86 http://www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JULY 2018DEVELOPMENT FAIREY ROTODYNE
I
t was hailed as the world’s
fi rst true vertical take-off
and landing airliner, a
machine so advanced it
was probably fi ve years ahead
of any comparable aircraft
under development anywhere
in the world. But although the
Fairey Rotodyne was the most
innovative British airliner since
the de Havilland Comet and
had the potential to
revolutionise short-haul air
travel, the sole prototype
ended up on the scrapheap
— literally — after the
government got cold feet and
withdrew funding.
At fi rst the name ‘Rotodyne’
was a generic one which the
Fairey Aviation Company
applied to a new kind of
helicopter it claimed to have
invented. In January 1949 the
company sent the Ministry of
Supply a brochure outlining its
ideas for an aircraft, “which we
have termed a ‘Rotodyne’.”
Fairey explained, “It is not a
helicopter though it has all the
characteristics of a helicopter.”
In a covering letter, James
Bennett, head of Fairey’s
rotorcraft division, said the
company had evolved what it
considered to be, “a
satisfactory confi guration for a
heavy-duty single-rotor
rotorcraft”. Bennett added, “Itis thought that a rotorcraft of
the size proposed, with twin
turbine engines, will fulfi l the
growing demand for a
rotary-wing air transport.”
The idea of aircraft operating
between city centres to
provide previously undreamed-
of levels of mobility had been
around since the 1930s. The
invention of the helicopter
advanced it. After the Second
World War the availability of
reliable and practical rotorcraft
suggested it was just a matter
of time before city-centre
heliports would be available to
support the creation of a
network of air services linking
towns and cities in the UK and
northern Europe.
In 1951 British European
Airways inaugurated the
world’s fi rst regular passenger
helicopter services, between
Cardiff and Liverpool and later,
between Birmingham and
London. It used Westland-built
Sikorsky S-51s. The airline
wanted to build on this
experience using something
bigger and more commercially
viable, and this led it to issue a
specifi cation for a 30-40-seat
‘BEALine Bus’.The airline’s visionary chief
executive, Peter Masefi eld,
predicted that a machine able
to carry 48 passengers over
250-mile (400km) sectors and
cruising at 160mph (256km/h)
could replace fi xed-wing
aircraft on all but the longest
domestic trunk routes.
Masefi eld’s vision, revealed in a
lecture to the Helicopter
Association of Great Britain,
was of London in the late
1960s being served by just two
fi xed-wing airports. Heathrow
and Gatwick, he believed,
could provide all the necessary
capacity. The crucial point was
that commercial helicopters
had to be allowed to operate
into city centres. If operations
were banned on grounds of
excessive noise, Masefi eld
warned, “most of the case for
the transport helicopter falls to
the ground”. It was to be a
prophetic remark.
In March 1951 the British
public received its fi rst
intimation of what the
Manchester Guardian called,
“the large amount of secretwork that is being devoted by
British designers to new kinds
of helicopter”. This was
heralded in the report of an
interdepartmental committee
led by the Ministry of Civil
Aviation. Also revealed was the
committee’s disappointment
with the helicopters produced
so far by British companies.
Most were considered too
small to be viable public
transport vehicles and only one
had been certifi cated for
carrying fare-paying
passengers.
But the newspaper also
reported details of a proposal
which represented “a
departure from all previous
types of moving wing
machines”. At this stage of its
evolution it was envisaged as
carrying 23 passengers and
cruising at 135mph (216km/h).
According to the Manchester
Guardian, “The company has
been authorised to proceed
with the preliminary
development work involved in
constructing this entirely novel
machine.”
This “novel machine” was
the Rotodyne. The reasoning
behind its planned operating
model was that, although it
would be slower than aFairey’s vision of the future
The Helicopter
Association Garden
Party at Ripley,
Surrey, on 3 June
1958 witnessed the
Rotodyne’s public
debut. AEROPLANE85-100_AM_Database_July18_cc C.indd 86 04/06/2018 16:57