A SHORT HISTORY OF SAUNDERS-ROE
BY J. W. R. TAYLOR

With the compliments of theGroup Public Relations Department,
Westland Aircraft Limited,
Yeovil, Somerset.
(circa 1960)

Transcribed for https://www.bartiesworld.co.uk
1 October 2020
18 July 2022
plus web links for further information.

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It is no coincidence that the name of Saunders-Roe will be associated forever with highperformance water-based aircraft, for the company had its beginnings beside the river at Streatleyon-Thames, in the year 1830. The founder’s name was Moses Saunders, and as a start he helped toconstruct weirs and locks on the Thames, to make it safer for boating and to enable goods to be
carried by barge as far as Oxford, It was only a short step from such work to boat-building, and his
small family business eventually became renowned for its high speed steam launches.
New premises were acquired as the demand for boats increased, and by the 1890’s the company
was established in the Springfield Works at Goring. It was at this stage that Samuel Saunders,
grandson of the founder, came on the scene.
Sam Saunders was typical of the gifted and venturesome men of that era whose names areperpetuated by great modern industrial companies. When efficient petrol engines became available,
he was one of the first to install them in marine craft. Realising that it would be impossible to takefull advantage of the power and speed offered by these engines unless hulls could be made stronger
without large increases in structure weight, he began developing new techniques in boat-building.
Laminated plywood skins had already been used experimentally, but the glues then obtainable
did not hold well when immersed in water. As an alternative Saunders tried sewing the laminatedskins together with annealed brass or copper wire and soon found that this was the answer to his
problem of combining strength with lightness. Hand- sewing was slow, so he and his daughter next
adapted large sewing machines so that several thicknesses of plywood could be sewn together
quickly and easily.
Confident that there was a big future for the new technique, he formed the “Saunders’ Patent
Launch Building Syndicate”, and before long boats with sewn plywood hulls were leaving theSpringfield Works in considerable numbers. One, built in 1895, was the launch Consuta and the
durability of the sewn method of construction - also known as ‘Consuta’ - is shown by the fact that
this boat was still being used 55 years later to carry the B.B.C. television camera team which
followed the Oxford and Cambridge crews in the University boat race.
It was clear that ‘Consuta’ had applications far beyond the building of small launches. So, as
Cowes in the Isle of Wight was fast establishing itself as the centre of British yachting at the turn ofthe century, Saunders opened a branch works there in 1901. Five years later his agreement with theSyndicate expired and, feeling that his inventive powers were restricted by the partnership, he did
not renew it but started out on his own in a derelict works by the river Medina. He soon put theplace in order and renamed it Columbine Yard. Then, in 1908, he converted his business into a
private limited company under the name of S. E. Saunders Limited, with a capital of £5,000, in which
the Wolseley Tool and Motor Car Company held a small interest. He became Chairman of the newconcern, with his son H. S. Saunders1 as a second Director.
These moves coincided with the opening of a great era in motorboat racing, and Saunders-built
boats, with ‘Consuta’ hulls, soon proved that they could beat anything in their class. Typical were the49ft. Ursula of 1909, which won the Coupe des Nations at Monaco for four years running, and Maple

1

Original text has ‘..his son S. E. Saunders..’ which doesn’t seem to make sense, so probably ‘Hubert Samuel
Saunders’, son of Sam Saunders.

