Special Naval Landing Forces
The Special Naval Landing Forces, were the marine troops of the Imperial Japanese Navy and were a part of the IJN Land Forces. They saw extensive service in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific theatre of World War II. Before the late 1920s the IJN did not have a separate marine force, instead it used naval landing forces or rikusentai formed from individual ships's crews, who received infantry training as part of their basic training, for special and/or temporary missions. In the late 1920s the navy began to form Special Naval Landing Forces as standing regiments; these forces were raised at — and took their names from — the four main naval districts/bases in Japan: Kure, Maizuru and Yokosuka. These SNLF units saw action in China from 1932 in the January 28 Incident and at the Battle of Shanghai in naval operations along the China coast and up the Yangtze River and its tributaries during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Soon, they became involved in successful Japanese seaborne assaults throughout South East Asia.
Other SNLF were raised from IJN personnel in China, at Hankow, Shanghai, for service in Canton and on the Yangtze River. On 7 December 1941 there were 16 SNLF units, this increased to 21 units during the war; the strengths of each SNLF ranged from the prewar peak of 1,200 to a 650 personnel. There was a special detachment in the Kwantung area, garrisoning the ports of Dairen and Ryojun; the SNLF were not a marine force, but was instead sailors who had basic infantry training and were employed in landings during the Russo-Japanese War and the Boxer Rebellion. Soon their training and equipment were improved upon drastically, their forces were given a variety of other operations as well. In 1941, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Yokosuka SNLF were converted to parachute units, they conducted more combat drops than Japanese Army parachute units during World War II. The SNLF paratroopers were used during the attack on Celebes and the Battle of Manado. Aside from the paratroopers, there were elite squads who conducted reconnaissance and raid operations.
From that point onward, the Landing Forces were influential in Japan's expansion of territories, their tactics of surprising their enemies through sea invasions proved effective. The original SNLF personnel were well-trained, high quality troops with good morale and they performed well against opposition across Southeast Asia. However, like all landing forces they experienced heavy casualties when faced with determined resistance, such as at the invasion of Timor and the Battle of Milne Bay; this was due to their unwillingness to surrender, when out of ammunition, they would resort to hand-to-hand fighting with their swords and bayonets. To combat defended positions in the Pacific, the Landing Forces created new tactics and techniques, that would be adopted by the Allies in their sea-borne invasions. In a well known last stand in 1943, 2,619 men of the 7th Sasebo SNLF and 2,000 base personnel at the Battle of Tarawa accounted for over 3,000 U. S. Marine Corps casualties. Kure Naval Base 1st Kure SNLF-At Hainan Naval District, 3rd China Fleet 2nd Kure SNLF 3rd Kure SNLF 5th Kure SNLF 6th Kure SNLF 7th Kure SNLF Maizuru Naval Base 1st Maizuru SNLF 2nd Maizuru SNLF 4th Maizuru SNLF 5th Maizuru SNLF Sasebo Naval Base 1st Sasebo SNLF 2nd Sasebo SNLF-Under 32nd Special Base Force, 3rd Fleet 5th Sasebo SNLF 6th Sasebo SNLF 7th Sasebo SNLF 8th Sasebo SNLF Shanghai Naval Base Sasebo Combined SNLF Yokosuka Naval Base 1st Yokosuka SNLF 2nd Yokosuka SNLF 3rd Yokosuka SNLF 4th Yokosuka SNLF 5th Yokosuka SNLF 6th Yokosuka SNLF 7th Yokosuka SNLF Ryojun SNLF: special naval guard detached in Ryojun port, Kwantung belonged in Ryojun Guard District.
Shanghai SNLF: special naval guard based in Shanghai port, China belonged in China Theater Fleet. Merged into Canton Special Base Force based in Guangzhou area. Yangtze SNLF: special river squadron detached along the Yangtze river area inside of 1st China Fleet. Hankow SNLF: special naval guard based in Hankow and Wuchang ports,belonged to Middle River Division,inside Yangtze River Fleet and 1st China Fleet. Canton SNLF: special naval guard detached in Guangzhou port, Kwangtung belonged inside of Canton Special Base Force. See article:Japanese marine paratroopers of World War II Yokosuka Naval Base 1st Yokosuka SNLF the 1st was disbanded after its operations in Celebes were completed. 3rd Yokosuka SNLF Made a drop on Timor. Taken into the 1st Yokosuka SNLF. See article:Imperial Japanese Navy Armor Units Shanghai SNLF Tank Company Milne Tank Platoon of Kure 5th SNLF Tarawa Tank Unit of Sasebo 7th SNLF Kwajalein Armor Unit of Sasebo 7th SNLF Navy tank unit of 55th Guard Unit,Yokosuka 1st SNLF Itoh Armored Detachment SNLF Makin Armor SNLF Detachment of Navy 3rd Special Base Force SNLF infantry training centers: Located in main bases of Kure, Sasebo, Yokosuka along special training centers of Ryojun and Dairen in Kantogun.
