SV Setty : Avro Student Pilot and Draughtsman

Avro Student Pilot and Draughtsman
SV Setty

Srirama Vekatasubba Setty, commonly referred to as SV Setty or Setti,was the son of Rama Thippaiah Setty and Savitri Sakamma. He was born in Mysore, in the Karnataka State, India, in 1879. After attending the Western Mission High School, he graduated with a degree from the Maharaja’s College, Mysore, in 1900. He then attended the Engineering College at Roorkie in Uttar Pradesh. Travelling to England to continue electrical and mechanical engineering studies, Setty went to work for Wilson and Robinson.

Setty joined AV Roe and Company at Brooklands, near Weybridge, Surrey, on 8 May 1911. The Avro Flying School charged £50 for tuition to Royal Aero Club certificate standard or accepted work on the developing and testing of aircraft instead of payment. AV Roe recalled (in 1939), “At Brooklands in 1911 an Indian student joined us. As he had some drawing-office experience at a technical college, he assisted me in getting out drawings of the ‘500’ and ‘501’ types, which were then sent to our Manchester works to be actually built.” Roe’s recollections are not always supported by contemporary documentation, and it may be that Setty worked on drawings for the original Type E. Roy Chadwick, working in Manchester, developed the first Avro 500 ordered by the War Office. However, Setty definitely worked on general arrangement drawings for the Avro Type F enclosed monoplane on 17 August 1911, and worked further drawings with fellow aspiring pilot Sydney Sippe between 24 and 31 August.

Sippe and Setty began learning to fly with Avro at about the same time, with the periodical Flight recording that they had both begun to attempt straight flights in mid June 1911. On Saturday 17 June Setty was called upon to guide a group of Indian visitors to Brooklands. Setty is next recorded as having been ‘rolling’ an Avro biplane, presumably the 35.p. Green Type D No. 3, on 25 September until he suffered a burst tyre. Rolling resumed soon afterwards but Setty was soon in trouble as “After two or three straight lines he turned off and ran in to the sewage farm. He is a vegetarian, and it is thought that he may possibly have some irresistible attraction for the cabbages which grow that way.” Rolling continued on 6 October, and Setty’s first straight flight was made on until 11 November.

Further straight flights were made on 29 November, 27 and 29 December. On Saturday, 30th December, two circuits were recorded, though Flight noted later that Setty’s first circuits were not until 16 February 1912. Setty flew the Viale-Avro D No 6, with an experimental propeller, on 1 January 1912. He was back flying circuits on Type D No 3 a week later, on 8 January. Setty was airborne on Friday 12 January, but did not fly again for another month, when he was back practising ‘straights’ on 12 February.

On 14 February John Duigan, an Australian, began erecting his Avro biplane at Brooklands. This had been built in Manchester in 1911 and taken to Huntingdon for flight trials. Fitted with an Alvaston engine, Duigan discovered that his biplane was significantly underpowered. He replaced the Alvaston with an ENV engine and moved to Brooklands for further trials. By tuning the engine and trying different propeller designs, Duigan managed to make a number of flights but his Avro was never practical as a passenger aeroplane.

Setty may have been involved in helping to erect Duigan’s Avro as part of his normal work at Brooklands. Setty had his photograph taken sitting in the Avro, but there is no evidence to suggest that he was ever allowed to attempt to fly it. The Calcutta Modern Review, published in July 1912, claimed that Setty designed one of the propellers for the Avro. No other modifications were made until after Duigan sold the aeroplane. The new owners enlarged the wings and fitted a 50 h.p. Gnome engine to give the aircraft an acceptable performance. Nevertheless, Duigan managed a number of flights in March and April, and passed his Royal Aero Club tests on 20 April, 1912.

Further flights in the Avro D were made by Setty on 21 February, though one ended up in the sewage farm. Fortunately Setty wasn’t hurt, and was back in the air on 13 February. 16 February, 1912, was the date of his last recorded flight. Setty did not attempt the tests which would have gained him a Royal Aero Club certificate.

It appears that Setty left Avro soon afterwards as, on 12 March 1912, HV Roe wrote a reference for him stating “He has had considerable experience in the Flying School and has become very efficient in the tuning up of aeroplanes and engines. He has the makings of a very good Pilot (although he failed to obtain his ‘Ticket’). He has also worked in the Drawing Office on some new types of machines, and we now consider him to have had sufficient experience to be left in entire charge of the erection of a machine of any type. If required, he could carry out any alterations, which may be required, including the designing and drawing of same.” Generally HV believed that Setty had “given every satisfaction, has been an excellent time-keeper, and in every way persevering and industrious, and is now very expert in all matters relating to aviation.”

This seems to be a general reference, though it does jar with AV Roe’s recollection, “I noticed whenever I had occasion to leave the aerodrome that on my return little had been done. I asked him the reason, and he always had some excuse that he wished to ask me about some detail or other.” This may be why Sippe was tasked to work on the Type F drawings with Setty though, by AV Roe’s own admission, his preferred design freehand sketch “method may have been primitive” and thus open to interpretation.

The first Type E made its first flight, at Brooklands, on 14 March, and Setty may have helped to assemble the aircraft. Flight recorded that a “Rama Smith” (who may have been Setty) was taken up the following day for load carrying tests to prove the suitability of the design as a two seater. The flight ended with a poor landing and the need to replace the undercarriage.

HV Roe recorded in his diary that Setty left Brooklands for India on 23 April 1912, but turned up at Brownsfield Mill at 9:20 pm on 21 May for an unknown reason.

AV Roe recalled the last time he heard from Setty, “one day I received from him an Indian newspaper in which I read an account of a dinner that was given him to celebrate the fact that he had been responsible for designing an aeroplane which had been ordered by the British Government in large numbers !” Roe commented, “In writing of the past I do not like to say that I designed this or that aeroplane, for even if a machine is of one’s own conception, yet there must necessarily be others who played an important part in its final details and construction. Pioneers in any line are sure to have assistants who think they have done the deed themselves…”

It may well have been at this dinner that Setty was awarded the medallion still in the possession of his family. It is dated June 1912.

Back in India, Setty planned to build his own aeroplane but the difficulties of raising sufficient funds, and then the restrictions placed on private manufacture and flying by the war, prevented this. In 1913 he was appointed Superintendent of the Mysore school of mechanical engineering, and on 10 October 1918 he was appointed as a Professor of Mysore University. He died soon afterwards, a victim of the influenza pandemic.