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Leaf IV, a multi-step hydroplane which regained the British International Trophy from America in1912 and defended it successfully in the following year. Nor were the company’s products restricted
to the home market. A number of small fast gunboats were built for Turkeys other boats were
produced to Saunders design in France, Italy and Germany.
ENTERING THE AIRCRAFT BUSINESSAs a sideline to this profitable and growing business, Sam Saunders began to take an interest inaviation, which was still very much an unknown quantity. He received a contract to build two
gondolas to carry the engines of the first naval airship, then being completed at Barrow-in-Furness,
and was soon working also with some of the private pioneers of flying. It was natural enough thatthey should have sought his aid, because a high strength-to-weight ratio was as essential to theaircraft of that period, with their unreliable low-powered engines, as it was to motor-boats. In
addition, it seemed good sense to build water-based aircraft, as flights over open water were lesshazardous than those over land, especially if they ended in a crash, which was by no means unusual.
Sir Hiram Maxim was one of the aircraft designers for whom early experimental work was done;
but the first real success did not come until 1912. In that year Saunders was asked by T.O.M. (nowSir Thomas) Sopwith if he would make the hull for a small two-seat flying-boat which he hoped to
exhibit in the 1913 Aero Show at Olympia, Saunders did so, and the complete 20ft. long hull, madefrom two layers of cedar planking sewn together by the ‘Consuta’ technique, weighed only 180 lb.
On this beautiful hydroplane structure was mounted a simple biplane wing assembly, carrying thetail-booms and a 90 h.p. Austro-Daimler engine.
The completed aircraft was given the name Bat Boat, after a mythical flying machine describedin Rudyard Kipling’s book ‘With the Night Mail’.
This was an uncomplimentary choice for such a graceful little flying-boat, but nobody seemed toworry about mere names in those days and even the Admiralty allowed its first airship to be called,
ambiguously, the Mayfly. The airship didn’t; the Bat Boat, on the other hand, was a success from themoment when it caught the eye of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, at the AeroShow. It was used by the Royal Naval Air Service for some of the first experiments in bomb-dropping,using potatoes as “bombs”; but is remembered best for a less militant exploit.
Mortimer Singer, the American sewing machine millionaire, had offered a series of prizes toencourage Britain’s struggling aircraft builders. One of these prizes, perhaps the most difficult towin, was £500 for the first all-British aeroplane able to make six “out and home” flights between two
points on land and on water, not less than five miles apart, within a period of five hours, carrying apilot and passenger - a degree of versatility never before considered.
It was the kind of challenge that appealed to the pioneers. “Tommy” Sopwith promptly fitted theBat Boat with retractable wheels and replaced its original engine with a 100 h.p. Green to bring it
into the all-British category. Flown by test pilot- Harry Hawker, the little aircraft began its attempt to
win the prize on July 8th, 1915, hopping between a field near the present site of Hamble aerodrome
and a buoy moored in the Solent.
To make his chore worthwhile, the official observer, Lt. Spenser Grey, decided to fly as
passenger. It was as well that he did, because the wheels stolidly refused to drop under their own
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weight when released after each take-off from water, prior to landing ashore. As a result, the“observer” had to stand up, put a leg over the side and kick them down in flight - an effort by nomeans lacking in hazard.
Fortunately, nobody in those days complained about official observers lending a hand, or foot,to competitors. So Hawker, Sopwith and the Bat Boat received their £500, and Saunders could feelproud that his sewn hull had played a major part in the venture.
Inspired, no doubt, by this achievement, Saunders became involved in the construction ofseveral more flying-boats in 1913-14. One, named the Perry-Beadle was exhibited at the 1914 AeroShow. In some respects it resembled the original Curtiss flying-boat 1912, because its two propellers
were driven through lengthy chains by a 60 h.p. E.N.V. engine housed in the bow of its sewn hull.
Unfortunately, the lower wing was set so low that the trailing-edge was submerged when the boat
was at rest on the water. The braking effect of this during taxi-ing, combined with the low power andinefficiency of the engine installation, gave the Perry-Beadle little chance of success. However, its
designer, Perry Beadle, was so impressed by the quality of the hull that when he joined the Whiteand Thompson company of Bognor shortly afterwards he used a ‘Consuta’ sewn monocoquefuselage in the tractor biplane land- plane which he designed for them. In 1915 the Admiraltyordered twelve of these aircraft for the R.N.A.S., whose officers bestowed on them the unflattering
nickname of Bognor Bloater. Their best claim to fame is that they were probably the first aircraft in
the world with a monocoque fuselage to go into production.
An earlier White and Thompson aircraft with a ‘Consuta’ fuselage was the flying-boat built forthe 1914 Daily Mail Circuit of Britain race. Powered by a 120 h.p. Beardmore engine, it was athoroughly workmanlike machine, very like the contemporary Curtiss designs, and might have done
well in the race. Instead, it went into military service, for all sporting events were cancelled on theoutbreak of war in August 1914 and the little flying-boat was taken over by the Admiralty. They musthave liked it, because they ordered at least eight more similar machines, followed throughout thenext four years by later flying-boats from the same company.
By the time the war started, therefore, S. E. Saunders Limited, had achieved outstanding successwith its boats and modest success with the Bat Boat and White and Thompson flying-boats, forwhich it had supplied only the hulls. As it had built several small gunboats and had secured an
important contract for lifeboats from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, it might have been
expected to concentrate on the production of naval craft for the duration of the war. In fact,
although the Admiralty planned initially to use the company’s resources to build coastal motorboats, it was decided eventually that the needs of the country would best be served if its experienceof high-speed hull design was devoted to the production of flying-boats and other aircraft.
For better or worse, S. E. Saunders Limited was in the aviation business to stay, and thechangeover from boat-building to aircraft construction was complete before the end of 1915, except
for the continued production of lifeboats for the R.N.L.I.
AIRCRAFT FOR WAR, 1914-18
The news that aircraft were to claim most of his attention for as long as the fighting lasted could
not have been wholly welcome to Sam Saunders. His reputation and craftsmanship as a boat-builder
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had earned him the first Admiralty order for a motor-boat and a Royal Warrant as launch-builder to
His Majesty the King. Now, his contracts for coastal craft were taken away and given to othercompanies, and he guessed, with justification, that they would not come back when peace returned.
Despite these qualms, he flung himself whole-heartedly into the aircraft production business. He
received his first sub-contract for floats for Short seaplanes within a few days of the declaration ofwar. Unimpressed by their lines, the company set to work to design some better floats and had thesatisfaction of receiving an amended subcontract for these.
Manufacture of complete aircraft began when A. V. Roe and Company awarded Saunders acontract for 50 Avro 504A trainers in June 1915. Almost simultaneously, the Admiralty ordered 30
Short 184 seaplanes at a cost of £81,000. To cope with this work, a large erecting shop had to bebuilt, and this was completed by the time the components for the first batch of seaplanes wereready for assembly.
Follow-on orders led to a total production of 201 Avros and 80 Short 184s; and work began in
1916 on a batch of 24 Norman Thompson (formerly White and Thompson) N.T.2B two-seat singleengined flying-boat trainers.
The company was also given a certain amount of experimental work. In particular, it assisted
Cdr. John Porte in developing the fine “F” Class of twin-engined maritime patrol flying-boats fromthe original Curtiss designs, building prototype hulls. Possibly as a result of this, coupled with thecompany’s unrivalled experience of building high-speed hulls, the Air Board proposed in 1917 that
Saunders should build complete F.2A flying-boats. This required a further major expansion of thecompany’s works, because the F.2A was a large aircraft for that period with a span of 95ft. 7in. andloaded weight of 11,000 lb. As a result the works soon extended on both sides of the river Medina,with smaller workshops scattered throughout the district and a rudimentary airfield at Medina Mills,
near Cowes, at which the Avros were erected and flown.
One hundred F.2As were constructed, and work was under way on 50 of the later F.5s with‘Consuta’ hulls when the Armistice was signed on November 11th, 1918. But such figures give only
an incomplete picture of the company’s war effort, because it also built large numbers of spare hulls,
seaplane floats and general spares. Over 10,000 sq.ft. of aircraft ‘Consuta’ plywood was produced,
the major part of it for the big flying-boats after their original hulls had proved unable to stand up to
the wear and tear of active service.
Like every company in the aircraft industry, S. E. Saunders Limited was hard hit by thecancellation of contracts for military aircraft after the Armistice. Its works was filled with partlycompleted “F” boats for which it held contracts worth over £650,000, and it seemed highly unlikelythat anybody would ever want these. However, the future was not so black as it appeared. The Air
Ministry let the contract for F.2As run for several more months and later decided to take a numberof F.5s out of store and put them into service as the R.A.F.’s standard flying-boat. Saunders received
frequent contracts for reconditioning these aircraft and for spares to keep them serviceable. Other
contracts for spares for D.H.9A day-bombers came in at about the same time, tiding the company
over the difficult post-war years when so many other wartime aircraft factories had to close or
switch to different work.

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Practically all the profits earned by the company during the war had been ploughed into land,buildings and plant for aircraft production. In addition, the demand for ‘Corsuta’ had justified theerection and equipping of a £53,000 factory of over 85,000 sq.ft., known as the Osborne Plywood
Works, in which to manufacture it.
Useful as they were, the Air Ministry contracts were not sufficient to keep the company going,
and Sam Saunders decided to make an all-out effort to get back into the market for highperformance motor-boats, with considerable success. Maple Leaf V, a 40-ft. boat powered by four
400 hp. Sunbeam engines, set up a sea speed record of 66.2 m.p.h. over one mile in 1920. Ardenrun
I, a 20-ft. boat with a 70 h.p. Wolseley engine, proved the fastest 3-litre class racer of the 1923
season, and her smaller sister, the 17-ft. Ardenrun II won the 100-km. race in the 1½ -litre class at
Cannes in the following year.
Famous sporting owners began to come once more to the company for their boats; Betty
Carstairs won the Duke of York’s Trophy on the Thames in the Saunders built 1 litre hydroplane andlater bought two more small racing boats and a 71ft. 6in. multi-step hydroplane of 50 registeredtons. Hubert Scott-Paine and Gordon Selfridge were among customers for the Puma class express
launch which had a top speed of 45 m.p.h. and could be used also for racing.
Lessons learned with such boats were applied to the design of working craft like the 40-ft.
torpedo recovery launch Lulworth, built in 1925 for the Whitehead Torpedo Company, and thelifeboats which continued to offer valuable regular work.
THE FIRST SAUNDERS-DESIGNED AIRCRAFTThis was all very good; but S. E. Saunders Limited was too deeply involved in the aviation
business to revert to boat-building entirely. Nor did there seem to be any point in simply subcontracting other peoples’ aeroplanes and as early as 1917 the company had begun to produce
machines of its own design.
The first was a perfectly conventional two-seat biplane designated the T.1., after its designer H.
H. Thomas. As might be expected, the fuselage was a ‘Consuta’ plywood monocoque, without metal
fittings or internal bracing wires. Full dual controls were fitted to the prototype, but drawings showthat it was intended to be a combat aircraft with a fixed gun for the pilot and movable gun for theobserver in the rear cockpit.
If the design looks a little ordinary this is understandable, for the Saunders design teamconsisted at the time of five men, two boys and a tracer, who worked in a tiny hut known as the“sardine tin” in the former shipyard.
The T.1 was intended to be powered by a 200 h.p. Hispano-Suiza engine, but all engines of thistype were needed for S.E. 5A fighter production and Saunders had to fit instead a 150 h.p. Sunbeam
Nubian. The prototype performed quite well with this. In fact there is a somewhat apocryphal story
that it was taken up one day by an R.F.C. officer from Hamble who had never before piloted anaeroplane.
It seems that his girl friend in the A.I.D. Department had been reprimanded for somemisdemeanour, which so annoyed him that he decided to “let off steam” in the air. After holding thePage 6 of 21

T.1 on the ground for an interminable take-off run, he is said to have shot up almost vertically andperformed every manoeuvre then known before landing and retiring for two months in hospital with
nervous collapse.
When H. H. Thomas died in the 1919 ‘flu epidemic, further development of the T.1 wasabandoned and the company returned to its old love, the flying-boat. It began by designing andbuilding a “hollo-bottom” hull for an F.5 in an effort to improve the aircraft’s water performance;
but the best opportunity for making real headway seemed to be to produce an aircraft of original
design and enter it for the Air Ministry competitions for civil transport aircraft, which were to beheld at Martlesham Heath in September, 1920.
The result was the Kittiwake amphibian, built almost entirely of ‘Consuta’ at a cost of over
£10,000. It was not really handsome, but incorporated ideas which made it the most advanced
water-based aircraft of its day.
An important innovation was a variable-camber wing, in which the entire leading and trailingedges could be drooped to increase lift and so reduce take-off run and landing speed - a feature
reinvented in recent years for high-speed jet aircraft. It required the use of interplane ailerons, andthe two 200 h.p. A.B.C. Wasp engines were also mounted between the wings.
The hull was a three-storey affair, made up of a boat hull which was attached to thesuperstructure in such a way that it could be replaced easily if damaged. Immediately above this, atthe front, was an enclosed cabin for the crew of two, with a further cabin for six passengers aboveand behind. This arrangement gave the passengers a unique forward field of vision and catered wellfor the terms of the Air Ministry competitions, which were to “promote safety, comfort and security
in civilian aeroplanes”.
Flown by Capt. Norman Macmillan, the Kittiwake showed great promise on its first flight, risingfrom the water quite quickly and handling well in the air. Unfortunately, when alighting on the water
near the shore at Gurnard, it ran on to some submerged obstacle which crushed the bottom of thehull. There was no time in which to repair the damage before the opening date of the competition
and all hope of winning the prize to recoup the cost of building the aircraft disappeared. Despite
this, Saunders restored it to an airworthy condition and many test flights were made subsequently
by F. Watton Merriam. These proved conclusively the effectiveness of the variable-camber gear in
shortening the take-off run despite the comparatively high power loading of 15.5 lb./h.p.
Although the accident to the Kittiwake was a major setback, the Saunders company still had astake in the Air Ministry competitions, for the Vickers Viking which carried off the first prize of£10,000 in the amphibian class had a ‘Consuta’ hull. So had the big Vickers Valentia twin-engined
flying-boat which was intended as a replacement for the F.5, but did not go into production.
POST-WAR FINANCIAL PROBLEMS
The link between Saunders and Vickers was even closer than this implies, for since 1918 thelatter company had held an important interest in S. E. Saunders Limited. Three representatives ofVickers had been appointed to the Board and one of them, Sir Arthur Trevor Dawson, had been
elected Chairman. This brought useful contracts to the works at Cowes at a time when they wereparticularly needed, but by no means solved all the financial problems.
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Like most aircraft manufacturers of the time, Saunders was being financed entirely byaccumulated wartime profits and by sums subsequently payable to the government as excess profits
tax. No new capital had been introduced during the war, and it was clear that a considerable sum
would be needed eventually to put the company firmly on its feet. Vickers’ Finance Committee did
not wish to contribute additional capital. So it was agreed early in 1921 that Sam Saunders should
buy out the Vickers and Wolseley interests, and the company was again a family business.
Orders continued to come in fairly steadily, but were not sufficient to keep the whole works infull employment. A 1925 scheme for reorganisation, in which Swan, Hunter and Sigham Richardson
Limited and William Beardmore Limited would have taken a financial interest in the aircraft side of
the company’s work, fell through; but it was clear that a move of this kind could not be long delayed.
Meanwhile a proper aircraft design department had been set up at Cowes in 1923, and was
rewarded with an Air Ministry contract for a large reconnaissance flying-boat in October of thefollowing year. Known as the A3 Valkyrie, this was a handsome all-wooden biplane, powered bythree 650 h.p. Rolls-Royce Condor engines and with an all-up weight of 26,600 lb. Bunks and living
quarters for the five-man crew were provided inside the spacious hull, and the full comfort of thesewas appreciated when the Valkyrie set out on a 9,400 mile Baltic cruise on August 12th, 1927, aspart of an R.A.F. mixed flight of prototype boats. Its companions on the long journey were aBlackburn Iris, Short Singapore and Supermarine Southampton, with which it had been incompetition for a large Air Ministry contract, and there was little doubt that it could hold its own
with these aircraft so far as performance was concerned. However, the Air Ministry had decided bythen to order only metal-hulled flying-boats for the R.A.F. and no more Valkyries were built.
Another prototype of this era was the A4 Medina, completed in 1926 as a potential commercial
flying-boat for Imperial Airways. This, too, was an all-wood biplane, considerably smaller than the
Valkyrie, with a span of 58ft. and loaded weight of 11,560 lb. Powered by two 450 h.p. Bristol Jupiterengines, it was designed to carry a crew of two and six passengers in a high degree of comfort for
360 miles at 90 m.p.h.
The company was no more successful in getting a production order for the Medina than it had
been in the case of the Kittiwake and Valkyrie. Even more disconcerting was the knowledge that the
day of the wooden-hulled flying-boats was over and with it the major application of ‘Consuta’ toaircraft production.
Saunders knew that the experience gained in nearly 100 years of boat design could be as
valuable in the design of the newly popular stressed skin metal hulls as for the wooden type.
Unfortunately, a switch to metal construction would demand still more capital for new equipment.
There seemed some hopes that the old links with Vickers might be reforged, as this company
planned in 1928 to reconstitute its aircraft activities as a separate subsidiary, which would obviously
be a very powerful unit of the aircraft industry. However, the terms offered were unacceptable toSaunders and the badly needed finance came eventually from an entirely different source.

