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From Lysander to Lightning

Teddy Petter, Aircraft Designer

The History Press

FOUR GENERATIONS OF PETTER ENGINEERS, 1840–1935

William Edward Willoughby (Teddy) Petter seems to have inherited his flair for engineering design, and spotting an opportunity, from several previous generations of his family, all from the West Country. In the 1840s John Petter (Teddy's great-grandfather), an ironmonger at Barnstaple, had built up a considerable fortune, enough to buy for his son James Beazley Petter a business, Iron Mongers of Yeovil. James Petter (Teddy's grandfather) was clearly a competent and energetic businessman, and was soon able to buy outright the Yeovil Foundry and Engineering Works. He invented a high-quality open-fire grate called the Nautilus in several versions 'for the study, the dining room and the boudoir'. His works employed some forty men making castings and repairing agricultural machinery. The Nautilus grates were to become famous after being selected by Queen Victoria for installation in the fireplaces of Balmoral Castle and Osborne House in the Isle of Wight. His business did not make James a wealthy man, mostly because he had fifteen children to support, a large family even for the Victorian era. The third and fourth of these children were the twins Percival Waddams and Ernest Willoughby, the latter of whom was Teddy Petter's father.

We have a clear account of Percival's life written by himself, and it is obvious that this large family was brought up with strict Christian beliefs. His daughter has said that Percival's faith enabled him to accept the early death of his two sons. At the age of only 20 Percival took over as manager of the engineering works in 1893. He had inherited the inventive streak and, together with B.J. Jacobs, the foreman of the foundry, he designed and built in 1894 'the Yeovil Engine', a high-speed steam engine. More importantly, a year later he designed and built a small 2.5hp oil engine for agricultural use. It was immediately successful and the business expanded so swiftly that by 1904 over a thousand engines had been sold, ranging from 1hp to 30hp in size.

Teddy's father, Ernest, seemed to think that his own talents were in enterprise and business, rather than sharing his brother's engineering skills. He worked hard at becoming part of the establishment, and spent more time in London than Yeovil. In fact by 1924 he had stood for Parliament twice (unsuccessfully) and had become chairman of the British Engineers Association. He was given the task of organising the engineering section of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, for which the king conferred upon him a knighthood in 1925.

By 1901 the business was growing so rapidly that James Petter could not cope and eventually had a nervous breakdown. Ernest consequently joined his brother and together they bought the business off their father. With much effort they succeeded in raising £3,850 from friends and investors. They made Jacobs the chief engineer, a position he held until his death in 1936. By 1908 the sale of their engines had increased, with a very large number of orders from Russia, where they preferred a two-stroke engine to the older four-stroke versions. In 1911 the company was awarded the grand prix at the Milan International Exhibition for their machines, which now ranged from 70 to 200hp By now the Nautilus works employed 500 people and some 1,500 engines were produced annually. A new foundry was needed and built, completed in 1913, at which point it was one of the largest in Britain. Harald Penrose (who became their first test pilot) later recalled that Percival Petter, his wife and two daughters were present when the first turfs for the new foundry were cut at a site west of Yeovil. Mrs Petter consequently chose the name 'Westland' for the proposed factory and planned garden village.

In 1915 Lloyd George made a speech in Parliament in which he frankly exposed the inadequacy and unsuitability of the munitions available for continuing the war. A board meeting of Petters Ltd passed a resolution placing at the disposal of the government the whole of the new factory to make anything the government might call for. The War Office did not respond immediately, but the Admiralty asked for a conference, so Ernest and Percival went to London to meet five gentlemen, three of whom were Lords of the Admiralty, who stated that the great need of the Navy was for seaplanes, and they asked whether Westland were willing to make them.

The brothers explained that their 'experience and the factory were not exactly in line with these requirements but we were willing to attempt anything which would help the country'. The sea lords replied, 'Good. You are the fellows we want: we will send you the drawings and give you all the help we can. Get on with it.' Percy recalled that they sent representatives to Short Brothers at Rochester, Kent, to find out what was expected. 'I must confess that my heart nearly failed me when I saw the nature of the project.' However, he then remembered a Robert Arthur Bruce, whom he had interviewed a year earlier, and who was then manager of the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company at Bristol. He was now the resident Admiralty inspector to the Sopwith Aviation Company at Kingston-upon-Thames. The Admiralty agreed to release him to knock the new factory into shape and realise the output of this manufacturing centre at Yeovil. The work considered for this new project needed a separate title from that of the established oil engine manufacturing company. Hence, although wholly owned by Petters Ltd, it would be operated as a self-supporting Westland Aircraft works, and Ernest Petter would be chairman. The split between the brothers was now official. Percival, the engineer, would look after the Petter engines and Ernest, the businessman, would guide Westland Aircraft Ltd.

