Percival aircraft details

sorry to dig up an old thread but I have been away from the forum for a while….

I can shed a little light on the Percival days of Luton Airport in relation as to what’s still there or not, my family worked at the site.

Percival were located in two main blocks, the admin was based to the east of the old airport approach road and the hangers on the west. During redevelopment in the 80’s the admin blocks were removed and new factory units/offices built. The original hangers though have survived and are incorporated into the Monarch repair sheds that back onto Percival Way (last two buildings on the east side).

The first luton Corporation hanger I think was rebuilt some time ago and is now part of the Thompson hanger further west.

There is an excellent photographic archive of the airport from this time on the old Luton News archive, sadly its no longer available online though.

CRACKED IT ?

Apologies to all, this is sheer indulgence, provided I can remember the sequence of conversion I’m OK.

TEST PICTURE AGAIN

TEST

TEST PICTURE 3

TEST (HUNTING CLAN WAS ALSO INTO SHIPPING? – CLAN LINE)
DUFF AGAIN – ‘tif’ file – does anyone know of any way of getting ‘tif’ images across?
:confused:

TEST PICTURE 2

TEST 2

TEST PICTURE

TEST

HUNTINGS AND PERCIVAL

Trusting to good old fragile memory, the original Hunting Group was comprised of spinoffs from the original company on geographic survey work. I was going to join Hunting Clan Airlines around 1958 as apprentice engine/airframe fitter also working to get PPL, when they went bellyup. This was a separate organisation from the rest of the group, seem to remember they were involved in trooping contracts and had some Vickers Vikings. When I’ve learnt to post an image here, I will look up my negative files.

Re Percival, I seem to remember (here we go again) spotting at either Panshanger or Stapleford Tawney around mid fifties, which is where the Q6 was based and some Procters, and an impression of production/repair facilities.

Hope this helps and is not all duff memory.

Cheers 😉

Was / are Hunting Air Surveys and various other Hunting aviation support groups anything to do with the original Hunting Aircraft company?

See here for lineage http://production.investis.com/heritage/nonflash/lineage/air/

basically

1934 formed as Percival Aircraft Company at Gravesend
1936 moved to Luton and became Percival Aircraft Limited
1944 become part of Hunting Group
1957 Changed name to Hunting Aircraft
1959 Merged with Bristol Aircraft Company, English Electric and Vickers Armstrong to become the British Aircraft corporation (BAC)
1965 Closed manufacturing Operations

This may also be of interest http://www.pilotfriend.com/acft_manu/Hunting%20Percival.htm

Does anyone know where Percival was physicly located at Luton and when did the Luton site shut down ?

There are some old pictures of Luton at:
http://www.pprune.org/aviation-history-nostalgia/310000-history-luton-airport.html
showing Percival. It might be possible to work out the location in relation to the current airport buildings from that.

Other Percival Factories

Hills and Sons of Trafford Park Manchester were sub contracted to build Proctors 1, 2 3 and 4 variants, though not sure if this was all of them or a percentage only. These were transported by road to Barton for flight testing and onward despatch to their respective service units. The main Luton factory built Mosquitos during the war, with the civil Mk 5 Proctor built there until around 1947, followed by the Prentice and Prince series of aircraft.