British aircraft manufacturers during the war

Shortly after he died the company went into liquidation. Had something to do with politics I understand.

Cees

IIRC, when the government insisted on the mass mergers, HP refused. The government said “No merger, no contracts”.

Fascinating stuff, thanks guys.

I guess that makes the Lancaster and the Hurricane cousins then 🙂

A.V.Roe left the company in 1928 after selling his shares to Sir John Siddeley. In July 1935 A.V.Roe & Co. Ltd. became a subsidiary of the newly created Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Company.
Avro stayed that way until 1963, when it became the Avro-Whitworth division of Hawker Siddeley Aviation Ltd. The Avro 748 then became the HS. 748.

Apart from the Hawker and Vickers combine most companys were ‘owned’ by their founders. But in the mid-late 30’s there were large share issues to raise capital for the forthcomming rearmamant programe.
As far as I know during WW2 this was the situation
Fairey-still run by Richard Fairey
Westland-owned by Petters, an industrial engine company
Miles- owned by the Miles brothers but Rolls-Royce had a
40odd% holding I think
Handley Page -still majourity owned and run by HP himself
Airspeed- owned by deHavillands
de Havillands -owned by the DH family

But I may be totally wrong!

Of the big names, several were still in charge. They almost certainly had shareholders to consider but Sir TOM Sopwith controlled Hawker, the White family controlled Bristol and Geoffrey de Havilland and Frederick Handley Page still headed their respective organisations.

AFAIK Frederick Handley Page (HP as he was called) was the director of the board until his death. During the war he was a very high profile figure and even requested the Halifax Building Society to join up for publicity. They turned it down as they were under the impression that they were putting up houses whereas HP’s Halifaxes were only interested in bringing them down.

Shortly after he died the company went into liquidation. Had something to do with politics I understand.

Hope this helps

Cheers

Cees

Avro wasn’t owned by A.V Roe by the start of World War 2. I’m not too sure how or why he disposed of his assets in AVRO but by 1920 Crossley Motors held 3/5ths of the sahres and by 1928 he had sold his shares. He then formed Saunders-Roe by buying a controlling stake in boat and aeroplane builders S.E. Saunders with John Lord. Even with Saro I’m not too sure if A.V Roe still in control during WW2 but I presume so (He died in 1970).

Hawkers was originally owned by H.G. Hawker and TOM Sopwith, plus two others. They bought the assets of Sopwith Aviation after the company went bankrupt. I don’t know if they still owned it at the start of WW2.

Armstrong Siddeley was a car manufacturer, yes.

Wow.

So was Hawker Siddeley itself still under the ownership of Sir Thomas Sopwith’s family or was it by then a public company, owned by many share holders?

Siddeley was another car manufacturer too, wasn’t it?

Hawker Siddeley owned:
Avro
Armstrong Whitworth
Glosters
Hawkers (duh!)
and probably a few others.

So that was the major conglomeration at the time…