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ENTER SIR ALLIOTT
In brief, what happened was that S. E. Saunders Limited was taken over in 1928 by Sir Alliott
Verdon Roe, John Lord and H. E. Broadsmith. They subscribed £42,500, to which was soon added
further large sums from the Aircraft Investment Corporation, Whitehall Securities Corporation, Sir
Alliott and his associates and Leslie Irvin, the great parachute pioneer to whom the company had
supplied parachute boxes.
The company was renamed Saunders-Roe Limited, and with this change the last vestige of theold family business disappeared; in its place was an organisation strong enough to weather thefinancial ups and downs of the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. It needed to be strong, for by 1932 theaccumulated losses exceeded issued capital. But three years later the whole financial positionchanged with the start of the government’s massive rearmament programme, and for a quarter of acentury after that there was never to be a time when the company did not hold large official
contracts.
It is interesting here to record something of the abilities of the men who now controlled thecompany. At the top was Sir Alliott Verdon-Roe, greatest of Britain’s early pioneers, newly-knighted
for his first brief flights at Brooklands in 1908, and creator of the famous Avro company which hehad recently sold out to John Siddeley (later Lord Kenilworth). Almost unrivalled as an inventive
genius, modest to the nth degree, and convinced that the entire monetary system must be wrong
that allowed good companies to founder through financial difficulties, he was not a person toconcern himself with the day-to-day world of high finance. So the man who kept the wheels turning
was John Lord, the superb businessman.
Matching Lord’s administrative ability was the design skill of Henry Knowler, Chief Designer since
1923 and one of the outstanding flying-boat engineers of the world. It was his task to show that
Saunders-Roe (usually abbreviated to “Saro”) could build as good aircraft in metal as S. E. Saunders
Limited had built in wood, and he began by designing a metal hull to which were fitted the wings of aSupermarine Southampton. This hull, designated A14, was quite different from those fitted to othercontemporary flying-boats. It was rather slab-sided and the skin was integrally stiffened bycorrugations. Nobody would have claimed that it looked as beautiful as a smoothly-rounded hull, but
it proved highly-efficient on the water and in the air, and became the prototype for the hulls of mostof the Saro water-based aircraft of the next decade.
During those years the company’s aircraft work gradually assumed larger proportions, and boatbuilding diminished; but the boats that did take the water from the slipway at Cowes were stillworld-beaters. In 1929 Lord Wakefield sponsored the boat in which Sir Henry Segrave planned toattack the water speed record. Powered by two 1,750 h.p. Rolls-Royce engines and named MissEngland II, she was launched on June 5th, 1930, only six months after Saro began her construction.
After two test runs on June 15th, Sir Henry attempted a full-throttle run, during which he wasestimated to have reached 120 m.p.h. Unhappily, towards the end of this run the boat struck a
submerged log and both Sir Henry and his mechanic were killed.
The average of 96.2 m.p.h. set up in the first two runs was a new world record. Nor did theaccident mark the end of Miss England’s career, for she was repaired and, raced by Kaye Don, raised

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the speed record first to 103.4 m.p.h. at Buenos Aires and then to 110.2 m.p.h. on Lake Garda in Italyin 1931.
Five years later, Saro built another high-speed boat, named the Bluebird, for Sir Malcolm
Campbell. By then the record stood at 124.8 m.p.h., set up by Miss America X, a boat of 7,000 h.p.
Bluebird’s single Rolls-Royce engine developed only about 2,000 h.p., yet she raised the record firstto 126.3 m.p.h. and then, in 1938, to 130.9 m.p.h.
Going back now to 1928, it is somewhat surprising to discover that the first complete metal
aeroplane of Saro design to fly was not a flying-boat, but a single-seat multi-gun fighter biplane
designated the A10. Powered by a 470 h.p. Rolls-Royce F engine, with a tunnel radiator, it was aclean and businesslike little machine, with a span of 32ft. and all-up weight of only 3,726 lb.
Preceding it in initial design, but not flown until 1930, was an aircraft more in the Saro tradition the A7 three-engined military biplane flying-boat. Designed to an Air Ministry specification andknown usually as the Severn, for obvious reasons, it was smaller all round than the Valkyrie, withthree 485 h.p. Bristol Jupiter engines and a metal hull of the kind first seen on the A14 “metal
Southampton”.
With a span of 88ft. and all-up weight of 22,000 lb., the Severn was intended as a possible
intermediate type between the standard twin and three-engined flying-boats then in service with
the Royal Air Force, and was put through a gruelling official test programme. This concluded with a
12-day cruise from England to Port Sudan and back, during which a total of 8,324 miles was coveredin 90 flying hours. On seven of the days stages of more than 655 miles were flown, and lengthy stops
were made in some places for trials under specific local and tropical conditions.
At Algiers the Severn successfully rode out a gale of intense severity. She then ended the cruisewith a magnificent non-stop last stage of 1,230 miles from Gibraltar to Plymouth in 13 hr. 40 min. To
demonstrate further the ample power reserve and safety factor inherent in the design, the final twohours were flown with one engine shut down, and Saro must have felt that such a flight would be
sufficient to produce at last a production order for one of the company’s own designs. But it was not
to be and the Severn, too, remained but a promising prototype.
FAMILY OF FLYING-BOATS
Although they could not have known it, success was quite near. It followed the decision to
produce a series of small metal flying-boats and amphibians, which broke new ground in that they
were cantilever mono-planes with their engines mounted high above the wing, clear of spray during
take-off and landing.
First to fly in 1929 was the A17 Cutty Sark, a four-seater which began as a flying-boat with two
105 h.p. Cirrus Hermes engines. The prototype had wooden wings and a smooth-skin metal hull, but
subsequent Cutty Sarks had integrally-stiffened skin with external corrugations. Some were flyingboats, other amphibians with semi-retractable wheels on each side of the fuselage under the wing.
What is more, the position of the engines made it possible to fit almost any kind of power plant thecustomer specified, with the result that, although only 12 Cutty Sarks were built, they flew at various
times with 200 h.p. and 215 h.p. Armstrong-Siddeley Genet Major, 98 h.p. Gipsy I and 120 h.p. Gipsy
2 engines, and probably others as well.
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Two Cutty Sarks went to Air Service Training, where they put in some fine work as flying andnavigation trainers for airline crews. Others went as far afield as China, the Royal Singapore Flying
Club and Santo Domingo.
Their success was paralleled by the eight-seat A19 Cloud, which followed in 1930 and was built
on exactly the same lines, but with twice the power. It, too, was produced in both flying-boat andamphibian form, and with a variety of engines. Most usual were the Wright Whirlwind or ArmstrongSiddeley Serval (Double Mongoose), each of 340 h.p., but one Cloud amphibian, sold to Mr. Bata, theCzech shoe manufacturer, had two 380 h.p. Walter Pollux engines and another was flown with 340
h.p. Napier Rapiers.
Altogether 22 Clouds were built. Of these, four went to civilian customers including the Hon. A.
E. Guinness, and one was fitted experimentally with a Monospar wing. The remainder (built under
the designation A29, with Serval engines) were used by the Royal Air Force for the instruction of
flying-boat pilots before they passed on to bigger boats such as the Southampton, and as “flying
classrooms” for navigation training. They were ideal for this work, as the roomy cabin offered plentyof space for chart tables and equipment; added to which the high-wing layout ensured a good viewof the ground or water below. Unlike most water-based service aircraft of its time, the Cloud evenbrought its pilots the comfort of an enclosed cabin.
Third member of the team was the four/six-seat A21 Windhover, which came mid-way between
the Cutty Sark and Cloud in size. Unlike the others, it had three engines and this added complexity
may have scared away prospective customers, for only two Windhovers were built. There must haveseemed to be more at the time, for these two machines flew in both flying-boat and amphibianform, with various engines, including the Gipsy and Serval. What is more, they were supplied with asmall auxiliary wing, which could be fitted above the engines to give improved lift, and were seen
with or without this almost on alternate days, according to the whim of their owners.
While these little flying-boats and amphibians were in production, Saunders-Roe were alsobuilding under sub-contract aircraft designed by other companies. First, and most importantnumerically, was the Blackburn Bluebird IV all-metal two-seat light plane, of which at least 55 wereturned out at Cowes between the end of 1929 and May 1931, leaving the parent company free tocope with its military commitments.
Many of the Bluebirds were used for training, 25 going to National Flying Services at Harworth
alone. Others were flown by great pilots of the 1930’s, but none achieved greater fame than G.ABDS, supplied to the Hon. Mrs. Victor Bruce. With only 40 hours of solo flying in her log book, thisgallant lady set out from Croydon in July 1930 to attempt the first solo flight around the globe - on a
120 h.p. Gipsy II engine. She followed the airline route to Karachi and Rangoon, then carried on to
Shanghai and made a superb 600-mile flight across the Yellow Sea to Seoul in Korea. After flying on
to Tokyo, she made the ocean crossing to Vancouver by ship, then piloted herself across North
America to New York, where she boarded a second ship to Le Havre. When she flew in to Croydon
on February 20th, 1931, almost every airworthy Bluebird in the country was there to meet her.
Simultaneously with this work for Blackburn, Saunders-Roe undertook the detail design andconstruction of a highly-advanced four-seat touring aircraft conceived by Sir Henry Segrave, who had
been a fighter pilot in the 1914-18 war. Known as the Saro-Segrave A22 Meteor, the prototype wasPage 11 of 21

