Founded by the real-life Biggles
COBHAM’S founder is said to have been the inspiration for WE Johns’s novels about fictional fighter-pilot Biggles.
Aviation pioneer Sir Alan Cobham, , from Camberwell, south th London, served in the e Royal Flying Corps in the e First World War. He later r became a test pilot for r plane maker De Havilland - and gained fame in n the 1920s for completing g long-distance routes.
These included a 5,000- mile tour of Europe in 1921 and return flights from London to South Africa and Australia.
On his return from Australia in 1926 he landed his De Havilland DH.50 0 seaplane on the Thames outside the Houses of Parliament in front of a thousands-strong crowd and was knighted for services to aviation in the same year.
In the early-1930s he became known for Cobham’s Flying Circuses – touring events where stunt pilots offered spectators tators the chance to fly in a plane – often for the first time.
But his jaunts abroad had been hampered by the fact that planes in those days couldn’t fly for long periods of time without having to stop and refuel.
In 1934, he founded Air Refuelling Limited – now Cobham – and the company later created a revolutionary plane-to-plane refuelling method. It is still the market leader in this type of product today and the technology is said to have helped Britain win the Falklands War.
Sir Alan died in 1973, aged 79, and in 1994 – the centenary of his birth – the firm was renamed in his honour.