Avion ancien, you are on the right track. Chiltons were looking to put the type into production after the initial Dudley Hiscox Oly was built. (This was started in 1944!)
Just after the war they placed an order for 50 sets of wings with Elliotts, but the price came back as being too expensive. This was around the time of the accident that killed Dalrymple who was one of the directors of the company.
Ward (the other director) practically lost all heart with aircraft as a result, and the company were just getting into other areas of production that were showing promise.
Horace Buckingham at Elliotts was having a full-blown set to with the Board of Trade, (they had forgotten that the war was over) as he had been refused timber quota’s to go back into their pre-war trade of furniture.
So as a way of keeping his workers gainfully employed, (his workers were after all, experianced in aircraft production during the war having built over 700 Oxford fuselages, Horsa nose sections and subframes, and metal spitfire parts) he brought the production rights from Chiltons as they were in teh process of trying to get the Oly through the Air Registration boards requirements to get the type certificate.
Horace used his aircraft licences as 1 way of keeping his timber quotas up, and it is probably fair to say, never really viewed the venture with a serious long-term solution for the hundreds of workers Elliotts employed. He viewed it no differently from building a couple of hundred wardrobes. Later glider production at Elliotts was often referred to as “Orices Obby”. One thing that probably did sway things for Elliotts to take over production, besides the timber quotas, was at the time there was serious talk of the Gliding events being held at the 1948 London Olympics, so there was an expectation that the type would sell well, and even before this, Slingsby’s advertised selling the type during the latter part of 1945, but in the end never did put it into production.
Nuff said…
SF:diablo:
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