SNLF paratrooper school: Recruits were trained at the army/navy paratrooper training base on Kanto Plain. SNLF land armor school: Created in the Tateyama IJN Ordnance School, across from Tokyo on the Boso Peninsula. SNLF amphibious armor school: Was established in the IJN aquatic armour unit at Q-Base on Nasakejima in 1943 and the first trained units were sent to Rabaul and the Marshall Islands in October of same year. On board ship the sailors of the SNLF wore their standard IJN blue or white uniforms but when on land the SNLF wore a uniform similar to that of the Imperial Japanese
Vickers Crossley Armoured Car
The Vickers Crossley Armoured Car a/k/a the Model 25 Vickers Crossley armoured car, was a British made military vehicle used by the British Army in India and exported to different countries, including Japan. The Model 25 armoured car was a British designed and manufactured military vehicle, which the British Army used in India; the Model 25 was exported. The Imperial Japanese Army saw a need for increased mechanization, the Kwantung Army began to import foreign-built vehicles, including the Model 25; the Kwantung Army used them during the Mukden Incident, a staged event engineered by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for the Japanese invasion in 1931 of northeastern China, known as Manchuria. The Manchukuo Imperial Army, established by Imperial Japan in Manchuria received some Model 25s for use; the Imperial Japanese Navy imported the Model 25 during the early 1930s for use in China. The Model 25 was used specially by the Special Naval Landing Forces during the hostilities between Japanese military and the Chinese 19th Route Army in what became known as the January 28 Incident or Shanghai Incident in 1932.
The armoured cars were imported to strengthen the Japanese forces in and around the urban city and port area. The Argentine Regiment of Mounted Grenadiers received 6 Vickers-Crossley Model 26 armoured cars in 1928. Derived from the British Indian Army cars, they had 2 axles instead of 3, they saw action during the 1930 Argentine coup d'état and some are used by the Argentine Federal Police. The vehicle used welded armor with a thickness of 6 mm, it had an hemispherical turret, which mounted twin 7.7 mm water-cooled Vickers machine guns with a domed cupola. The engine produced 50 hp giving the vehicle a top speed of 65 to 70 km/h. Duus, Peter; the Cambridge History of Japan: The Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-22357-7. Hara, Tomio. Japanese Combat Cars, Light Tanks, Tankettes. AFV Weapons Profile No. 54. Profile Publications Limited. Tomczyk, Andrzej. Japanese Armor Vol. 1. AJ Press. ISBN 83-7237-097-4. Taki's Imperial Japanese Army Page - Akira Takizawa The Crossley "IGA1" armoured car
Rebadging
Badge engineering, sometimes called rebadging, is the practice of applying a different badge or trademark to an existing product and subsequently marketing the variant as a distinct product. Due to the high cost of designing and engineering a new model or establishing a brand, economies of scale make it less expensive to rebadge a product once or multiple times than to create different models; the term badge engineering is an intentionally ironic misnomer, in that little or no actual engineering takes place. The term originated with the practice of replacing an automobile's emblems to create an ostensibly new model sold by a different maker. Changes may be confined to swapping badges and emblems, or may encompass minor styling differences, as with cosmetic changes to headlights, tail lights and rear fascias and outer body skins. More extreme examples involve differing drivetrains; the term badge engineered does not apply to vehicles that share a common platform architecture but are uniquely designed so that they may look different from each other.
This is achieved by not sharing visible parts, maintaining a host of underlying parts specific to their respective applications. Although platform sharing involves rebadging, it often extends much further than that, as an automobile platform may be used with many different applications. Rebadging in the automotive industry can be compared with white-label products in other consumer goods industries, such as consumer electronics and power tools; the first case of badge engineering began in 1917 with the Texan automobile assembled in Fort Worth, that made use of Elcar bodies made in Elkhart, Indiana."Probably the industry's first example of one car becoming another" occurred in 1926 when Nash Motors' newly introduced smaller-sized Ajax models were discontinued in 1926 after over 22,000 Ajax cars were sold during the brand's inaugural year. The chairman and CEO of the company, Charles W. Nash, ordered that the Ajax models be marketed as the "Nash Light Six", Nash being a known and respected automobile brand.
