History

This summary of Roy Chadwick's life was written by his daughter, Margaret Dove, in 1996.

Roy Chadwick, designer of the AVRO Lancaster and described as ‘one’ of the two or three top designers of the 20th century, was born in England, at Farnworth near Widnes, Lancashire.

He was the fifth generation of engineers in his father’s family. When he was fourteen, Roy Chadwick entered the British Westinghouse Drawing office in 1907; he also began studying at the Manchester College of Technology, at night, after work.

In 1909, Alliot Verdon-Roe, England’s pioneer airplane constructor and aviator opened his own company, A.V. Roe & Company Ltd. As his apprenticeship drew to a close at Westinghouse in December 1911, Roy Chadwick joined the firm, and A.V. Roe engaged him as his personal assistant.

All the 500 Avro series of airplanes, including the AVRO 504 of W.W.I passed through his hands, in the design stage. Roy Chadwick soon became head of the design team, and Chief Designer in 1918. He designed the Pike, the W.W.I Manchester, and the giant Aldershot, the world’s biggest single-engine bomber. Many variants of the plane followed. Also, many civil and military aircraft flowed from his drawing board. He designed the world’s first true light aircraft, the AVRO Baby, in 1919.

The 1920’s and early 1930’s saw Chadwick design such airplanes as the AVR Avian and Tutor. The Tutor was a trainer used by the Royal Air Force to train pilots for WWII.

In 1933 the AVRO 18, a welded steel tube, fabric-covered 16-seat plane, was soon converted for the RAF into the AVRO Anson, a light bomber and transport plane. Over 11,000 were built. Many bomber crews were trained on Ansons in Canada. Roy Chadwick received an Air Ministry specification in 1937 for a long-range, all metal bomber of advanced conception, powered by two Rolls Royce Vulture engines.

Chadwick’s intuitive, forward thinking ensured that a huge bomb bay, capable of holding ten tons of bombs and mines, in any combination, was part of the design. Also, that the fuselage was made in five separate sections, for manufacture at different factories and for ease of assembly at Woodford, AVRO’s giant assembly works in Cheshire. The machine was named the Manchester, and the prototype L7246 made its initial flight in July 1939, with 207 Squadron receiving Manchesters in November 1940.

Immediately, it was obvious that the Vulture engines were inadequate, and Roy Chadwick, who had always wanted the Rolls Royce Merlin engines, and who had designed a four- engine version of the Manchester, showed the Air Ministry how he could lengthen the Manchester wing and install four Merlin engines. This was agreed, and the Lancaster was born.

The conversion was carried out between November 1940 and January 1941, and right away it was evident that the Lancaster bomber was a highly successful airplane. Production followed rapidly, and AVRO had seven factories and 100 sub-contractors building Lancasters, thus employing 40, 000 persons. In the RAF, 35 squadrons were equipped with Lancasters, which could fly higher and penetrate deeper into enemy territory than any other contemporary machine and which could carry the heaviest loads.

There were over 200 draughtsmen and tracers in Roy Chadwick’s drawing office. Every week, he would go around the office, and look at the work of each draughtsman. He could spot a mistake immediately and correct it. During the war he designed far into the night on the myriad modifications incorporated into the Lancaster for various operations, including the Dam Busters raid in 1943.

Other aircraft designed by Chadwick include the Shackleton, York, Tudor and Lincoln. He had left, in the hands of the Air Ministry, his last brilliant conception: the giant Delta Wing Bomber, the Avro Vulcan, a front line RAF plane, for over thirty years.

In 1944, Manchester University made him an Honorary Master of Science, and the College made him an Associate in 1946. Roy Chadwick met his untimely death on Saturday, August 23 1947 on a test flight of the AVRO Tudor II. An overnight servicing error resulted in the aircraft losing control and crashing soon after takeoff.

Roy Chadwick lived and died for aviation. His Influence lives on in Delta design. His greatest hope was that the airplane would unite the people of the world.

The bouncing bomb

In July 1938 the Air Ministry noted that the Ruhr consumed almost 25% of Germany's water, most of this from the reservoir behind the Möhne Dam. Many ideas for breaching the Möhne were put forward from 1937 but there was no suitable weapon in existence until the introduction of the Avro Lancaster.

The reservoirs in the Upper Derwent Valley are most famous for the fact that they closely resembled the Ruhr Dams and were used for six weeks in 1943 by 617 Squadron, 'The Dambusters', to practice their ultra-precision bombing runs, each plane releasing its single bomb at a precise height of 60ft and a speed of exactly 222mph. Dr Barnes Wallis designed the bouncing bomb for the Lancaster, assisted by Roy Chadwick.

The real raids were carried out in darkness - this is what the practice runs in the Lancaster looked like in daylight:











Video courtesy of the The Dambusters. For the Air Ministry Operational log of the Dambusters raid, look here.

'The Lancaster surpassed all other bombers'

Roy Chadwick is pictured in 1943 with Wing Commander Guy Gibson VC DSO DFC, leader of the Dambuster Raids.

Sir Arthur Harris, AOC-in-C, Bomber Command, would later write to Sir Roy Dobson of Avro:

"The Lancaster surpassed all other types of heavy bomber. Not only could it take heavier bomb loads, not only was it easier to handle, not only were there fewer accidents with this than with any other type throughout the war, the casualty rate was also considerably below other types.

I used the Lancaster alone for those attacks which involved the deepest penetration into Germany and were, consequently, the most dangerous. I would say this to those who placed that shining sword in our hands - without your genius and efforts we could not have prevailed, for I believe the Lancaster was the greatest single factor in winning the war."

Post War Achievements

After the war, Chadwick designed Britain's first pressurised airliner, the Avro Tudor, a sixty passenger civil aircraft based around the Lancaster-derivative Avro Lincoln.

The Tudor played an honourable role in the 1948 Berlin Airlift carrying food and fuel. This British South American Airways Avro Tudor II, G-AKCD, pictured at Berlin-Gatow, was later transferred to BOAC (Ralf Manteufel).

Type 698 - the Vulcan

Chadwick began to focus on jet flight, and the Air Ministry despatched Specification B35/46, for a long-range bomber capable of carrying an atomic weapon. In the winter of 1946/47 he designed a delta-winged craft, envisaging an airliner based on the same shape. In Avro's subsequent brochure it was styled as the Avro Atlantic, fore-shadowing the Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde.

Pictured is the original model, built as part of the specifications taken to the Air Miinistry by Roy Chadwick in May 1947.

World's first production delta winged aircraft

The delta wing apparently developed "by accident". The original design had more conventional swept-back wings but was much too heavy - there was no option other than to reduce weight by reducing the wing span.

However, in order to maintain lift, the wing area needed to be constant and so every reduction in wingspan was compensated for by filling in an area between the trailing edge and the fuselage until, eventually, a delta wing emerged.

Roy Chadwick took no part in this phase of wing development because he was off ill but he was apparently highly satisfied with the shape because he already been highly interested in work on delta wings carried out in Germany before the war by Alexander Lippisch.

The original pure delta wing produced problems at high speed, overcome by reducing the sweep-back at mid-span from 52 degrees to 42 degrees and then restoring the 52 degrees at the tips. This new wing was introduced in 1956, replacing the original pure-delta wing on the first prototype XA889.

Concorde

Experience with the delta wing of the Vulcan greatly assisted the design of the Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde.