Stuart Duncan Davies

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

FREng Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) is an award and fellowship for engineers who are recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as being the best and brightest engineers, inventors and technologists in the UK and from aroun ...

FRAeS The Royal Aeronautical Society, also known as the RAeS, is a British multi-disciplinary professional institution dedicated to the global aerospace community. Founded in 1866, it is the oldest aeronautical society in the world. Members, Fellows, ...

(5 December 1906 – 22 January 1995) was a British aerospace engineer who was in charge of the design of the

Avro Vulcan The Avro Vulcan (later Hawker Siddeley Vulcan from July 1963) is a jet-powered, tailless, delta-wing, high-altitude, strategic bomber, which was operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF) from 1956 until 1984. Aircraft manufacturer A.V. Roe an ...

. He was also responsible for converting the unsuccessful two-engined

Avro Manchester The Avro 679 Manchester was a British twin-engine heavy bomber developed and manufactured by the Avro aircraft company in the United Kingdom. While not being built in great numbers, it was the forerunner of the famed and vastly more successfu ...

into the four-engined

Avro Lancaster The Avro Lancaster is a British World War II, Second World War heavy bomber. It was designed and manufactured by Avro as a contemporary of the Handley Page Halifax, both bombers having been developed to the same specification, as well as the S ...

Early life

He was the son of William Davies and Alice Duncan. He attended Westminster City

grammar school A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented secondary school, ...

in central London from 1918 to 1923.

Career

Vauxhall

His career began at

Vauxhall Motors Vauxhall Motors LimitedCompany No. 00135767. Incorporated 12 May 1914, name changed from Vauxhall Motors Limited to General Motors UK Limited on 16 April 2008, reverted to Vauxhall Motors Limited on 18 September 2017. () is a British car compa ...

where he worked for two years from the age of 16.

Vickers

He worked at Vickers as a junior technical assistant from 1925 and gained an external

BSc A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

degree in Engineering at Northampton Polytechnic (now

City University London City, University of London, is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, and a member institution of the federal University of London. It was founded in 1894 as the Northampton Institute, and became a university when The City Univ ...

) awarded by the University of London. At Vickers he worked in the wind tunnel at

Brooklands Brooklands was a Auto racing, motor racing circuit and aerodrome built near Weybridge in Surrey, England, United Kingdom. It opened in 1907 and was the world's first purpose-built 'banked' motor racing circuit as well as one of Britain's fir ...

, and on the

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the East Coast of the United States, Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography an ...

biplane bomber, converting it from a wooden to metal structure.

Hawker

In 1931 he moved to

Hawker Aircraft Hawker Aircraft Limited was a British aircraft manufacturer that was responsible for some of the most famous products in British aviation history. History Hawker had its roots in the aftermath of the First World War, which resulted in the ban ...

Kingston upon Thames Kingston upon Thames (hyphenated until 1965, colloquially known as Kingston) is a town in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, southwest London, England. It is situated on the River Thames and southwest of Charing Cross. It is notable a ...

. He worked in the stress office, in a team of seven. There he worked on the Hart and Fury biplanes; the

RAF The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...

's main fighter planes in the 1930s. In 1933 he began work on what would become the

Hawker Hurricane The Hawker Hurricane is a British single-seat fighter aircraft of the 1930s–40s which was designed and predominantly built by Hawker Aircraft Ltd. for service with the Royal Air Force (RAF). It was overshadowed in the public consciousness b ...

, then known as the ''Fury Monoplane''.

Avro

Hawker Siddeley Hawker Siddeley was a group of British manufacturing companies engaged in aircraft production. Hawker Siddeley combined the legacies of several British aircraft manufacturers, emerging through a series of mergers and acquisitions as one of on ...

was formed in 1935, and in the group it included A.V.Roe & Company of Manchester. In January 1938 he moved to Avro, becoming assistant to the chief designer. Aged 33, he was promoted to be the company's experimental manager in April 1940. In 1940 he became responsible for converting the Manchester into the Lancaster. 7,377 Lancasters would be built in the UK and Canada, having first flown at

Woodford Woodford may refer to: Places Australia *Woodford, New South Wales *Woodford, Queensland, a town in the Moreton Bay Region *Woodford, Victoria Canada *Woodford, Ontario England *Woodford, Cornwall *Woodford, Gloucestershire *Woodford, Greater ...

on 8 January 1941. Avro 698 and Avro Vulcan B

From 1944 he was in charge of the

Avro York The Avro York was a British transport aircraft developed by Avro during the Second World War. The design was derived from the Avro Lancaster heavy bomber, several sections of the York and Lancaster being identical. Due to the importance of L ...

transport plane, and later worked on the

Avro Lincoln The Avro Type 694 Lincoln is a British four-engined heavy bomber, which maiden flight, first flew on 9 June 1944. Developed from the Avro Lancaster, the first Lincoln variants were initially known as the Lancaster IV and V; these were renamed L ...

. In 1947 he became the technical director at Avro, with responsibility for producing the

(Avro 698), which first flew on 30 August 1952. He was Chief Designer from 1945 to 1955, and was succeeded by Roy Ewans. Five

Avro 707 The Avro 707 (also known as Type 707) is a British experimental aircraft built to test the tailless thick delta wing configuration chosen for the Avro 698 jet bomber, later named the Vulcan. In particular, the low-speed characteristics of such ...

aircraft were produced before the Vulcan. They were used for experimental work on the delta wing. He also designed the

Avro Athena The Avro 701 Athena is a British advanced trainer aircraft built by Avro in the late 1940s. It was designed to replace the North American Harvard in the Royal Air Force, but was bought only in small numbers, the competing Boulton Paul Balliol ...

advanced single-engined trainer. Avro 722 Atlantic top-view silhouette

The Avro Atlantic was an early-1950s proposed 94-seat airliner version of the Vulcan, with delta wings and Olympus engines, which was never built.

Later career

He left Avro in June 1955 for

Dowty Rotol Dowty Propellers is a British engineering company based in Brockworth, Gloucestershire that specialises in the manufacture, repair and overhaul of propellers and propeller components for customers around the world. It is owned by General Elec ...

, becoming managing director of Dowty Fuel Systems in Cheltenham, and returned to Hawker Siddeley Aviation from 1958 to 1964. He left aviation for general engineering. He was President from 1971–2 of the

Royal Aeronautical Society The Royal Aeronautical Society, also known as the RAeS, is a British multi-disciplinary professional institution dedicated to the global aerospace community. Founded in 1866, it is the oldest aeronautical society in the world. Members, Fellows ...

. In 1958 he received the RAeS Gold Medal. He became an

FEng Feng may refer to: *Feng (surname), one of several Chinese surnames in Mandarin: **Féng (surname) ( wikt:冯 féng 2nd tone "gallop"), very common Chinese surname **Fèng (surname) ( wikt:鳳 fèng 4th tone "phoenix"), relatively common Chinese fa ...

in 1977. He was an honorary Fellow of the RAeS. Vulcan in flight

Personal life

In 1935 he married Ethel Radcliffe. She died before him. They had one daughter in 1939, born in north-east Cheshire.Vulcan to the Sky
/ref> He was awarded the

in 1968. He died on 22 January 1995 aged 88.

References

* ''Times'' obituary, 11 February 1995, page 19

External links

Avro Heritage

History of the Vulcan
{{DEFAULTSORT:Davies, Stuart 1906 births 1995 deaths Alumni of City, University of London Avro Lancaster Avro Vulcan Commanders of the Order of the British Empire English aerospace engineers Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellows of the Royal Aeronautical Society Hawker Siddeley People educated at Westminster City School Royal Aeronautical Society Gold Medal winners