Production was stopped for two days so Nash emblems and radiator shells could be exchanged on all unshipped Ajax cars. Conversion kits were distributed at no charge to Ajax owners to transform their cars and protect the investment they had made in purchasing an automobile made by Nash. Starting with the beginning of General Motors in 1923, chassis and platforms were shared with all brands. GMC, a truck builder, began to offer their products branded as Chevrolet, vehicles produced by GM were built on common platforms shared with Chevrolet, Buick and Cadillac. Exterior appearances were upgraded between these vehicle brands. For 1958, GM was promoting their fiftieth year of production, introduced Anniversary models for each brand; the 1958 models shared a common appearance on the top models for each brand. A example was Wolseley Motors after it was bought out by William Morris. After World War I, the "Wolseley started to lose its identity and succumbed to badge engineering." This was repeated with the consolidation of Austin Motor Company and the Nuffield Organisation to form the British Motor Corporation.
The rationalization of production to gain efficiencies "did not extend to marketing" and each "model was adapted, by variation in trim and accessories, to appeal to customer loyalties for whom the badge denoting the company of origin was an important selling advantage...'Badge Engineering', as it became known, was symptomatic of a policy of sales competition between the constituent organizations." The ultimate example of BMC badge engineering was the BMC ADO16, available badged as a Morris, MG, Wolseley and Vanden Plas. Badge engineering occurs when an individual manufacturer, such as General Motors, owns a portfolio of different brands, markets the same car under a different brand, it may be done to expand the ranges of different brands in one market without developing new models, such as selling one car as a Chevrolet, a GMC and a Cadillac by GM in the United States. It may be done to sell the same model in different regions and markets under a different name. For example, cars built by Daewoo, now owned by GM, are no longer badged as Daewoos.
Instead, they are now badged as Chevrolets. In Australia and New Zealand, where Daewoo was unsuccessful, they were rebadged as Holden models; the Australian car manufacturing industry experienced major badge reengineering during the 1980s and 1990s as part of the failed Button car plan. In Japan, Toyota and Honda used this approach to expand vehicle production by offering one car at multiple Japanese dealerships. Toyota took the Corolla, exclusive to Toyota Corolla Store locations and sold it as the Toyota Sprinter, exclusive to Toyota Auto Store locations. Nissan followed suit with the Nissan Cedric, sold an identical bodystyle of the Cedric, called the Nissan Gloria, sold the Cedric at Nissan Bluebird Store, while the Gloria was sold at Nissan Prince Store. Honda pursued this marketing approach with the Honda Accord, sold in 1984 at Honda Clio locations and sold it as the Honda Vigor at Honda Verno locations; the difference to this method, as oppose
Four-wheel drive
Four-wheel drive called 4×4 or 4WD, refers to a two-axled vehicle drivetrain capable of providing torque to all of its wheels simultaneously. It may be full-time or on-demand, is linked via a transfer case providing an additional output drive-shaft and, in many instances, additional gear ranges. A four-wheeled vehicle with torque supplied to both axles is described as "all-wheel drive". However, "four-wheel drive" refers to a set of specific components and functions, intended off-road application, which complies with modern use of the terminology. 4WD systems were used in many different vehicle platforms. There is no universally accepted set of terminology to describe the various architectures and functions; the terms used by various manufacturers reflect marketing rather than engineering considerations or significant technical differences between systems. SAE International's standard J1952 recommends only the term All-Wheel-Drive with additional sub classifications which cover all types of AWD/4WD/4x4 systems found on production vehicles.
Four-by-four or 4x4 is used to refer to a class of vehicles in general. Syntactically, the first figure indicates the total number of wheels, the second indicates the number that are powered. So 4x2 means a four-wheel vehicle that transmits engine torque to only two axle-ends: the front two in front-wheel drive or the rear two in rear-wheel drive. A 6×4 vehicle has three axles, two of which provide torque to two axle ends each. If this vehicle were a truck with dual rear wheels on two rear axles, so having ten wheels, its configuration would still be formulated as 6x4. During World War II, the U. S. military would use spaces and a capital'X' – like "4 X 2" or "6 X 4". Four-wheel drive refers to vehicles with two axles providing torque to four axle ends. In the North American market the term refers to a system, optimized for off-road driving conditions; the term "4WD" is designated for vehicles equipped with a transfer case which switches between 2WD and 4WD operating modes, either manually or automatically.
