Alfred Hessell Tiltman FRAeS (1891 – 28 October 1975), known as Hessell Tiltman, was a notable and talented British aircraft designer, and co-founder of

Airspeed Ltd Airspeed Limited was established in 1931 to build aeroplanes in York, England, by A. H. Tiltman and Nevil Shute, Nevil Shute Norway (the aeronautical engineer and novelist, who used his forenames as his pen-name). The other directors were A. E ...

. He graduated in engineering from

London University The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degr ...

, then served an apprenticeship with the Daimler Co in 1910-11 and worked on structural steel design in Canada (the Quebec bridge) and England. In 1916 he joined

Geoffrey de Havilland Captain (British Army and Royal Marines), Captain Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, (27 July 1882 – 21 May 1965) was an English aviation pioneer and aerospace engineer. De Havilland, The aircraft company he founded produced the de Havilland Mosquit ...

’s company

Airco The Aircraft Manufacturing Company Limited (Airco) was an early British aircraft manufacturer. Established during 1912, it grew rapidly during the First World War, referring to itself as the largest aircraft company in the world by 1918. Airc ...

; then moved to the

De Havilland Aircraft Company The de Havilland Aircraft Company Limited (pronounced , ) was a British aviation manufacturer established in late 1920 by Geoffrey de Havilland at Stag Lane Aerodrome Edgware on the outskirts of North London. Operations were later moved to H ...

when it was formed in 1921. As assistant designer he was involved in the design and testing of a number of DH aircraft, from the small DH 60 Moth to the DH 66 Hercules airliner. He then worked on the Vickers

R100 His Majesty's Airship R100 was a privately designed and built British rigid airship made as part of a two-ship competition to develop a commercial airship service for use on British Empire routes as part of the Imperial Airship Scheme. The o ...

airship with Nevil Shute Norway. Following the disaster to the rival, Government sponsored R101, the British airship programme was cancelled with the result that, in 1931, Norway and Tiltman founded

. Tiltman designed all Airspeed's early aircraft, including the three-engined Ferry (for Sir Alan Cobham's flying circus), the innovative and fast single-engined Courier, and the elegant twin-engined Envoy. The Courier was the first British aircraft for many years to incorporate a hydraulically operated, retractable undercarriage and was used (by Alan Cobham) to pioneer in-flight refuelling. In the 1934 MacRobertson air race from England to Australia, a Courier finished in seventh place, making very good time against formidable opposition from aircraft such as de Havilland's purpose built Comets and a Douglas DC2 airliner. In 1937, an Envoy was delivered to the King's Flight for the personal use of the royal family. With the approach of war, the Envoy was developed into the

Airspeed Oxford The Airspeed AS.10 Oxford is a twin-engine monoplane aircraft developed and manufactured by Airspeed Ltd, Airspeed. It saw widespread use for training Commonwealth of Nations, British Commonwealth aircrews in navigation, radio-operating, bombin ...

, which became the standard RAF and Commonwealth multi-engined pilot trainer for many years. A total of 8,751 Oxfords were built. In 1940 Tiltman designed the

Horsa Hengist (, ) and Horsa are legendary Germanic peoples, Germanic brothers who according to later English legends and ethnogenesis theories led the Angles (tribe), Angles, Saxons and Jutes, the progenitor groups of modern English people, in thei ...

glider which was used to carry troops on D-Day and at Arnhem. The Horsa went from the drawing board to the air in ten months, which he said was ''“not too bad considering the drawings had to be made suitable for the furniture trade who were responsible for all production"''. He left Airspeed soon after, and in 1948 co-founded Tiltman Langley, of which he was Technical Director and Chairman for six years. Altogether Tiltman designed about 15 different types of aircraft. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1933 for his design of the Airspeed Courier with its retractable undercarriage.

References

Death Notice & Obituary: ''The Times'', 1 & 4 November 1975. English aerospace engineers Alumni of the University of London 1891 births 1975 deaths {{England-engineer-stub