Geoffrey de Havilland
Sir
Geoffrey Raoul de Havilland (b.
27 July,
1882,
Buckinghamshire - d.
21 May,
1965) was one of
England's aviation pioneers.
After
engineering school, his first interest was in automotive engineering, building cars and motorcycles. He married in 1907 and almost immediately embarked on the career of designing, building and flying aircraft to which he devoted the rest of his life.
His first plane took two years to build and he crashed it during its first very short flight near Litchfield, in Hampshire. A memorial today marks the place. Subsequent designs were more successful.
He joined HM Balloon Factory at Farnborough, which was to become the
Royal Aircraft Factory as it realised the importance of planes and shifted some attention away from balloons.
Employed during
World War I by
Airco, he designed many planes used by the
Royal Flying Corps during that period.
After the war, de Havilland bought
Airco, renaming it the
de Havilland Aircraft Company. One of his roles was as test pilot for the company's aircraft, in all of which he liked to fly.
The company's planes, particularly the
Mosquito played a formidable role in World War II, and de Havilland was knighted in 1944.
He controlled the company until it merged into the
Hawker Siddeley Company after disastrous problems killed passengers aboard its cutting-edge
Comet jet airliner in the mid-1950s.
Two of de Havilland's three sons died as test pilots in de Havilland aircraft. One of these (also named
Geoffrey) carried out the first flights of the Mosquito and
Vampire and was subsequently killed flying the
DH 108 Swallow while diving at or near the speed of sound.
De Havilland was related to the famous actresses
Olivia de Havilland and
Joan Fontaine - his father Charles and their father Walter were half-brothers.
