Sydney Camm

Sir Sydney Camm, CBE, FRAeS (5 August 1893 – 12 March 1966) was an English aeronautical engineer who contributed to many Hawker aircraft designs, from the biplanes of the 1920s to jet fighters. One particularly notable aircraft he designed is the Hawker Hurricane fighter.

Early years
Sydney Camm was the eldest child of Frederick Camm, who had twelve children with Mary Smith. He attended the Royal Free School on Bachelors Acre in Windsor (The Royal Free school became the Royal Free Middle School with the secondary school becoming the Princess Margaret Royal Free School on Bourne Avenue). His brother Frederick James Camm became a technical author, and created the Practical Wireless magazine. The Camm family lived near Windsor & Eton Central railway station.

Camm developed an interest in aircraft at an early age and his first interest in aeronautics was spurred on by his membership in the Windsor Model Aeroplane Club. His accomplishments as a model aeroplane builder culminated in a man-carrying glider which he and others at the club built in 1912.

Aviation career
Camm started as a carpenter's apprentice and joined the Martinsyde aircraft company.

He joined the Hawker Aircraft Company (later Hawker Siddeley) at Kingston upon Thames as a senior draughtsman in 1923, becoming Chief Designer in 1925. He took part in the design of many Hawker aircraft, including the Tomtit, Cygnet (his first Hawker plane), Hornbill, Nimrod, Hart and Fury. He then moved to designing aeroplanes that would become mainstays of the RAF in the Second World War including the Hawker Hurricane, Hawker Typhoon and Hawker Tempest.

Hurricane
With the Hurricane, Sydney Camm moved from the technology of the biplane to contemporary monoplane fighter aircraft. The result was that fighters flew faster, and with the improved engine technology of the time, higher, and could be made more deadly than ever.


 * "Camm had a one-tracked mind – his aircraft were right, and everybody had to work on them to get them right. If they did not, then there was hell. He was a very difficult man to work for, but you could not have a better aeronautical engineer to work under. [...] With regard to his own staff, he did not suffer fools gladly, and at times many of us appeared to be fools. One rarely got into trouble for doing something either in the ideas line, or in the manufacturing line, but woe betide those who did nothing, or who put forward an indeterminate solution."

Working with Camm at Hawker were Sir Frederick Page (later to design the English Electric Lightning), Leslie Appleton (later to design the advanced Fairey Delta 2 and Britain's first air-to-air missile, the Fairey Fireflash), Stuart Davies (joined Avro in 1936 and later to be chief designer of the Avro Vulcan), Roy Chaplin (became Chief Designer at Hawker in 1957) and Sir Robert Lickley (Chief Project Engineer during the war, and later to be Chief Engineer at Fairey). The Hawker engineer Frank Murdoch was responsible for getting the Hurricane into production in sufficient numbers before the outbreak of the war, after an eye-opening visit to MAN diesel plant in Augsburg in 1936.

A full size Hawker Hurricane replica has been placed near the River Thames, Windsor, to honour Sir Sydney Camm's aircraft

Typhoon
When the Typhoon's design first emerged and entered squadron service, pilots became aware that there was elevator flutter and buffetting at high speeds, due to the positioning of the heavy Napier Sabre engine intake very close to the wing root.

The engineering of the aircraft to travel at higher speeds and handle compressibility effects was one of the challenges of the day, but with his small design team of one hundred members at Hawker, Camm managed to solve these problems and make the Typhoon an effective combat weapon even at these speeds. As operational requirements changed, the Typhoon was used more as a fighter-bomber, in which role its low level performance, weapon-carrying capabilities and ability to absorb damage made it very effective. It was much used in the Battle of the Falaise Pocket, in which ground-attack aircraft proved very destructive. German losses were so severe that most of France was retaken less than two weeks after the conclusion of this operation.

Tempest
The lessons learned on the Hawker Typhoon were incorporated in its successor, the Hawker Tempest. As soon as the Typhoon entered service, the Air Ministry requested a new design. Camm recommended that they keep the existing design of the Typhoon for the most part, with modifications to the aerofoil. He also considered the new and powerful Napier Sabre and Bristol Centaurus engines as the power plant. Camm decided that both engines would be used: the Tempest Mk 5 was fitted with the Napier Sabre, while the Tempest Mk 2 had the Bristol Centaurus. The design modifications to be made to the aircraft to switch from one engine type to another were minimal, so that  little assistance was needed in ferrying these aircraft all the way to India and Pakistan, in the final days of the conflict.

Postwar
After the Second World War, Sydney Camm created many jet-powered designs which would became important aircraft in the Cold War era.

Harrier
Notable among these are his contributions to the Hawker Siddeley P.1127 / Kestrel FGA.1, the progenitor of the Hawker Siddeley Harrier. The Harrier is a well-known vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft designed at Hawker Siddeley, which would later merge into the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC), now known as BAE Systems. The Harrier was one of the radical concept aircraft which took shape in post-war Britain, which required the coming together of many important technology, such as vectored thrust engines like the Bristol Siddeley (later Rolls-Royce) Pegasus and technologies like the Reaction Control System. Camm played a major role in determining these and other vital Harrier systems. In 1953, he was knighted for these and other achievements and his contribution to British Aviation. The P.1127 first flew on 21 October 1960. Working with Camm on this aircraft and the Hunter was Prof John Fozard, who became head of the Hawker design office in 1961 and would write a biography of Camm in 1991.

Hunter
Camm worked on many aircraft built by Hawker before the Harrier, including what is probably his most significant aircraft after the Second World War, the Hawker Hunter.

Final years
Camm was President of the RAeS from 1954-5. Since 1971 the RAeS has held the biennial Sir Sydney Camm Lecture in June, given by the current Commander-in-Chief of RAF Air Command.

Before he died in 1966, Camm was planning the design of an aircraft to travel at Mach 4, having begun his life in aircraft design with the building of a man-carrying glider in 1912, just nine years after the first powered flight.

Quotes

 * On the cancellation in 1965 of the BAC TSR-2: All modern aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height and politics. TSR-2 got just the first three right...

Personal life
He lived at Thames Ditton in Surrey. He married Hilda Starnes in 1915 and they had a daughter in 1922. Camm died on 12 March 1966 at the Richmond Golf Course aged 72 and he was buried in Long Ditton.

Video clips

 * Memorial service in Windsor in May 2008