In the immediate post-WW1 period, A.V.Roe & Co. Ltd. established a subsidiary company to provide pleasure flights and air taxi services. This was the Avro Transport Company (‘ATC’), which operated for only two years, 1919 and 1920, before ceasing to trade in the latter year. The given reason for it so doing was the decline in demand for pleasure flights but one wonders whether it might have been because of a desire to concentrate on the parent company’s core business of aircraft manufacture and/or the economic climate.
The operations of the ATC were divided into northern and southern zones. In the southern zone, it operated in the Brighton area from flying fields at Patcham (Ladies Mile) and West Blatchington Farm but, it seems, its aircraft were/was hangared and/or maintained at Shoreham Aerodrome.
Other than that the southern zone of the ATC was managed by Capt. H. Duncan Davies and that one of the pilots or the pilot operating from the Patcham and West Blatchington flying fields was Capt. Donald I.M. Kennard, I’ve failed to find anything more concerning the ATC operations from the Patcham and West Blatchington flying fields. I assume that it used one or more Avro 504Ks but I don’t know which aircraft were/was used and whether there was one or more. I suspect that both flying fields were rudimentary and lacked infrastructure beyond, possibly, an operations tent and, maybe, a Bessoneau hangar (although even the latter may have been absent if aircraft returned to Shoreham at the end of each working day). Thus when the ATC ceased operations in 1920, I suspect that the two flying fields quickly reverted to agriculture. I’ve found no evidence of their subsequent use for aviation purposes.
I suspect that Jackson’s ‘Avro Aircraft since 1908’ deals with the ATC but may not go into detail sufficient to address the Patcham and West Blatchington flying fields. However I do not have this book in my library and so shall be grateful to someone who has if they’ll consult it and let me know what it has to say on the matter. If anyone knows of any other sources of information, be they in print or online, concerning the ATC operations from the two flying fields mentioned (and/or at Shoreham Aerodrome), I’d be grateful if they would point me in the direction of those.
With my thanks in anticipation.
AA
By: avion ancien - 5th January 2024 at 21:32
Jimmy126, would I be correct in assuming that you are Jimwit who posted on the sussexhistoryforum.co.uk website in April of last year?
By: Mothminor - 5th January 2024 at 15:36
Hi Jim – I’m not sure this is really of much help or adds anything to what you already know but a couple of Flight magazines published in Oct 1919 give the following information –
“W. of Hove Park at S.E. corner of W. Blatchington” and “the new aerodrome at West Blatchington Farm which consists of about 50 acres is being fenced round and hangars are being erected”
I suspect, as AA said in his original post, the hangars were of the Bessoneau type and not permanent?
By: Jimmy126 - 5th January 2024 at 11:40
I am also trying to research the West Blatchington airfield .
I am a volunteer at West blatchington windmill which is the only remaining part left of the farm.
We have many maps of the farm and wider area and know about the airfield but can’t tell exactly where it was. It doesn’t appear on any map.
I have been through files at our local records office but all I found was letters of noise complaints from local residents, especially the nuisance of them flying on Sundays! Plus subsequent council letters discussing the matter.
I have contacted the Avro heritage museum but they also drew a blank on the matter.
And help or pointers would be much appreciated!
Jim
By: avion ancien - 16th January 2020 at 17:50
Thank you, gentlemen both. My principal interest being in the two flying fields, already I have gone on tangential excursion, vis à vis Captains Kennard and Davis, and I must resist the temptation to pursue that further – beyond saying that Capt. Davis was better known as Drunken, rather than Duncan, Davis, for reasons explained by Tim Webb and Dennis Bird in chapter six of their history of Shoreham Airport.
By: Lyffe - 16th January 2020 at 17:18
AA
It might be worth extending your research outside published works and trying the section of the Great War Forum which deals specifically with aviation during and immediately after WW1 – https://www.greatwarforum.org/forum/25-air-personnel-and-the-war-in-the-air/ . I’d be surprised if someone there couldn’t help.
By: Mothminor - 16th January 2020 at 16:01
More detail on the light aircraft he owned as stated in A Fleeting Peace –
G-AAAS DH60 at Heston ; G-AAHE Avro Avian at Hanworth; G-AAWE Klemm L.25 at Heston; G-AAXR Puss Moth at Heston; G-ABCI Klemm L.26 at Renfrew and G-ABLY Puss Moth again at Heston.
By: Mothminor - 16th January 2020 at 15:55
I can’t find any other references to Capt. Kennard in the A.J. Jackson book but there are a few mentions of his name within the A Fleeting Peace website (specifically the UK registers) as having owned a succession of light aircraft (DH60, Avian, Puss Moth, Klemm) at Heston and Hanworth and briefly a Klemm L.26 at Renfrew.
He was also a member of the ATA based at Hucknall and there is a photo of him on this site – http://aircrewremembered.com/percy-randall.html
Searching his full name, Donald Ian Menzies Kennard, returns the CWGC entry stating he was killed, age 52, on 15/9/42 – https://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/2430912/kennard,-donald-ian…
This was in the crash of Liberator FK217 which swung on take-off and hit a hangar at Boscombe Down. He was with no. 1 Ferry Pilots Pool at the time.
By: avion ancien - 16th January 2020 at 14:52
Thank you, MM. I fear that the ephemeral nature of the two flying fields will militate against the possibility of there being more information available concerning them.
Capt. Kennard also seems to be something of an enigma. I can find nothing about his life and flying career post-ATC. Capt. Davis is better recorded. It seems that he stayed in the south after the ATC ceased trading, working as a flying instructor and then, in the thirties,, being one of the co-founders, the CFI and managing director of Brooklands Aviation and subsequently being involved with its subsidiary, the South Coast Flying Club at Shoreham, in which he continued until, at least, the late forties. I can find nothing about him postdating that time.
By: Mothminor - 16th January 2020 at 14:09
Hi AA,
As you suspect there’s no detail about Patcham/ West Blatchington Farm in “Avro Aircraft since 1908”. Other than a brief mention about Captain Kennard being in charge at Brighton/ Patcham/ West Blatchington farm I have found only one other reference –
G-EAOM Avro 546 “saw little service and made only a few flights at Hamble and West Blatchington Farm early in 1919 – 20”
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January 16, 2020 at 11:55 am