of all-wooden construction and was beautifully-streamlined, with a cantilever low wing into which
the 120 h.p. Gipsy III engines were neatly faired. In a biplane age, it was a revolutionary design, andbore comparison with aircraft produced many years later, except for its fixed undercarriage. Nor did
it just look pleasant, for it was designed to be capable of flying on one engine and to combine amaximum speed of 145 m.p.h. with a low and safe landing speed.
Only the prototype was built by Saunders-Roe, production being taken over by the Blackburn
company, who changed the fuselage from wooden to metal construction. After only three more had
been built, Sir Henry Segrave was killed and, as Blackburn were by then very much involved withmilitary orders, further production of the Meteor was abandoned.
IN THE AIRLINE BUSINESS
Not long after this first venture in the construction of a passenger-carrying landplane, thecompany found itself in the air transport business. The story of how this came about begins in
February 1931, when Spartan Aircraft Limited, manufacturers of the Arrow three-seat light plane,
moved over to Cowes from the Mainland. Before long its Board was strengthened by the addition of
Sir Alliott Verdon-Roe and some of his fellow Saro Directors, and when Spartan designed a threeengined monoplane for economical long-range mail-carrying, the prototype was built by SaundersRoe.
It was of all-wooden construction and had three 120 h.p. Gipsy III engines, which gave it a top
speed of 122 m.p.h. and endurance of six hours at 105 m.p.h. Impressed by its possibilities,
Saunders-Roe re-designed it with a metal fuselage, equipped to carry a crew of two and sevenpassengers in comfort, and named the result the Spartan Cruiser.
Only one Cruiser Mark 1 was built, with 120 h.p. Gipsy III engines, after which the design was
cleaned up and put into production as the Cruise II, with alternative 135 h.p. Gipsy Majors or
120/130 h.p. Hermes IVs. Cruising speed with the Gipsy Majors was 118 m.p.h. and the aircraft could
maintain height on any two of them. Furthermore, it was so economical that the company decided it
would be worthwhile forming an airline to cash in on the money-making capabilities of its latest
product.
As a result, although Cruisers were sold to the Yugoslav airline Aeroput, the Bata company ofCzechoslovakia and customers in Egypt and India, most of the dozen Mk.IIs produced went into
service with Spartan Air Lines. In conjunction with Railway Air Services, this Saro-controlled company
operated scheduled return services between Heston, Bembridge and Cowes two or three times aday, with fine regularity and at incredibly low fares until it became part of the British Airways
combine in 1935. Even tho, the Cruisers continued to be used by British Airways, as far afield as the
Scottish islands and Highlands.
One further version, the Cruiser Mk.Il, appeared with more streamlined fuselage, “trousered”
undercarriage and other refinements but only three of these were built before Spartan Aircraft
ceased operations in the mid-thirties.

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START OF R.A.F. EXPANSION
While all this was happening, Saunders-Roe was getting itself established at last as a designer ofmilitary aircraft. As well as Cloud amphibian trainers for the R.A.F., it had sold some Gipsy Major
powered Cutty Sarks overseas for coastal reconnaissance duties, with a Vickers machine-gun
mounted in the bow cockpit and racks for eight 20 lb. bombs.
Even more important, it had received an Air Ministry contract to build a prototype twin-engined
general-reconnaissance flying-boat to Specification R24/31. First flown in 1934, under the company
designation A27, this aircraft was a sturdy biplane of all-metal construction, with a two-step hull on
the same general lines as that of the Cloud and powered by two 775 h.p. Bristol Pegasus III engines.
It carried a crew of six and was armed with three machine-guns in the bows and amidships, plus
racks for 2,000 lb. of bombs or depth charges.
This time there was no disappointment, for the Air Ministry ordered the A27 into immediate
quantity production as the London. Altogether 48 were delivered between the Summer of 1936 andMay 1938. Of these the first ten were London Mk.I’s, with Pegasus III engines in polygonal cowlings.
Following successful modification of the prototype to specification R3/35, the rest were London
Mk.II’s, with 1,000 h.p. Pegasus I engines in circular cowlings.
First Squadron to receive Londons, as replacements for its Southampton’s, was No. 204 at
Mount Batten; and they eventually went into service also with Nos. 201 and 240 Squadrons at homeand No. 202 in Malta and Gibraltar. They proved extremely popular with their crews, and in 1937
No. 204 Squadron was chosen to make a long-distance cruise across half the globe to represent the
R.A.F. at celebrations to mark the 150th anniversary of the founding of the State of New South
Wales.
Five Londons were specially-modified for the flight, with a large external fuel tank mounted
above their hull, aft of the Cockpit, to increase their range from the normal 1,100 - 1,740 miles to
2,600 miles. They set out in December 1937 and returned five months and 30,000 miles later toreport that the trip had been “without incident”.
THREE SEPARATE COMPANIESTo provide adequate space for assembly of the Londons, Saunders-Roe began its own
programme of expansion and reorganisation in 1935. As a start, it awarded Boulton & Paul Limited acontract to build a new erecting shop at Cowes, with a clear floor area of 150 x 200 ft. and height of
40ft. in the main shed. Under the same massive roof were to be housed the dope and covering
shops, sheet metal department, sewing and metal wing assembly departments, a three-storey officeblock, the Aeronautical Inspection bureau, finished parts and free issue stores, lecture andschoolroom, mould loft, parachute packing room and chief pilot’s office and kit room. A slipway wasprovided “to a design which had in view its future use by flying-boats having a weight of 50 tons”.
Little did the architect know that one day a 140-ton flying-boat would take shape in that erecting
shop by the river, and that its designers would have cause to be grateful that he had planned thebuilding on such a mighty scale.
Other expansion followed rapidly. For a brief period in 1936-37, a workshop at Luton was
managed for the company by the Adamant Engineering Company for the manufacture of flying-boat
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components; but this was not successful and in 1937 the Luton works was superseded by a small
factory established in buildings at Southampton Airport, Eastleigh.
Also in 1937, Saunders Shipyard Limited was formed as an associate company of Saunders-Roe
Limited to handle the company’s boat-building activities, centred in the Cornubia Yard half-a-mile
up-river from the aircraft works. This conformed with the latest ideas on company management, andit was decided that the rapidly-growing plywood business would also develop more satisfactorily as aseparate company. So, early in 1938, Saro Laminated Wood Products Limited came into being at
Folly Works (named after the nearby Folly Inn) where the earlier production of ‘Consuta’ had been
followed by manufacture on a vast scale of everything from flush doors for ocean liners andhospitals to panelling for railway carriages, roofs for trolley buses and cubicles for swimming baths.
New processes like resin-impregnation and compression of plywood to produce “tailor-made”
panels and pre-formed shapes were also developed during the 1930s and with these the wheel
turned full circle, for by 1939 Saro Laminated Wood Products were again producing nearly 40% of allaircraft plywood made in the United Kingdom.
Free to concentrate on aircraft, now that boat-building and plywood were no longer among its
responsibilities, the parent company devoted its efforts to evolving a replacement for the London.
First it submitted a design to meet the requirements of Specification R2/33, which called for a fourengined monoplane flying-boat to replace the large biplanes then in service. It received a contract
for one prototype, at a cost of £68,000, in competition with Short Brothers, and set to work building
the aircraft early in 1936.
Designated A33, the new boat was to be different from anything the company had tackled
before. quite apart from its great size and weight of 41,500 lb., it was to feature a Monospar Wing
and to make use of stub-wing stabilising surfaces instead of the usual wing-floats. Both of these
innovations were given a thorough testing on a modified Cloud before being incorporated in the
prototype and Saunders-Roe had every reason to look forward with confidence to the flight tests of
the A33. Unfortunately, as it was taxing out for take-off on October 25th, 1938, it hit the wake of apassing ship with such violence that the starboard wing suffered a structural failure and twisted outof shape.
All further work on the A33 was dropped and the future again began to look gloomy, with little
prospect of production work after the last London had been delivered. A programme of subcontracting was undertaken, to keep the shops busy so far as possible, and the company decided to
begin the design of a monoplane replacement for the London, as a private venture, to Specification
R1/36.
Somewhat unexpectedly, the Air Ministry announced in December 1936 that it intended toorder between 11 and 21 of the new R1/36 flying-boats “off the drawing board” under the name of
Lerwick, and the contract for these aircraft was signed in July 1937. This was somewhat
embarrassing, as the work had to be delayed while the company cleared up £30,000 worth of subcontracting.
The first Lerwick (Saro Type S36) flew in 1938 and looked rather like a tubby twin-engined
Sunderland. Powered by two 1,375 h.p. Bristol Hercules II engines, it carried a crew of six and 2,000

