Aircraft manufacturers and caravans….

My garage door, an old aluminium up and over door, was made by Westlands.

In fact look at whats lurking in the background to this photograph
http://www.bluemelon.com/geoff/greatbushrailway-1#page-6/photo-1660971

Claude Jessop was the guy who owned the land and narrow gauge railway at Hadlow Down home of the famous Hadlow Down steam rallies in the 70’s, the railway is being restored/rebuilt so maybe the aircraft stuff is around, i will ask and see.

Mike Pannell

Apparently there are two Dakota rear fuselages still there that were made into caravans and some tail wheels, but there is still a building that is full of stuff but very dangerous to enter, my contact will do some snooping when he is out there next.

Ha! That is the bus stop from where I used to catch the bus home from school. Outside Glen Waverley train station.

Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC) made buses for a few years…

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I don’t have photographs, but a local Sussex character called Claude Jessop used to make caravans from cut up and converted war surplus fuselages and I know that he had DC3s and Stirlings for this purpose. A DC3 cut-down and much modified fuselage section caravan survived in about 1970, as did a monumental pile of Short Stirling fuselage doors that had grown into a massive bramble patch. I wonder what happened to it all?

Claude Jessop was the guy who owned the land and narrow gauge railway at Hadlow Down home of the famous Hadlow Down steam rallies in the 70’s, the railway is being restored/rebuilt so maybe the aircraft stuff is around, i will ask and see.

Mike Pannell

If I manage to snag one of those two, it will getting a mirror finish polish & a Vought Aircraft logo 🙂

Saw an Airstream 345 motorhome a few days ago with a shark mouth on it 🙂

A friend is restoring a very rare Pierce Arrow trailer, a short lived part of the famous motor car company.

Quest for a vintage trailer continues. In the past week I found what appear to be 2 trailers made by General Coachworks of Marlette, Michigan. Started digging trying to find something about the company. Today this popped up, turns out they were part of Vought Aircraft.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19591215&id=WP8jAAAAIBAJ&sjid=sg8EAAAAIBAJ&pg=6063,3114832

Here’s the first one:

& the other I found yesterday:

Did any UK manufacturers make caravans?

Spartan Aircraft:

That is the US Spartan Aircraft Co…not Simmonds Spartan of the UK…see the UK company logo at the top of this page from my website…don’t think they made any caravans.
http://daveg4otu.tripod.com/gabwp.html

Free PDF book (170pp) about Simmond Spartan at this link
http://www.hampshireairfields.co.uk/simspar/simspar250413.pdf

Not quite correct. AFAIK Erich Bachem (before building the Natter he was at Fieseler, Kassel) founded his own company, ERIBA (ERI ch BA chem) after the war. First they built wooden composite caravans, later aluminium ones as well. They were quite well done and owners were pleased with them. Hymer, located in the vicinity took over Eriba when Erich Bachem died.

Michael

This tells the detail of the connection between Bachem and Hymer

http://www.hireahymer.com/about-us/history-of-hymer-motorhomes/

There’s a connection to the Dornier Do27 as well the Natter

Erich Bachem , designer and builder of the Bachem Natter, subsequently joined with Erwin Hymer to build Hymer caravans and eventually motor homes. The company used the original factory where the Bachem Natters were built to build their caravans and motor homes for some time and IIRC the building is still used for storage by the Hymer company.

This was covered in After the Battle a short while ago

Not quite correct. AFAIK Erich Bachem (before building the Natter he was at Fieseler, Kassel) founded his own company, ERIBA (ERI ch BA chem) after the war. First they built wooden composite caravans, later aluminium ones as well. They were quite well done and owners were pleased with them. Hymer, located in the vicinity took over Eriba when Erich Bachem died.

Michael

I don’t have photographs, but a local Sussex character called Claude Jessop used to make caravans from cut up and converted war surplus fuselages and I know that he had DC3s and Stirlings for this purpose. A DC3 cut-down and much modified fuselage section caravan survived in about 1970, as did a monumental pile of Short Stirling fuselage doors that had grown into a massive bramble patch. I wonder what happened to it all?

Hi,

that CAC bus is great to see, my grandpa worked at CAC in the 1960s (my pre-teen years), anytime I was sitting in a bus and noticed the CAC data plate I felt as proud as if I was sitting in a Mirage III 🙂

We were always invited to the CAC kids Christmas parties in fromt of the factory; while the other kids were on pony rides I was snooping around the Mirage and Macchi production lines.

Cheers,

-John

Did a bit more digging, turns out this was just some bloke who happened to be named Vickers, not *that* Vickers.

Vickers made may things from guns, ships, submarines through to the VC10 airliner

Was doing some digging, turns out those stainless steel travelers caravans were built by a company called Vickers up until 1970…. any relation?

Just noticed that Bailey Caravans from Bristol have models called the Pegasus & Olympus… Coincidence?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-20th-century_system-built_houses

Erich Bachem , designer and builder of the Bachem Natter, subsequently joined with Erwin Hymer to build Hymer caravans and eventually motor homes. The company used the original factory where the Bachem Natters were built to build their caravans and motor homes for some time and IIRC the building is still used for storage by the Hymer company.

This was covered in After the Battle a short while ago

Hawksley [edit]A W Hawksley Ltd of Hucclecote, were formed in 1940 by the Gloster Aircraft Company to build the Albermarle aircraft designed by Armstrong Whitworth. Post-WW2, the companies parent Hawker Siddeley kept it open to supply prefab houses and bungalows to the MoW. After their MoW work finished, they continued for a period exporting their buildings to Australia, New Zealand and Uruguay into the 1960s.[15] Their designs included:[16]

BL8 – an aluminium-clad timber-framed bungalow.[9]
C2/C3 – either a 3 bedroom bungalow, or convertible to a government building such as a Post Office or Doctors surgery
Hawksley House – a semi-detached or terraced house with 2-4 bedrooms based on the principles of the Swiss architect G Schindler
Hawkesley Single Storey building – a general purpose building suitable for schools, offices, hospitals and village halls
The company later developed an aluminium house for the Margaret MacMillan Memorial Fund, for use in tropical overseas relief missions.

AIROH [edit]The AIROH house (Aircraft Industries Research Organisation on Housing) was a 675 square feet (62.7 m2), ten tonne all-aluminium bungalow assembled from four sections, each to be delivered to the site on a lorry, fully furnished right down to the curtains. The proposed rate of production of complete houses was to be an incredible one every twelve minutes. This was possible because the completely equipped and furnished AIROH could be assembled from only 2,000 components, while the aircraft it would replace on the production line required 20,000. The parents of future Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock were allocated at AIROH, on which he commented:[3]

“ It had a fitted fridge a kitchen table that folded into the wall and a bathroom. Family and friends came visiting to view the wonders. It seemed like living in a spaceship. ”

Although impressive, the AIROH by 1947 was costing £1,610 each to produce, plus costs of the land and installation. However, as the design was so easy to produce, 54,500 AIROHs were constructed.[13]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-20th-century_system-built_houses

Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC) made buses for a few years…

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Stolen from here