- de Havilland, Sir Geoffrey
- 1882 - 1965
- Geoffrey de Havilland was born on 27 July 1882 at High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, the son of Rev Charles de Havilland and his wife Alice (née Saunders). De Havilland was educated at Nuneaton grammar school, St Edward's School, Oxford, and the Crystal Palace School of Engineering. He served an apprenticeship with Willans & Robinson Ltd, Rugby, and joined Wolseley Tool & Motor Car Co, Birmingham, in 1905 and then worked in the design office of Motor Omnibus Construction Co Ltd, Walthamstow. Borrowing money from family he designed and built his own aeroplanes and aero-engine, establishing a new British altitude record in 1912. His first prototype engine was made by Iris Motor Co, Willesden, in 1910.
In late 1910 de Havilland joined H M Balloon Factory, Farnborough, from 1911 styled the Royal Aircraft Factory, to which he sold his second aeroplane as the FE1, the first aircraft to bear an official Royal Aircraft Factory designation. For the next three years de Havilland designed, or supported the design of, a number of experimental types of aircraft and aero-engines. In early 1914 he was appointed inspector of aircraft in the War Office’s new Aeronautical Inspection Directorate, but left within months to become chief designer at the Aircraft Manufacturing Co, London. At the outbreak of war, he was appointed as a flying officer in the Royal Flying Corps and was briefly stationed in Montrose, Scotland, before being released back to the Aircraft Manufacturing Co. He nominally remained on service until the end of the war, as captain from 1916 and later as flight commander. Whilst at Aircraft Manufacturing Co he designed and flew eight military aircraft of which five types went into large-scale war service and production. He received the Air Force Cross in 1919.
After Aircraft Manufacturing Co was sold and liquidated in 1920, with financial help from George Holt Thomas, founder of Aircraft Manufacturing Co and his former employer, de Havilland founded The de Havilland Aircraft Co focused on civil aviation. In 1925 the company began production of the successful Moth series of light aircraft. Previously de Havilland had matched his aeroplane designs to suitable aero-engines, but in 1926 de Havilland, with consultant F B Halford, designed the company’s own new light four-cylinder aero engine, Gipsy. The Gipsy, which was tried out in the DH71 Tiger Moth racing monoplane, immediately won a world speed record. It subsequently became the engine for the de Havilland Gipsy Moth and many different models of Gipsy engines followed. During the 1930s, The de Havilland Aircraft Co manufactured hundreds of airliners of the Dragon, Express, and Dragon Rapide types and during the Second World War designed the Mosquito and operated government shadow factories. After the war The De Havilland Aircraft Co returned to civil aviation but de Havilland himself was not involved in design work after 1945 and retired from active involvement in his company in 1955, thereafter remaining as president. He was made an OBE in 1918 and a CBE in 1934, knighted in 1944 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1962. De Havilland married Louise Thomas in 1909 (died 1949) and they had three sons, of which two died in flying accidents. In 1951 de Havilland married Joan Mary Mordaunt, née Frith. He died on 21 May 1965 at Stanmore, Middlesex.
- Iris 42/52hp (1909-10); Gipsy I 98hp (1926); Ghost 198hp (1928).
Geoffrey de Havilland, Sky fever: The autobiography of Sir Geoffrey de Havilland (1961). Sir Richard Davenport-Hines, ‘de Havilland, Geoffrey (1882-1965)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (2004).
Correspondence with Royal Aeronautical Society n.d. [128337: raesl/19]; photographs: with wife in cockpit 1928 [102862], with Frank Hearle n.d. [88831 p.444], with Frank Halford and Lord and Lady Trenchard 1950 [88390 p.441], with Frank Hearle and Wilfred Nixon 1949 [81315 p.444]; test flight log book, design notes and log book facsimile 1911-12 [58914, 47673: m pamphlets 21]; film re Humming Bird monoplane 1961 [45782: audio visual 14]; audio recording of de Havilland talk re his early career in aeronautics 1962 [45785: digital audio collection]; aeronautical history research files of Harold Penrose, letters from Sir Geoffrey de Havilland 1963-69 [pen/26].
Institution of Mechanical Engineers
Associate member proposal form 1909 [IME/7/26/1/178].
Military service records 1912-16, 1918-19 [WO339/8739; AIR76/215/186]; Royal Aircraft Establishment photographs of de Havilland in a BE4 (Blériot Experimental) 1913 [AIR1/724/91/7/54-5]; letter to Air Ministry from de Havilland on aircraft design 1919 [AIR1/724/85/1].
Papers re honours and awards 1911-1965 [AC96/53]; correspondence 1912-24 [AC96/52].