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lb. of bombs. Defensive armament comprised one machine-gun in a nose-turret, two in a dorsal
turret and four in a tail turret.
All seemed set for another good production run; but the Lerwick failed to live up to its promise.
The Air Ministry allowed the 21 aircraft covered by the original order to be completed, but cancelled
a follow-on order for 31.
Faced by yet another set-back, Saunders-Roe decides to try its hand at producing a very largecommercial flying-boat. The prospects for such a machine seemed excellent, because Britain’s
national airline, Imperial Airways, was using a fleet of 40,500/48,000 lb. Short “C” class flying-boats
exclusively on its Empire routes, with such success that it would almost certainly be in the market fora larger flying-boat to replace the “C” class in due course.
Calculations showed that an all-up weight of about 184,000 lb. would be the limit possible withfour of the most powerful engines then envisaged. So it was decided to accept this weight as thebasis for the aircraft, which was to be fitted with a pressurised cabin, to make possible a cruising
speed of 250 m.p.h. at 25,000ft.
As In the case of the A33, features of the design were tried out on the water and in the air tin, ascaled-down form. This time, however, the research vehicle was not just a modified Cloud, but aperfect one-third scale piloted “model” of the projected aircraft. Designated S37, but known usuallyas the Shrimp this little machine flew for the first time in September 1939. With its neatlystreamlined metal hull and four 95 h.p. Pebjoy Niagara engines, mounted on a cantilever wooden
wing, it looked so like a big transport flying-boat from a distance that it was difficult to appreciatethat it spanned only 50ft. and carried only two persons.
If it had been able to continue its research flying in peace, the whole pattern of world airtransport might have been different today; but the month in which it flew was also the month inwhich Britain again went to war against Germany. During that war long concrete runways forbombers were to be laid down in every corner of the globe, and big landplanes were to be
developed in the United States for service as military transports. Although it was not appreciated formany years, these two developments between them ended forever the reign of the large flying-boat
airliner.
SARO IN WORLD WAR II
When World War II began, on September 3rd, 1939, the only Saro-built aircraft in service with
the Royal Air Force were 28 Londons and two Lerwicks of Coastal Command. Two of the Londons
were actually on patrol over the North Sea at the moment war was declared and the type remainedin use by No. 202 Squadron at Gibraltar until 1941. The first full Lerwick Squadron, No. 209, wasformed at Oban, Scotland, in 1940 and operated these aircraft only until 1941, when it re-equippedwith Catalina’s. Other Lerwicks were used by No. 4 O.T.U. at Invergordon and No. 422 (Canadian)
Squadron for training; but by 1942 the type was declared obsolete. It was as well that the employeesof Saunders-Roe were unaware then that no Saro fixed-wing aeroplane would ever again serve with
the Royal Air Force - or, for that matter, with any other air force or airline.
The major part of the company’s wartime productive effort was devoted to the manufacture ofSupermarine Walrus Mk.II and Sea Otter air/sea rescue amphibians for the R.A.F. The first contract
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for 25 Walruses was dated January 25th, 1940, and specified a purchase price of £10,500 for eachaircraft, including £500 profit. Further contracts for 100 and 210 Walruses followed in July andAugust 1940 respectively, by which time it was clear that the company would lose about £75,000 on
the deal unless the price per aircraft was raised. This led to a repetition of the financial haggling that
had punctuated the London production programme in the mid-30’s and had plagued most othermanufacturers since the R.A.F. expansion programme began. However, it was not allowed to hold up
the work and 453 Walruses were delivered by Saunders-Roe up to mid-January 1944 from the main
factory at Cowes and a dispersal factory at Weybridge, Surrey, both of which were fed withcomponents from Eastleigh. The Walruses were followed by 209 Sea Otters, built between mid-1943
and July 1946, and many pilots owed their lives to these amphibians.
Air/sea rescue sorties often involved flying within sight of the enemy coast and alighting in minefilled waters to pick up a ditched airman from his rubber dinghy. Inevitably it resulted in the loss ofsome Walruses and Sea Otters to enemy fighters; but the achievements of the others made up forthis and Saunders-Roe had good reason to feel satisfied with their wartime task, although theaircraft produced were less glamorous and less publicised than fighters or bombers.
In addition to new production, a total of 435 damaged aircraft were repaired and returned toservice, and 336 American-built Catalina amphibians were equipped with ASV radar and otherdevices to suit them for their role in the war at sea.
Much of this work was done in a new factory which the company built on the shores of the
Menai Straits, near Beaumaris in Anglesey. There, too, was done wind-tunnel testing and design
work on the R14/40 long- range military patrol and reconnaissance flying-boat. Both Short Brothers
and Saunders-Roe submitted designs to meet this specification, only to be told that a prototype
contract would not be awarded unless the two companies worked together on the project. Despite
the obvious disadvantages in this, the terms were accepted and the Ministry of Aircraft Production
then ordered two prototypes.
Saunders-Roe was made responsible for design and manufacture of the component parts of thewings, including the flaps, ailerons, engine mountings and wing-tip floats. The remainder of thework, including assembly and flight testing, was the responsibility of Short Brothers. Both prototypes
were eventually completed and flown, the first being a 120,000 lb. military boat and the second anembryo civil transport version; but there the project rested.
BEGINNING AFRESH
When the war ended in 1945, the future of the company looked no more assured than it had
done in 1919, and the first task was to reorganise on a peacetime basis what had become a widelydispersed collection of factories engaged on an immense variety of work, much of it with little
application to peacetime needs.
As a start, many of the dispersed units were closed and aircraft work was re-grouped in two
main centres, in the Isle of Wight and at Eastleigh.
Beaumaris works was taken over by Saunders Shipyard Limited, whose Cornubia Yard at Cowes
had been destroyed in a bombing raid in May 1942, together with the Solent works on the opposite
bank of the river from the main aircraft factory. To indicate better the widening scope of the
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Shipyard company’s activities, its name was changed first to Saunders Engineering and Shipyard
Limited and then in January 1951, to Saunders-Roe (Anglesey) Limited.
Boat-building continued to form a major part of its work at Beaumaris, and the company soon
established itself as one of the major design and construction units for small naval craft in the
country. One of its earliest post-war contracts was for the first aluminium-alloy motor torpedo boat
for the Royal Navy. Launched early in 1948, this boat (MTB.1602) had three Packard enginesdeveloping a total of 3,750 h.p. and reached a speed of 42 knots on trials.
As a result of experience gained with MTB.1602, Saunders-Roe (Anglesey) was entrusted withthe design of the “Dark” class of fast patrol boats for the Royal Navy, and supplied boats of this typealso to Burma, Finland and Japan. Contracts for inshore minesweepers followed in 1954-55 andother boats launched down the new slipway ranged from 18ft. glass-fibre dinghies for the R.A.F. tothe 72ft. yacht Morag Mhor, the construction of which represented the first large-scale marine
application of the Argon aluminium-alloy welding process in Britain.
Substantial numbers of aluminium airborne lifeboats for airdropping from Coastal Command
Shackleton aircraft were also produced at Beaumaris, together with over 1,500 bus bodies, some of
the world’s largest tanker lorries for fuel and high test peroxide, stabilisers for small ships,
equipment for the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority and control surfaces for high-speed military aircraft.
Similar versatility was displayed by Saro Laminated Wood Products. Faced with a decreased
demand for plywood after the war, it began to concentrate again on flush doors and panelling, andalso entered the new field of plastics. Many buildings were soon fitted with its Sarolite and Saropane
translucent corrugated roofing sheets instead of glass windows, while the demand for Saroy
thermoplastic sheet, for applications such as lining refrigerators, became so great by the beginningof 1960 that six machines were continuously extruding it for home and foreign markets.
As a further diversification of its interests, Saunders-Roe Limited formed in May 1958 a company
named Saro Structures Limited to specialise in designing and building light alloy structures for civilengineering and other commercial applications. This was followed by the formation of Saro-Nuclear
Enterprises, to operate in specialised fields of nuclear engineering, including nuclear irradiation andallied interest.
FASTEST AND BIGGEST AIRCRAFT
So, the little company that started beside the Thames at Streatley grew in 130 years into quite a
giant, with interests ranging over fields of modern technology of which Moses Saunders could never
have dreamed.
Remarkable and advanced as its aluminium welded boats, nuclear equipment end plastics mightbe, they are overshadowed by the post-war achievements of the main aircraft company.
Realising that research is the key to success in modern aviation, Saunders-Roe began to add to
its test and development equipment as soon as the war ended. On the aerodynamics side, it built
new wind and water tunnels. To speed the design of the high-performance water- based aircraft itbelieved would be needed in an age when land airfields are terribly vulnerable, it createdhydrodynamic test facilities second-to-none in the world’s aircraft industry. New hull form for highPage 17 of 21

speed craft and flying-boats have been conceived in the 618ft. long No. 1 towing tank. Fully detailed
dynamic models of almost every important new British aeroplane have been catapulted into anothertank to test the landing characteristics of seaplanes and the ditching qualities of landplanes andhelicopters.
First Saro aircraft to benefit from lessons learned in the new research facilities was the little
SR.A1 of 1947. The versatility of a water-based aircraft was combined for the first time with thepower of jet-propulsion to produce a new kind of fighting aircraft. With two Metrovick Berylturbojets of only 3,750 lb. s.t. each, it could fly at over 500 m.p.h., and was by far the fastest marine
aircraft ever seen up to that time. Its manoeuvrability and handling qualities were shown in a neverto-be-forgotten way at the 1948 S.B.A.C. Flying Display, when test pilot Geoffrey Tyson flew along
the runway inverted, a few feet above the ground.
Only three SR.A1’s were built, and even when the company showed that a supersonic flying-boatfighter was perfectly feasible no further official interest was shown.
From the fastest aircraft of its kind, Saunders-Roe next turned to the biggest. Even before thewar ended, it was clear that the newly invented turboprop could make it possible; a flying-boattransport compared with which the 1939 project of 184,000 lb. and 250 m.p.h. was but a toy. Under
the technical leadership of Sir Arthur Gouge, who had joined the company from Short Brothers in
1943, a completely-new flying-boat was projected, with turboprop power.
This initiative, was rewarded in July 1945, when Saunders-Roe was invited to tender for theconstruction of a very large flying-boat for possible use by B.O.A.C. Six months later B.O.A.C.
informed, the Ministries of Supply and Civil Aviation that they were satisfied an order should beplaced for three such machines, and in May 1946, Saunders-Roe were authorised to begin work on
them. Originally they were to be powered by Rolls-Royce Tweed turboprops, but when developmentof this type of engine was abandoned the Bristol Proteus turboprop was chosen instead, theinstallation comprising ten engines, in four coupled pairs and two single units.
So, by 1947, after consideration of a project of 260,000 lb., the design of what became known as
the Princess flying-boat was finalised as a 140-ton aeroplane with an estimated cruising speed of 385
m.p.h. at 30,000ft., carrying 205 passengers. The basic design was orthodox, but the airframe was
the largest metal structure ever designed for an aeroplane up to that time, and this raised many
problems. Indeed, construction might have been impossible but for the farsightedness of those who
had planned the vast assembly hall at Cowes in 1936. Even this was not big enough to take acomplete Princess, but little remained to be done after the prototype had been towed out on to theslipway, and it made its first flight on August 22nd, 1952.
Like the little SR.A1 before it, this mighty, majestic aircraft stole the show when it cruised over
the airfield at Farnborough during the 1952 S.B.A.C. Display. Here was an aircraft to restore Britain’s
leadership on world air routes - the only airliner of its time which could make possible non-stopflights between New York and London.
Unfortunately, it never got a chance to do so. Early in 1951 B.O.A.C. said that it was fullycommitted to landplane operations and no longer had any requirement for the Princess. It wasannounced immediately that the three aircraft would be completed as long-range military transports
Page 18 of 21

