Percy Pilcher

This article is about the aviator. For the photographer, seePercy William Pilcher.

Percy Pilcher
Born	(1867-01-16)16 January 1867 Bath, Somerset,England
Died	2 October 1899(1899-10-02)(aged 32) Stanford, Northamptonshire
Cause of death	Glider accident
Burial place	Brompton Cemetery,London
Occupation	Inventor
Known for	Aviation pioneer

Percy Pilcher'sHawkglider, restored after his fatal crash, on display in theNational Museum of Scotland.

Percy Sinclair Pilcher(16 January 1867 – 2 October 1899) was a British inventor and pioneer aviator who was his country's foremost experimenter in unpowered flight near the end of the nineteenth century.

After corresponding withOtto Lilienthal,Pilcher had considerable success with developinghang gliders.In 1895, he made repeated flights in theBat,and in 1896–1897 many flights in theHawkculminated in a world distance record.

By 1899, Pilcher had produced a motor-driven triplane, which he planned to test atStanford HallinLeicestershireon September 30, 1899; however, the attempt was delayed by mechanical problems. When he substituted a flight ofHawk,it suffered structural failure in mid-air and he was fatally injured in the resulting crash, with his powered aircraft never having been tested.

Research carried out byCranfield Universityin the early 2000s concluded that Pilcher's triplane was more or less workable, and would have been capable of flight with design modifications. This raised the possibility that Pilcher could have been the first to fly a heavier-than-air powered aircraft had he survived.

Early life

Percy Pilcher was born inBathin 1867, the son of Thomas Webb Pilcher (1799–1874) and aScottishmother Sophia (née) Robinson. In 1880, at age 13 Pilcher became a cadet in theRoyal Navy,and served for seven years. Thereafter he became an engineering apprentice with the shipbuilders,Randolph, Elder and Company,of Govan inGlasgow.

Aviation career

The hang gliderHawk,1897. Shown might be Miss Dorothy Pilcher, Percy's cousin who was towed in a flight.

In 1891 Pilcher began work as assistant lecturer atGlasgow Universityand took a growing interest in aviation. He built ahang glidercalledThe Batwhich he flew for the first time in 1895;

Later that year Pilcher metOtto Lilienthal,who was the leading expert in gliding in Germany. These discussions led to Pilcher building two more gliders,The BeetleandThe Gull.Based on the work of his mentor Otto Lilienthal, in 1895–1896 Pilcher built a glider calledHawkwith which he broke the world distance record when he flew 250 m (820 ft) in 1897 on the grounds of Stanford Hall, Leicestershire.His sisterElla Pilcherwas involved with his work, stitching the fabric wings of his planes and assisting with his experiments and test flights. She appears in photos taken at the time of Pilcher's public flights.

Pilcher set his sights on making powered flights. He developed atriplanethat was to include a 4hp(3 kW) engine. In order to develop a suitableinternal combustion engineto power the aircraft, Pilcher teamed up with the motor engineerWalter Gordon Wilson,and created a company calledWilson-Pilcher.Wilson was later to become credited by the 1919Royal Commission on Awards to Inventorsas the co-inventor of thetank,along withSir William Tritton.However, construction of the triplane put him heavily into debt, and Pilcher needed sponsorship to complete his work.

Death

Monument nearStanford Hall, Leicestershireat the point where Pilcher crashed his glider (the monument is actually located just across the county boundary inNorthamptonshire)

Funerary monument,Brompton Cemetery,London

On 30 September 1899, having completed his triplane, he had intended to demonstrate it to a group of onlookers and potential sponsors, including the eminent Member of ParliamentJohn Henniker Heaton,in a field near Stanford Hall. However, days before, the engine crankshaft had broken and, so as not to disappoint his guests, he decided to fly theHawkinstead. The weather was stormy and rainy, but by 4 pm Pilcher decided the weather was good enough to fly.The canvas on the wings of theHawkhad become saturated by rain; unbeknown to Pilcher, this caused the fabric to contract putting excessive strain on thebambooframe: Whilst in mid-air, the tail snapped and Pilcher plunged 10 metres (30 ft) to the ground: he died two days later from his injuries, having never regained consciousness, with his triplane having never been publicly flown.

He is buried inBrompton Cemetery,west London.

