary members of their mess.

  A mystery machine

  Short No 3 (also designated S.III) was much longer in building than its forebears. A real ‘mystery machine’, in previous accounts of the company’s pre-First World War work it has become confused with another Short product. The aircraft initially identified as Short No 3 was a small biplane with a 35hp Green engine that was exhibited at the second Olympia Aero Show, held from 11 to 19 March 1910, and the customer was said to be the Hon. C S Rolls. In the 1970s, however, this attribution was challenged when Short Brothers regained possession of the company’s early aircraft order book, which shows that Frank McClean ordered ‘One aeroplane (Shorts No 3)’ on 3 August 1909 (as mentioned earlier). In addition, the word ‘delivered’ has been appended to the original entry for the order. It was therefore thought that this was the machine displayed at Olympia, but more recently a letter from Shorts to the Wrights, dated 8 March 1910, has been found in the Wright archive in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., which shows beyond dispute that Rolls was the customer for the Olympia aeroplane, and that it was the small biplane delivered to him on 16 March 1910 as the ‘RPG IV’ (Rolls Powered Glider No IV). Drawing numbers show that the Short No 3 and the RPG IV were under construction concurrently.

  This leaves the problem of identifying McClean’s Short No 3, as there is no known general-arrangement drawing or photograph of it. However, surviving component drawings dated between 7 August 1909 and 23 May 1910 do exist, and reveal that its wings spanned 30ft Oin and had a chord of about 5ft 10in, that the ribs were pitched at 15in intervals, the canard elevator spanned 8ft 11in and the tailplane 4ft 10in. Moreover, an undated entry between 30 July and September 1910 in the order book records ‘repairs etc’ to this aircraft, so it seems that McClean (or someone else) might have attempted to fly it, but there is no record of its fate. In truth, the mysterious Short No 3 was almost certainly rendered obsolete even before it was completed by the advent of the far better Short-Sommer, as recounted below, and was probably quickly abandoned. Unfortunately its configuration, powerplant installation and control system remain unknown.

  Although the Rolls machine displayed on Shorts’ Olympia stand was described as being ‘of special light design’, Horace Short seems to have found it hard to reconcile the strength and lightness that were equally essential if an aeroplane was to be capable of flight, choosing to err on the side of strength and sacrifice lightness. Shortly after the Olympia Aero Show the Daily Mail’s aviation reporter, Harry Harper, visited the company’s works. In the newspaper’s 4 April 1910 issue he reported:

  Out in an almost deserted corner of the Isle of Sheppey, with nothing but flat grassland around them, intersected with broad dykes, stand several queer buildings, from which, by the removal of a couple of planks, all access may speedily be cut off when privacy is desired – as it often is.

  Over the major portion of these buildings, where much secret work is now afoot, I have just had the privilege of being conducted by an extraordinarily interesting man. The buildings are part of a well-organised factory for the building of aeroplanes; the man is Mr Horace Short, now an enthusiastic designer of British-built aeroplanes, but until little more than a year ago one of the right-hand men of the Hon. Charles Parsons in the construction of steam turbines and in experimental work.

  I saw a hundred specially trained men hard at work building aeroplanes. Amid the clatter of hammers, the clang of metals, and the swishing sound of planes passing up and down long rods of wood, a big biplane was growing – a queer medley of wood and wire and thin steel tubing, all seemingly ridiculously heavy when one remembered that it was designed to fly through the air.

  “A thousand pounds is the weight of a soundly built biplane, with engine in it and the aviator in his seat,” explained the maker of flying machines. “When you see a man 1,000 feet high, his life dependent upon the wood and metal and fabric you have given him, it makes you determine not to stint the weight where it is possible to make an aeroplane strong. As a matter of fact, the fashion – there are already fashions in aeroplanes – is to fit heavier and therefore more reliable engines than was first the case, and to put stronger wood and wire into the machine’s construction. An aeroplane swoops to the ground at forty miles an hour on landing; flimsy wheels or skids crumple up like paper. There must be strength.”

  And then we passed through test rooms where every length of wire destined for use in an aeroplane was being subjected to enormous strains, where sections of wooden rods were being examined with microscopes to detect flaws, where nuts and bolts and connecting levers were undergoing a merciless scrutiny.

  As my guide was leading me to the part of the factory where propellers are made, we heard a curious penetrating hum from without. We stopped and gazed through a window. It was a quiet evening, with the clear faint light that
heralds the dusk. From out of the wide expanse of land which forms the aerodrome of the Royal Aero Club came an aeroplane on the wing. It wheeled superbly not far from our window. Then it darted off again and was lost to view. Mr Short smiled. The aeroplane which flew off so splendidly into the dusk was a creation of his own brain, with a British pilot at its controlling levers.

  “In a year’s time,” he declared with emphasis, “England will not only have made up her lost ground in aviation, but will be leading the whole world.” Then we entered a long, airy workroom. Everywhere there were long wooden aeroplane propellers in all stages of construction – some crude, shapeless forms of wood, others half-turned to the requisite curve to thrust upon the air, others again quite finished and being coated with a dull, lead-coloured paint. Each propeller is built up from three sections of wood, which are glued and pressed together; each section of wood is critically examined. Even with this care propellers crack and break under the enormous strain.

  “If I am very lucky,” said Mr Short, “I get a 60 per cent efficiency with an aeroplane propeller. [The Wright brothers had already exceeded this by a substantial amount, achieving 66 per cent efficiency with the propellers of their first Flyer of 1903, and attaining an extraordinary 81.5 per cent with the propellers of the Flyer III of 1905.] What we are straining every nerve to do now is to make the aeroplane propeller as efficient in the air as the marine propeller is in the water. With propellers doing more efficient work, we can give the over-driven engine a respite, with the result that they will run longer without breakdowns. And, apart from propeller efficiency, aviation engines are improving to an extent that is astounding when one remembers what is asked of them.”