Mystery pre WW1 biplane & Mr Wright, pilot

Unfortunately the photo of Wright in the suit comes from a 1913 edition of Flight, so it is contemporaneous with those of the pilot. Most unlikely to be the same man

Here it is :

A Wright mystery

Schneiderman, great find thank you.
Putting the photos all together I am not emphatically convinced that this isn’t our man…
The ‘director of the firm’ pose, by the cut of the jacket, looks 1930’s, which would make our man more aged than his 1912 self.
Same kind of receding hairline, same kind of hands, same kind of earlobes, just 20 years later. In the earlier photo, a bit of a grin that that is not there in the formal pose later. What was Mr Wright doing in the late 20’s and 30’s?

(Ahh, I can’t seem to post the pic, not uploading….)

…. There are no photos I can find of him to confirm this.

Here you are, HTW in 1913. Doesn’t look like the pilot in your first post
[ATTACH=CONFIG]250215[/ATTACH]

He must have been hot stuff! Especially helpful in a pea-souper. Don’t ask me Witch one though.

Oops :apologetic:

Don’t ask me Witch one though.

:applause:

Off topic, but Flight global is flypaper stuff once you start grazing. An early exploration of aerial combat technique :

Mr. Grahame-White, on the Farman, took up with him Capt. Tyrer, the aerodrome manager, who is an experienced shot, and who fired at inflated paper figures liberated from firework bombs. Out of the half a dozen or so shots he made, only his first took effect. Undoubtedly the experiment would have met with much greater success had Capt. Tyrer been accommodated on the machine in a better place than behind the pilot, from which position he had to exercise the utmost care in taking his aim, in order to avoid carrying away any of the important wires operating the control or trussing the aeroplane structure. He proposes on future occasions to fit a type of hammock below the lower plane, just under the pilot’s seat, so that lying full length he may not be so encumbered.

Flight Pg 325 April 13th 1912

Yes indeed. Mr Ewen was buzzing around Hendon, where he ran the W.H. Ewen flight school, in a Cauldron…

He must have been hot stuff! Especially helpful in a pea-souper. Don’t ask me Witch one though.

Thanks Flight Global

Thanks Consul, Kenneth & Schneiderman. All great tips.
Flightglobal is an extraordinary resource. Thank you to the Directors of the Firm for digitizing this extraordinary material, and for using character recognition software to make it searchable.There is a lot of material on the Ewen Flying School, particularly in 1912, when it was based at Hendon. Apparently there were three machines at the school, No 1, Bleriot monoplane, No 2 Deperdussin monoplane and No 3, Caudron biplane. Here is Mr Ewen, from Flight :

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There are references to Ewen taking out a a 35 HP and 60 HP Caudron, and operating an agency for the type in the UK. Here is a picture of the 35HP Ewen Caudron, from Flight :

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The pictures I have posted show more engine cylinders, so I hazard this is the 60 HP Caudron. The pilot, Mr Wright, is proving harder to trace. No American Mr Wright, this. I have handy “History of British Aviation 1908 -14” by Dallas Brett, Vol II, Appendix E lists the first 863 UK qualified pilots. There are only two Wrights :

No.331 Howard T Wright, qualifying Oct 15th 1912 on a Henri Farman at the Sopwith Flying School, Brooklands
No.456 Sergeant H.C Wright, qualifying April 11th 1913 on a Short at Central Flying School, Upavon.

I suspect the pilot is Howard T White, the aircraft constructor. There are no photos I can find of him to confirm this. It is curious that a constructor of aircraft in 1909 should be seeking a licence in 1912, but I guess it was the system catching up with the inventor. The context of the field landing in Feltham, some 15 miles from Hendon, in the more powerful 60HP Caudron, suggests a confident aviator rather than a novice. Today Feltham is two miles south of Heathrow. Howard T Wright is also described in Flight as training at the Grahame-White school, and he finally takes his brevet with Tommy Sopwith at Brooklands, so it seems he was getting around. Howard T Wright build the aircraft that Tommy Sopwith first learned to fly in, and broke many records, so perhaps it was a compliment returned that he qualified at Sopwiths.

Yes indeed. Mr Ewen was buzzing around Hendon, where he ran the W.H. Ewen flight school, in a Cauldron in 1912. If you search Flight you can probably pin down the date of the forced landing
https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/index.html

The aircraft looks like a Caudron G2…

Might the name Ewen on the aeroplane have anything to do with this gentleman? http://www.earlyaviators.com/eewen.htm