The Aeronautical Syndicate Limited (ASL) was one of the earliest aeroplane manufacturers. A British company, it was founded in 1909 by the investor

Horatio Barber Captain Horatio Claude Barber (1875–1964) was an early British aviation pioneer and First World War flight instructor. In 1911 he flew the first cargo flight in Britain, transporting electric light bulbs from Shoreham to Hove. He was also ...

and engineers

William Oke Manning William Oke Manning (20 October 1879 – 2 April 1958) was an English aeronautical engineer. Although none of his aircraft were built in large numbers he is remembered for his English Electric Wren ultralight and his flying-boats. Early life Ma ...

and

Howard T. Wright Howard is a masculine given name derived from the English surname Howard. ''The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names'' notes that "the use of this surname as a christian name is quite recent and there seems to be no particular reason for i ...

. Initially located in

Battersea Battersea is a large district in southwest London, part of the London Borough of Wandsworth, England. It is centred southwest of Charing Cross and also extends along the south bank of the Thames Tideway. It includes the Battersea Park. Hist ...

, London, the business soon relocated to Larkhill on

Salisbury Plain Salisbury Plain is a chalk plateau in southern England covering . It is part of a system of chalk downlands throughout eastern and southern England formed by the rocks of the Chalk Group and largely lies within the county of Wiltshire, but st ...

. It later moved to the Aeronautical Syndicate Flying School,

Hendon Hendon is an urban area in the London Borough of Barnet, northwest London northwest of Charing Cross. Hendon was an ancient Manorialism, manor and parish in the county of Middlesex and a former borough, the Municipal Borough of Hendon; it has ...

. The company closed in 1912. ASL were most well known as manufacturer of the

ASL Valkyrie The ASL Valkyrie was a canard pusher configuration aircraft designed by the Aeronautical Syndicate Ltd in 1910. Examples were widely flown during 1911 and were used for instructional purposes at the ASL flying school, which was the first occup ...

series of tail-first or canard monoplanes.

Origins

Horatio Barber had made a fortune in Canada when, back in England, he met the friends William Manning and Howard Wright. They were both electrical engineers with, like Barber, a keen interest in aeronautics. In 1909 they formed the Aeronautical Syndicate Limited and Manning was appointed Chief Designer. They first set up under a railway arch in Battersea, next to the

Short Brothers Short Brothers plc, usually referred to as Shorts or Short, is an aerospace company based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Shorts was founded in 1908 in London, and was the first company in the world to make production aeroplanes. It was particu ...

who were another early aeronautical manufacturer. However ASL needed somewhere to fly their machines. They soon moved to a rented site at Durrington Down on Salisbury Plain, a location which would later become known as Lark Hill.

Aircraft production

The first aircraft, the ASL monoplane No.1, was of canard layout with a pusher propeller driven by a Antoinette V-8 engine. The pilot was Barber's

chauffeur A chauffeur () is a person employed to drive a passenger motor vehicle, especially a luxury vehicle such as a large sedan or a limousine. Initially, such drivers were often personal employees of the vehicle owner, but this has changed to s ...

, Bertie Woodrow, but it was overweight and failed to fly. It was later sold off and is believed to have crashed on its first real flight.Brown (2013) The ASL monoplane No.2 appeared in the spring of 1910. Also of canard design, it had a wing-span and was powered by a rear-mounted Green D.4 engine mounted above the trailing edge of the wing and driving an diameter two-bladed pusher propeller.''Flight'' 12 March 1910, Pages 184-185. The pilot sat immediately in front of the wing's leading edge: in front of him a square-section

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French language, French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds Aircrew, crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an Aircraft engine, engine as wel ...

of uncovered wire-braced wooden construction carried the span

foreplane In aeronautics, a canard is a wing configuration in which a small forewing or foreplane is placed forward of the main wing of a fixed-wing aircraft or a weapon. The term "canard" may be used to describe the aircraft itself, the wing configurati ...

, a small rudder and a pair of nosewheels.Lewis, Peter. ''British Aircraft 1809-1914''. Putnam, 1962 p.40 Woodrow flew it on many test flights, eventually crashing it when the foreplane was experimentally set at too steep an angle. The third design was named the

Valkyrie In Norse mythology, a valkyrie ( or ; from ) is one of a host of female figures who guide souls of the dead to the god Odin's hall Valhalla. There, the deceased warriors become ('single fighters' or 'once fighters').Orchard (1997:36) and Li ...

and first flew in September 1910. It was produced in significant numbers and in several variants, typically powered by a Gnome Sigma engine. ASL gained a reputation for the quality of their work and also took on commissions for other clients.''Flight'', 20 January 1912, pages 52 ff. The last of the company's designs to be built was the

Viking I ''Viking 1'' was the first of two spacecraft, along with ''Viking 2'', each consisting of an orbiter and a lander, sent to Mars as part of NASA's Viking program. The lander touched down on Mars on July 20, 1976, the first successful Mars land ...

. The tailplane stabiliser and front-mounted tractor propeller had by now become established as the conventional layout, while an increasing number of manufacturers were hedging their bets by building both monoplanes and biplanes. The Viking I emerged as a conventional tractor biplane.

Closure

The Viking failed to sell. Due to the lack of any commercial prospects, the company was wound up in April 1912, most of its assets being acquired by

Handley Page Handley Page Limited was a British aerospace manufacturer. Founded by Frederick Handley Page (later Sir Frederick) in 1909, it was the United Kingdom's first publicly traded aircraft manufacturing company. It went into voluntary liquidation a ...

References

Citations

{{reflist

Bibliography

*Brown, Timothy C.; ''Flying with the Larks: The Early Aviation Pioneers of Lark Hill'', Spellmount (History Press), 2013. Defunct aircraft manufacturers of the United Kingdom