One of the very first acts of this company was to recruit a young man named Arthur Davenport, who was appointed as chief draughtsman, and charged with a stay at Short Brothers. There he made necessary production drawings of the Short 184 seaplanes, for which an order for twelve had been placed. The fourth aircraft to be built at Yeovil saw action during the Battle of Jutland, operating from the seaplane carrier Engadine. It successfully reported by radio the movements of German fleet and consequently gave much confidence to the workforce at Yeovil that they were capable of building aircraft as good as those from any other source. Robert Bruce had proved to be a giant in capability, creating a large significant aircraft works from the small shops he had inherited. During the war he was instrumental in seeing over 1,000 biplanes built at Yeovil. They included sub-contracts for Sopwith landplanes, de Havilland DH4 Bombers and the DH9 two-seater bomber. For his wartime work Bruce was awarded the OBE.

After the war the aircraft manufacturers knew there would be no market for military aircraft, but assumed that civil aircraft would no longer be the toys of the wealthy sportsman. However, the public was not in the least air-minded and over a decade would pass before a market emerged, in spite of the Department of Civil Aviation funding competitions for small and large aircraft and seaplanes. Westland had no crystal ball, so in 1922, when the Air Council announced a light aircraft competition, Robert Bruce submitted a biplane and Arthur Davenport a monoplane. Both prototypes were built and flew in 1924. Thirty of the (Widgeon) monoplanes were eventually built but production ceased in 1929.

The depression years were a lean time for speculation but Westland kept going by re-engineering the DH9 biplane with a new fuselage and a Bristol Jupiter radial engine. This aircraft, named the Wapiti, was a commercial success and eventually more than 500 were built and used by the RAF in the north-west frontier of India and in the deserts of Iraq. The company then proceeded with a private venture, which started life as a Wapiti mark V, with a supercharged Bristol Pegasus engine. It became the first aircraft to fly over the peak of Mount Everest in April 1933. This conversion received several contracts with the Air Ministry and more than 170 were built by 1936. However, in 1934 a sea change rocked the company, which had hitherto enjoyed a period of stability with Robert Bruce as managing director and Arthur Davenport as chief designer. This change was forced upon the company by the chairman, Sir Ernest Petter.

Ernest Petter was a strong-willed, domineering father who had ambitions for his bright son, Teddy. However, Teddy saw more of his mother than of his father, since Ernest spent so much time in London, and from her he inherited a strong religious conviction and a set of firm ethical principles, which played a major part in his upbringing. He was reticent and scholarly, and looked it. His appearance was to influence his relationships throughout his business and family life. He might have looked a scholar and introvert, but he turned out to be supremely confident in his own abilities, almost arrogant, and was to have many conflicts with government officials and captains of industry, who might have thought he was a pushover.

Teddy was sent away to prep school until he was 12, when his father decided he should go to Marlborough public school. According to Teddy's brother Gordon, his father probably picked this prestigious public school as a reaction to his own lack of higher education, and to ensure that his eldest son had the best possible preparation for taking over the family business. Ernest also wanted Teddy to become proficient in such sports as rugby and cricket. Teddy's first house master was a double blue and expected all of his pupils to demonstrate a similar prowess. Although Teddy proved to be an outstanding scholar, he did not enjoy any of the sports, having neither the requisite physique nor inclination. He is said to have preferred to spend time on intellectual pursuits, and was especially interested in the great philosophers Kant and Nietsche. For relaxation he read motor car magazines and took solitary walks in the Wiltshire countryside. His time at Marlborough did much to develop his aloof and withdrawn attitude as a defence against the many snubs he must have endured by not being one of the sporting set.

He left school for Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge, where he read engineering. In the final year of the Mechanical Tripos he was awarded a first-class honours and a gold medal in aerodynamics. He led a reclusive life at college, but had one friend, John McCowan, who had rooms on the same staircase. They shared a passion for motor cars and acquired an old air-cooled sports car, in which they travelled to the McCowan's farm in Yorkshire. It was at this farm that Teddy met an attractive French girl, Claude Marguerite Juliette Munier, the daughter of a Swiss official at the League of Nations in Geneva. She was to become his beloved wife, although his engagement was not welcomed by his parents, who were prejudiced against 'foreigners' and compared her unfavourably with the daughter from a well-heeled English family with whom his brother Gordon was seeking an engagement at the time. Gordon is on record as attributing his brother's puritan strain to their mother and her Huguenot ancestors.