All-wheel drive was synonymous with "four-wheel drive" on four-wheeled vehicles, six-wheel drive on 6×6s, so on, being used in that fashion at least as early as the 1920s. Today in North America the term is applied to both heavy vehicles as well as light passenger vehicles; when referring to heavy vehicles the term is applied to mean "permanent multiple-wheel drive" on 2×2, 4×4, 6×6 or 8×8 drive train systems that include a differential between the front and rear drive shafts. This is coupled with some sort of anti-slip technology hydraulic-based, that allows differentials to spin at different speeds but still be capable of transferring torque from a wheel with poor traction to one with better. Typical AWD systems are not intended for more extreme off-road use; when used to describe AWD systems in light passenger vehicles, it refers to a system that applies torque to all four wheels and/or is targeted at improving on-road traction and performance, rather than for off-road applications. Some all-wheel drive electric vehicles solve this challenge using one motor for each axle, thereby eliminating a mechanical differential between the front and rear axles.
An example of this is the dual motor variant of the Tesla Model S, which on a millisecond scale can control the torque distribution electronically between its two motors. Individual-wheel drive is used to describe electric vehicles with each wheel being driven by its own electric motor; this system has inherent characteristics that would be attributed to four-wheel drive systems like the distribution of the available torque to the wheels. However, because of the inherent characteristics of electric motors, torque can be negative, as seen in the Rimac Concept One and SLS AMG Electric; this can have drastic effects, as in better handling in tight corners. The term IWD can refer to a vehicle with any number of wheels. For example, the Mars rovers are 6-wheel IWD. Per the SAE International standard J1952, AWD is the preferred term for all the systems described above; the standard subdivides AWD systems into three categories. Part-Time AWD systems require driver intervention to couple and decouple the secondary axle from the driven axle and these systems do not have a center differential.
The definition notes. Full-Time AWD systems drive both rear axles at all times via a center differential; the torque split of that differential may be fixed or variable depending on the type of center differential. This system can be used on any surface at any speed; the definition does not address exclusion of a low range gear. On-Demand AWD systems drive the secondary axle via an active or passive coupling device or "by an independently powered drive system"; the standard notes that in some cases the secondary drive system may provide the primary vehicle propulsion. An example is a hybrid AWD vehicle where the primary axle is driven by an internal combustion engine and secondary axle is driven by an electric motor; when the internal combustion engine is shut off the secondary, electrically driven axle is the only driven axle. On-demand systems function with only one powered axle until torque is required by the second axle. At that point either a passive or active coupling sends torque to the secondary axle.
In addition to the above primary classifications the J1952 standard notes seconda
Irish Army
The Irish Army, known as the Army, is the land component of the Defence Forces of Ireland. As of May 2016 7,300 men and women serve in the Irish Army on a permanent basis and 1,600 active Reservists, divided into two geographically organised brigades; as well as maintaining its primary roles of defending the State and internal security within the State, since 1958 the Army has had a continuous presence in peacekeeping missions around the world. The Army participates in the European Union Battlegroups; the Air Corps and Naval Service support the Army in carrying out its roles. The roles of the Army are: To defend the Irish state against armed aggression. To give aid to the civil power; this means that the Army assists, when requested, the Garda Síochána, who have primary responsibility for law and order in Ireland. To participate in multinational peace support, crisis management and humanitarian relief operations in support of the United Nations peacekeeping missions, EUFOR. To carry out other duties which may be assigned to them from time to time.
For example, assistance on the occasion of natural disasters, assistance in connection with the maintenance of essential services, etc. The Defence Forces, including the Army, trace their origins to the Irish Republican Army, the guerrilla organisation that fought British government forces during the Irish War of Independence. In February 1922, the Provisional Government began to recruit volunteers into the new National Army; the Provisional Government was set up on 16 January 1922 to assume power in the new Irish Free State. On 31 January 1922, a former IRA unit assumed its new role as the first unit of the new National Army and took over Beggars Bush Barracks, the first British barracks to be handed to the new Irish Free State; the National Army's first Commander-in-Chief, Michael Collins, envisaged the new Army being built around the pre-existing IRA, but over half of this organisation rejected the compromises required by the Anglo-Irish Treaty which established the Irish Free State, favoured upholding the revolutionary Irish Republic, established in 1919.