Legacy

The damagedHawkwas given to theAeronautical Society of Great Britainwhich exhibited it in that state, then in 1909 it was restored and given on loan to the Royal Scottish Museum in Chambers Street (now the main part of theNational Museum of Scotland) which put the glider on display. It was on temporary loan to the 1911Scottish Exhibition of National History, Art and Industry,when a November storm caused damage to the building, and to the glider which was repaired before being put on display again in the museum. DuringWorld War IIit was put in storage. The fabric wings deteriorated, and restoration work was carried out by theShuttleworth Trust.Pilcher'sHawkwas again put back on display in the museum. In 1985 this became part ofNational Museums Scotland,and theHawkbecame part of the collection of itsNational Museum of FlightatEast Fortune.Further major conservation work was completed in the summer of 2016, and it is back again on display in its usual place, suspended above the atrium of the Science and Technology galleries of the National Museum of Scotland.

A stone monument to Pilcher stands in the field near Stanford Hall at the point where he crashed, and a full-sized replica of hisHawkglider is also displayed at Stanford Hall.

Pilcher is one of the unsuccessful aviation pioneers mentioned in theMarc BlitzsteincompositionThe Airborne Symphony.

In 2011 he was one of seven inaugural inductees to theScottish Engineering Hall of Fame.

Modern research

Replica of theBatin Glasgow'sRiverside Museum

Pilcher's plans were lost for many years, and his name was also long forgotten except by a few enthusiasts. When the centenary of theWright brothers' flight approached, a new effort was made to find the lost work, and some correspondence was found in a private American collection. From this it was possible to discern the general direction of his plans and the basis of his design. Based on Lilienthal's work, Pilcher understood how to produce lift using winglike structures, but at this time a full mathematical description was years away, so many elements were still missing.

In particular, Pilcher was stuck trying to design a wing that could lift the weight of an engine, the aircraft itself and the occupant – each increase in wing area increased the weight so much that yet more lift was required, requiring a larger wing – a seemingly vicious circle. Pilcher's breakthrough, thanks to correspondence with another pioneer,Octave Chanute,was to stack smaller, lighter wings one atop the other in an arrangement we know today as the biplane or triplane. This allowed the wings to generate much more lift without a corresponding increase in weight.

In 2003, a research effort carried out at the School of Aeronautics atCranfield University,commissioned by theBBC2television seriesHorizon,has shown that Pilcher's design was more or less workable, and had he been able to develop his engine, it is possible he would have succeeded in being the first to fly a heavier-than-air powered aircraft with some degree of control.

Cranfield built a full-sized working replica of Pilcher's aircraft, but, based onwind tunneltests with a scale model, they made several alterations to Pilcher's original designs, which they speculated Pilcher would have made, including filling in cut-away sections of the wings to increase the wing area, and therefore lift, and adding a swinging seat to aid control of the aircraft through shifting body weight; a refinement developed by Octave Chanute, which they believed Pilcher would have been aware of. They also added the Wright brothers' innovation of wing-warping as a safety backup for roll control. Pilcher's original design did not include aerodynamic controls such asaileronsorelevators.After a very short initial test flight piloted by the aircraft designer Bill Brookes, the craft achieved a sustained flight of 1 minute and 25 seconds, compared to 59 seconds for the Wright Brothers' best flight atKitty HawkinNorth Carolina.This was achieved under dead calm conditions as an additional safety measure; the Wrights in 1903 flew in a 20 mph+ wind to achieve sufficient airspeed.

A monument to Percy Pilcher is located at Upper Austin Lodge to the south ofEynsford,Kent. He regularly flew hisHawkglider from this location.

See also

• Aviation history
• Pilcher Peak

Bibliography

• Jarrett, Philip (1987).Another Icarus: Percy Pilcher and the Quest for Flight.Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.ISBN9780874745566.
• Jarrett, Philip (1996). "Soaring Inspiration: Otto Lilienthal's Influence in Britain".Air Enthusiast.No. 65. pp. 2–7.ISSN0143-5450.
• Brooks, Peter W. (9 March 1956)."A British Gliding Pioneer: The Experiments of Percy Pilcher".Flight.pp. 270–271.ISSN2059-3864.Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 23 April 2014.Retrieved1 October2022.

External links

• Info about Pilcher
• Guardian story about Pilcher
• The BBCHorizonprogramme's website about Pilcher
• Guide to Percy Pilcher, Materials for the Study of Aeronautical Experiments 1895-1899at theUniversity of Chicago Special Collections Research Center