for the R.A.F. Then this was denied, and an official statement said that the second and third
Princesses would be Cocooned and stored until more suitable engines were available to powerthem.
Despite persistent rumours that they would be used by an independent airline company, or
would be modified to flight test America’s first airborne atomic power plant, all three Princesses
were still Cocooned in 1960, the first prototype having joined the others under a plastic skin, toawait engines that will never come.
It was apparent by the mid-1950’s that unless there was major change of heart, the flying-boatwould gradually disappear from the aviation scene. Bitterly disappointed that both the SR.A1 andthe Princess should have been spurned, Saunders-Roe gladly accepted a challenge to try somethingnew.
To cope with high-performance bombers likely to enter service within a few years, the R.A.F.
needed a fighter that would climb tremendously quickly to the bombers’ ceiling and then give chaseat supersonic speed. Only a rocket-engine could give the kind of performance needed, but it would
burn up its propellants far too quickly if used throughout an interception sortie. So Saro decided to
combine it with a powerful lightweight turbojet in a “mixed-power” unit fighter, and to use therocket only for take-off, climb and combat. In charge of the project was Maurice Brennan, who hadtaken over as Chief Designer from Henry Knowler in 1952.
After the announcement in 1956 that de Havilland Holdings Limited had acquired a interest in
the company, it was no surprise to learn that the new fighter designated the SR.53, would have a deHavilland Spectre rocket motor and an Armstrong Siddeley Viper turbojet. The first of the prototypes
flew on May 16th, 1957, and proved tremendously impressive. It was underpowered when using theViper alone; but the production version, designated SR.177 was known to combine its Spectre rocketwith a lightweight and immensely-powerful de Havilland Gyron Junior turbojet, giving a top speed in
the Mach 2 Class.
Once again nobody doubted at first that Saunders-Roe had produced a world-beater. But justbefore it flew the government announced in its now-notorious 1957 White Paper on Defence that
the R.A.F. would get no more piloted interceptors after the English Electric Lightning, which has beenordered for Fighter Command.
There was still hope for the SR.177 as both the Admiralty and the West German Government
were interested in it. But the Germans refused to have it unless the British Government bought italso and so shared the development costs, while the Admiralty could not afford it unless theGermans had it. The result of this vicious circle was the abandonment of the half-completed
prototype of the 177, and when Saro test pilot John Booth was killed in a take-off accident in one of
the two SR.53s, the whole project seemed to die with him. A few more flights were made with theother prototype, but these were merely to log the number of hours under the development
contract.
The concept of a rocket-powered fighter had been overtaken by the rapid development ofguided missiles for attack and defence; but Saunders-Roe was not outpaced by progress. A key itemin Britain’s defence plan at that time was the de Havilland Blue Streak, a mighty ballistic missile with
Page 19 of 21

a performance far superior to that of its foreign counterparts. But Blue Streak would be a practical
weapon only if a technique could be perfected for bringing its nuclear warhead back into theatmosphere over the target without burning up like a dying Sputnik.
Saunders-Roe was given the task of designing and building a single-stage liquid-propellant
research rocket as the vehicle for developing and testing the warhead and other features of Blue
Streak. This rocket received the code-name of Black Knight, and the public learned of its existence on
the last day of the 1958 S.B.A.C. Display when it was announced that its first firing at the Woomera
Rocket Range had been entirely successful. Equal success marked the four subsequent firings, which
took Black Knight to a height of more than 500 miles - a record for a single-stage rocket and Britain’s
most significant space-age achievement to date.
From then on, Saunders-Roe’s aircraft activities were restricted almost entirely to helicopter
development and production. Its Helicopter Division had been formed on January 22nd, 1951, when
the company took over the premises, current design commitments and technical staff of the Cierva
Autogiro Company. Main asset acquired was a tiny two-seat helicopter known as the Skeeter. Whenre-engine with a 200 h.p. Gipsy Major engine and refined in various ways, it became such a finemachine that it was ordered for both air observation post duties with the British Army and training
duties with the R.A.F. Nor was that all, for the West German Government also bought Skeeters for
its army and navy.
Having evolved a good basic design, the company set to work to develop it further. Improved
performance resulted from fitting the new and more powerful 215 h.p. Gipsy Major 215, and an
experimental installation of small Napier blade-tip rocket units demonstrated how the vertical rateof climb could be increased to as much as 1,400 ft./min. With these rockets installed, payload went
up from two to four people, with the extra pair bedded down as casualties on stretchers at each sideof the cabin.
Far more important was that, by utilising many Skeeter components, Saunders-Roe were able todesign, build and fly in a period of only six months the prototype of a bigger five-seat helicopter,with a 425 h.p. Blackburn-Turbomeca Turmo shaft-turbine engine. Known originally as the Saro
P.531, but since named the Wasp, this helicopter has been evaluated by the Royal Navy for antisubmarine duties from frigates at sea, and will almost certainly enter large-scale service with the
Navy and the Army in its production form with a 968 h.p. Blackburn Nimbus shaft-turbine.
With the Skeeter and Wasp, and the revolutionary SR.N1 hovercraft which Saunders-Roe built in
1958-59 for the National Research Development Corporation, the company entered a new world oftransport, almost as far removed from flying-boats as were the flying-boats themselves from Moses
Saunders’ steam launches. With these aircraft, too, the story of Saunders-Roe as an independentcompany came to an end, for in 1960 it was combined with Fairey Aviation Limited and thehelicopter interests of Bristol Aircraft Limited to form a united British helicopter group, under theoverall control of Westland Aircraft Limited. At the same time Saunders-Roe (Anglesey) Limited andSaro Laminated Wood Products Limited were incorporated in the de Havilland group.
Soon even the name of Saunders-Roe may be but a memory, but this is not sad, for the two men
who gave it that name would have realised full well that in the new unity lies strength for evengreater achievement in the years ahead.
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Further information (in order they are mentioned in the main text):
Sopwith Bat Boat - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopwith_Bat_Boat
Mayfly, Airship - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMA_No._1
The Perry-Beadle flying boat - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Beadle_T.1
White and Thompson aircraft 1914 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_and_Thompson_No._3
Avro 504A trainers - https://www.baesystems.com/en/heritage/avro-504-to-avro-504h
Short 184 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Type_184
Norman Thompson N.T.2B - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Thompson_N.T.2B
Seaplane Experimental Station F.2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felixstowe_F.2
Seaplane Experimental Station F.5 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felixstowe_F.5
Airco DH.9a - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airco_DH.9A
Saunders T.1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders_T.1
S.E. 5A fighter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Aircraft_Factory_S.E.5
Felixstowe F.5 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felixstowe_F.5
Saunders Kittiwake amphibian - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders_Kittiwake
Vickers Valentia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_Valentia
Saunders A3 Valkyrie, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders_Valkyrie
Saunders A4 Medina, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders_Medina
Saunders A14 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders_A.14
Maple Leaf IV - http://www.lesliefield.com/boats_teams/maple_leaf_iv.htm
Miss England II, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_England_II
Saunders A10 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders_A.10
Saunders A7 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders_Severn
Saunders-Roe A17 Cutty Sark - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saro_Cutty_Sark
Saunders-Roe A19 Cloud - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saro_Cloud
Saunders-Roe A21 Windhover - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saro_Windhove
Blackburn Bluebird IV - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackburn_Bluebird_IV
Saunders-Roe Saro-Segrave A22 Meteor - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackburn_Segrave
Spartan Cruiser - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartan_Cruiser
Saunders-Roe A27 London - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saro_London
Saunders-Roe A33- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saro_A.33
Saunders-Roe A36 Lerwick - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders-Roe_A.36_Lerwick
Saunders-Roe S37 – the Shrimp - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saro_Shrimp
Saunders-Roe Bluebird powerboat - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Bird_K3
Saunders-Roe Motor Torpedo Boat (MTB.1602) - http://dave-mills.yolasite.com/saunders-roemtb.php
Royal Navy “Dark” class of fast patrol boats - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkclass_patrol_boat
Saunders-Roe Morag Mhor yacht https://www.flickr.com/photos/46611789@N08/5523725986/in/album-72157626133075705/
Saunders-Roe SR.A1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders-Roe_SR.A/1
Saunders-Roe SR.45 Princess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders-Roe_Princess
Saunders-Roe SR.53 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders-Roe_SR.53
Saunders-Roe SR.177 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders-Roe_SR.177
Saunders-Roe Black Knight rocket - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Knight_(rocket)
Cierva Autogiro Company - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cierva_Autogiro_Company
Saunders-Roe Skeeter helicopter - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saunders-Roe_Skeeter
Saunders-Roe P.531/Wasp helicopter - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saro_P.531
Saunders-Roe SR.N1 hovercraft - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR.N1

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