page_title: William Beardmore and Company
section_title: Aviation
hierarchical_section_title: William Beardmore and Company / History / Aviation
caption_attribution_description: A Sopwith Camel 2F1 bi-plane at the Imperial War Museum in London. This version is the navy version, the 2F1 mounts a pair mounted of Lewis .303 machine guns on top of the upper wing, firing above the propeller disc. The aircraft pictured was flown by Flight Sub-Lieutenant Stuart D Culley, from a barge towed by the destroyer HMS Redoubt on 11th August 1918 when he shot down German Zeppelins L.53, the last to fall during the war. See also&#160;: File:SopwithCamelTopsideIWM2006.jpg&#160;: view of cockpit area from above rear File:Lewis Gun Camel.jpg top wing viewed from above right File:Sopwith Camel.jpg from right front above
context_page_description: William Beardmore and Company was a British engineering and shipbuilding conglomerate based in Glasgow and the surrounding Clydeside area. It was active from 1886 to the mid-1930s and at its peak employed about 40,000 people. It was founded and owned by William Beardmore, later Lord Invernairn, after whom the Beardmore Glacier was named.
context_section_description: The company first became involved in aviation in 1913, when it acquired British manufacturing rights for Austro-Daimler aero-engines  and later those for D.F.W. aircraft.
  It later built Sopwith Pup aircraft at Dalmuir under licence. Later, a shipborne version of the Pup, the Beardmore W.B.III, was designed by the company. A hundred of these aircraft were produced and delivered to the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). Beardmore also built 50 of the Nieuport 12 under licence, incorporating many of their own refinements however production was delayed sufficiently that by the time they entered service the aircraft were obsolete and were primarily relegated to training duties or placed into storage and never used.
  The company built and ran the Inchinnan Airship Constructional Station at Inchinnan in Renfrewshire. It produced the airships R27, R32, R34 and R36.
  In 1924, the company acquired a licence for stressed skin construction using the Rohrbach principles. An order for two flying boats using this construction idea was placed with Beardmore. It had the first aircraft built for it by the Rohrbach Metal Aeroplane Company in Copenhagen, building the second itself and they were delivered to the RAF as the Beardmore Inverness. In addition, a large, experimental, all-metal trimotor transport aircraft was designed and built at Dalmuir and delivered to the Royal Air Force as the Beardmore Inflexible. Beardmore produced a line of aircraft engines, including the Cyclone, Meteor, Simoon, Tornado (used in the R101 airship), Typhoon and Whirlwind.
caption: N6812, a preserved, Sopwith Camel, built under licence by Beardmore
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