Dowty name was respected round the globe
PERSHORE-BORN George Dowty, who was knighted by the Queen this week in 1956, founded an aviation engineering company based in Gloucestershire that came to be respected throughout the world.
While still employed as a draughtsman by Gloster Aircraft Company (GAC) at its Sunningend Works in Cheltenham, Dowty formed a company called Aircraft Components.
In truth it was a company in name only, because Aircraft Components had no premises, no staff and no orders.
Its only asset was Dowty’s design for a revolutionary new kind of landing gear, in which the wheels were internally sprung.
It was 1931, the market for aircraft was stagnant and the world was on the threshold of economic depression.
Despite these unpromising circumstances, Dowty received an order from the inventor of the autogiro, the splendidly named Juan de la Cierra yu Cordoniu, for a consignment of shock absorber legs.
The order was completed by George Dowty, working in his spare time, plus two of his friends, one who had a foot operated lathe in the basement of his home, the other who worked from the garden shed of his home in Gloucester Road, Cheltenham.
Flushed with this initial success, Aircraft Components next received an
order for half a dozen of Dowty’s patented internally sprung wheels by the Japanese aeroplane maker Kawasaki.
The order had to be completed in 11 weeks, which prompted Dowty to take the plunge, give up his job at GAC and find premises for his firm.
The first address was a lock-up workshop in Lansdown Terrace Lane, which was home to Aircraft Components’ sole machine tool, a hand-operated pillar drill.
Dowty sub-contracted the Kawasaki job all over Cheltenham and the wheels were dispatched ahead of schedule.
Kawasaki was so impressed it bought the rights to manufacture in Japan for £1,000 and George Dowty now had the capital to expand.
Moving to a former monumental mason’s yard in Grosvenor Place South, orders for shock absorber struts, tail wheels and undercarriages were soon being placed by virtually all British aircraft-makers and a thriving export business was founded supplying customers in Italy, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Siam (as Thailand was then called).
In 1935, the company moved again, this time to Arle Court, bought with eight cottages and 100 acres for £6,000.
The Second World War increased demand for the products of Dowty Equipment Ltd, as the company was re-named in 1940.
Between 1939 and 1945, Dowty made 87,000 sets of landing gear for British and Allied aircraft.
Dowty opened its first Ashchurch factory in 1942.
This began a close association with the town which continued until management buyouts in the late 1980s heralded the break-up of the Dowty Group.
The company had three factories in Ashchurch. Dowty Mining Equipment made the hydraulic pit props that were found in mines all over the world.
Dowty Hydraulic Units produced hydraulic systems that were used in railway buffers, aviation components and numerous other applications, including the delightfully titled Whitlock Dinkum Digger, which was a scoop fitted to the back of a tractor.
Dowty Seals at Ashchurch made rubber washers of all sizes, some so small they were barely visible to the naked eye, others so large they had to be individually transported on a low loader.
In 1956, Dowty Electronics, later Dowty Nucleonics, opened a factory in a former malthouse, which stood somewhere near the former Cascades leisure centre in Tewkesbury.
A company brochure of the time tells us: “The thousands of units produced weekly at the Tewkesbury electrical factory meet the demands for the remote control, actuation and signalling of mechanical movement.
“They include electrical switches incorporating safety devices, compact magnetic indicators for control panels and units for remote control of hydraulic systems and electric motors.”
Over the years Dowty diversified into many markets. Not all these ventures were successful.
In the 1960s, the rights were acquired to build a fibreglass,
water jet-powered boat, designed by New Zealander Fred Cooper, which was made in Staverton (and Canada) and marketed as the Dowty Turbocraft.
As it had no propeller, the boat could only be used in very shallow water. Dowty thought this gave it potential for military applications and leisure use.
The new craft made its debut at the London Boat Show and among other high-profile celebrity customers was Max Bygraves.
Speed ace Donald Campbell was appointed a director of the company, though he had little to do with the dayto-day business.
His role was to promote the Dowty Turbocraft and he demonstrated its potential at a number of public shows, including one at South Cerney.
Campbell used a Turbocraft as the tender for Bluebird in his world water speed record attempts.
‘Karen,’ the 1962-built Dowty Turbocraft MKIII that went with Bluebird 11 to Coniston Water where Campbell was killed in 1967, was sold to a collector in Harrogate in 2001.
Some of Dowty’s lesserknown products made over the years included spectacles for chickens, Arlex transparent plastic braces, sock suspenders, metal suitcases and moulded plastic boot studs.
The latter were tested by Gloucester Rugby Club’s first XV and became the model for the British Standard specification for boot studs.