On graduating in 1929 Teddy agreed to his father's suggestion that he join Westland as a 'graduate apprentice'. He then served the statutory two years moving from workshop to workshop, and is believed to have insisted on no special favours as the chairman's son. The chief test pilot, Lois Paget, said 'I can't stand that priggish young man.' In fact in later years Teddy was to say: 'I looked on this as sheer drudgery at the time, but knew afterwards that without workshop knowledge I would never have become a designer.' In the spring of 1932, Sir Ernest appointed Teddy, at the age of 23, as personal assistant to the managing director, Robert Bruce, who perhaps understandably did not welcome this appointment and ignored his presence in his office. Teddy consequently spent much of his time with John McCowan modifying an Austin 7 to win several sporting trophies. Despite this enthusiasm for sports cars, he never wished to learn to fly. The Westland chief test pilot, Harald Penrose, tried to get him interested but reported 'his sole attempt at piloting revealed a lack of the required sensitivity coupled with hopeless judgement of speed and distance, so his efforts at approaching for a landing were abysmal'.

Whilst serving his time as personal assistant, Teddy set the date for his marriage to Claude: August 1933 in her home town, near Geneva. John McCowan was best man, and Sir Ernest and Lady Petter attended somewhat grudgingly. Teddy's two daughters, Camile and Françoise, were born whilst he was serving out his assistantship with Bruce, whose retirement was due in late 1934.

It seems that Bruce had an inkling that Sir Ernest would appoint Teddy as his successor, so in May 1934 he announced his resignation, to take effect within a month, whereupon Ernest announced that Teddy had been co-opted to the board and would be in charge of all design activities. Ernest later entitled Teddy to assume the title of technical director. This looked like a deliberate snub to the chief designer, Arthur Davenport, and Bruce's son-in-law, Stuart Keep. Bruce insisted that Keep, at least, should also be appointed to the board, and when this was refused tendered his resignation to take effect immediately. Teddy became technical director at the age of 26, with the more experienced Davenport (aged 43) reporting to him, whilst Keep was made works manager. For several years the Air Ministry left Westland off their list of potential bidders for military aircraft because Petter was not considered a sufficiently experienced or dependable designer.

In fact Teddy had learned a great deal from Bruce in three years, especially his means of keeping tight control on design development by spending time at the boards of all of his draughtsmen and at the desks of his aerodynamicists and stressmen. Petter was not alone in this practice apparently as others such as Sydney Camm at Hawker and R.J. Mitchell at Supermarine operated similarly. Petter adopted this practice throughout his career and consequently was never hit by unexpected surprises. He was able to make informed decisions on who deserved promotion and who did not. One of his first important decisions was to scrap the Pterodactyl, a grotesque aircraft, which was essentially a flying sweptback wing and needed no tailplane or fin.

This was not a good time to expect profitable contracts for military aircraft. Sir Ernest gave a lecture to the Royal Aeronautical Society in Yeovil in which he emphasised the need to remove barriers leading to delays and heavy costs in the development of new aircraft. He asked for encouragement similar to that enjoyed by manufacturers on the Continent and elsewhere. Teddy was not, apparently, helped by his aloof attitude towards the Air Ministry officials, who found him supercilious and overbearing. Consequently, as no military aircraft contract looked to be forthcoming, Petter persuaded his father to put up company capital to pursue a private venture, a high-wing three-engined six-seater to compete with the De Havilland Dragon/Rapide.

Unfortunately Ray Chadwick at Avros had already proceeded with such a design and had interested Imperial Airways and the Air Ministry. So, in his first year as technical director, Petter tried his hand at a wide range of aircraft designs, all without success. However, the Widgeon, designed by Davenport ten years earlier as a high-wing strutted monoplane, was going through several development cycles and it allowed Petter to start his career as a designer. In particular his new design, called the P7 (P for Petter?), exploited an adventurous Handley Page device for high lift, namely a wing leading edge slat which automatically deployed as the wing incidence was increased and the leading edge pressure intensified (see Appendix 1). The movement of these slats was also geared to the trailing edge flaps.

Westlands showed that this system was highly effective and mechanically reliable. This established Petter's reputation as a successful designer. In 1935 the army co-operation squadrons were looking for a replacement for their Hawker Audax, and the Air Ministry included Westlands on its list of bidders for a military aircraft designed to have a very low stalling speed. Petter's response was the P8, later to be named the Lysander. Hawkers had submitted their own replacement design and were awarded a contract for 178 Hectors, which was passed on to Westland as a subcontractor: a blessing for Westland and Petter in particular. Westland were now building the Hector and the Lysander. (It is tempting to speculate whether the name Lysander, to join Hector, was the choice of the scholar Teddy Petter.) The Lysander's time was still to come, and it would eventually replace the Hawker aircraft in the RAF squadrons.

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Excerpted from From Lysander to Lightning by Glyn Davies. Copyright © 2014 Glyn Davies. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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