The 81st Entry
RAF Halton Aircraft Apprentices
Sept 1955 - July 1958

ISSUE No.21 - NOVEMBER 2009
81st ENTRY NEWSLETTER
Editor: Mike Stanley

PERCY PILCHER (1866-1899) by Tod Slaughter.

During my years as a volunteer at the IWM at Duxford I have worked on many of their aircraft to a larger or lesser degree. One of the most fascinating and certainly the oldest, albeit a replica, was the "Hawk" a flying machine designed, built and flown by a gentleman by the name of Percy Sinclair Pilcher. In the annals of British aviation Percy Pilcher is not a name that springs readily to mind. I decided to find out more about this person and to my mind he turned out to be quite an unsung hero.

He was born in Bath in 1866 to a Scottish mother. He served in the Royal Navy for a short time before becoming an apprentice at the Govan ship-builders Randolph, Elder and Co. In 1891 he took up a post at the University of Glasgow as a lecturer. It was here that he proceeded to design and build gliders as he, like many of that era, was fascinated by the concept of manned flight. His first machine which he called the Bat flew successfully but it was his forth "The Hawk" that was the most successful of all. It was built, as was the replica, of bamboo, stretched linen and numerous rigging lines. To enable him to perfect his designs he travelled to Germany where he met Otto Lilienthal, the most famous glider designer of the time. In that respect Percy was the British equivalent of Otto. Percy travelled around Britain showing his prowess giving many gliding demonstrations in the Hawk to an incredulous audience of onlookers.

Like many of his contemporaries Percy Pilcher was looking to the future of powered flight and not just a launch from a hill or a tow from a rope. It was to this end that in a rainy day in October 1899 in a park near Market Harborough that a crowd turned up to see Percy make his first test flight in a triplane glider powered by a 4hp engine weighing some forty pounds, but the weather was against him. Had the weather been better and perhaps if he had been successful who knows he may have beaten the Wright Brothers by a number of years but fate was to show her hand.

The crowd was getting restless at the delay so he decided to fly his trusted Hawk. The rain had saturated the rigging lines and he needed to take the slack out of them.

Still there was some delay and as the lines started to dry out they became dangerously tight. During the subsequent flight a guideline connected to the tail snapped and the Hawk and Percy tumbled thirty feet to the ground. Sadly he died two days later without regaining consciousness.

His memory faded in the passing of time and most people now are unaware of his existence. He just became one of those many pioneers who lost their lives in pursuit of a dream. It is fitting therefore that when you enter the Air Space, hanger 1, there suspended high up just inside the entrance hall is "The Hawk" replica. A reminder of one mans brave sacrifice.