As such, from January 1922 until late June and the outbreak of the Irish Civil War, there existed two antagonistic armed forces: the National Army, built from a nucleus of pro-Treaty IRA units, armed and paid by the Provisional Government. Both forces continued to use the Irish-language title Óglaigh na hÉireann, used by both the original IRA and its predecessor, the Irish Volunteers of the mid-1910s. In July 1922, Dáil Éireann authorised raising a force of 35,000 men; the National Army lacked the expertise necessary to train a force of that size, such that one fifth of its officers and half of its soldiers were Irish ex-servicemen of the British Army, who brought considerable experience to it. The Irish Civil War broke out on 28 June 1922; the pro-Treaty Sinn Féin party had won an election on 16 June. The British were applying increasing pressure on the government to assert its control over the anti-Treaty units of the IRA who had occupied the Four Courts in Dublin. In the early weeks of the Civil War, the newly formed National Army was composed of pro-Treaty IRA units the Dublin Guard, whose members had personal ties to Michael Collins.
Its size was estimated in contrast to about 15,000 anti-Treaty IRA men. However, the Free State soon recruited far more troops, with the army's size mushrooming to 55,000 men and 3,500 officers by the end of the Civil War in May 1923. Many of its recruits were war-hardened Irishmen who had served in the British Army during the First World War. W. R. E. Murphy, a second-in-command of the National Army in the civil war, had been a lieutenant colonel in the British Army, as had Emmet Dalton. Indeed, the Free State recruited experienced soldiers from; the British government supplied the National Army with uniforms, small arms, ammunition and armoured units, which enabled it to bring the Civil War to a speedy conclusion. The Four Courts and O'Connell Street were taken from anti-Treaty IRA units during the Battle of Dublin in July 1922; the anti-Treaty IRA were dislodged from Limerick and Waterford in that month and Cork and County Kerry were secured in a decisive seaborne offensive in August. The remainder of the war was a Guerrilla War concentrated in the south and west of the country.
On 15 October, directives were sent to the press by Free State director of communications, Piaras Béaslaí to the effect that Free State troops were to be referred to as the "National Army", the "Irish Army", or just "troops". The Anti-Treaty troops were to be called "Irregulars" and were not to be referred to as "Republicans", "IRA", "forces", or "troops", nor were the ranks of their officers allowed to be given. National Army units the Dublin Guard, were implicated in a series of atrocities against captured anti-Treaty fighters; the National Army suffered about 800 fatalities in the Civil War, including its commander-in-chief, Michael Collins. Collins was succeeded by Richard Mulcahy. In April 1923, the anti-Treaty IRA called a ceasefire, in May it ordered its fighters to "dump arms" ending the war. With the end of the Civil War, the National Army had grown too big for a peacetime role and was too expensive for the new Irish state to ma
Coventry Climax
Coventry Climax was a British forklift truck, fire pump and other speciality engine manufacturer. The company was started in 1903 as Lee Stroyer, but two years following the departure of Stroyer, it was relocated to Paynes Lane and renamed as Coventry-Simplex by H. Pelham Lee, a former Daimler employee, who saw a need for competition in the nascent piston engine market. An early user was GWK, who produced over 1,000 light cars with Coventry-Simplex two-cylinder engines between 1911 and 1915. Just before World War I a Coventry-Simplex engine was used by Lionel Martin to power the first Aston Martin car. Ernest Shackleton selected Coventry-Simplex to power the tractors that were to be used in his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914. Hundreds of Coventry-Simplex engines were manufactured during World War I to be used in generating sets for searchlights. In 1917 the company was moved to East Street, Coventry. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s they supplied engines to many companies manufacturing light cars such as Abbey, AJS, Ashton-Evans, Bayliss-Thomas, Crossley, Crouch, GWK, Morgan, Triumph and Standard.
In the 1920s the company moved to Friars Road, Coventry and in the late 1930s they acquired the former Riley premises on Widdrington Road, Coventry. In the early 1930s the company supplied engines for buses. With the closure of Swift in 1931, the company was left with a stock of engines that were converted to drive electric generators, giving the company an entry into a new field; the economic problems of the 1930s hit the business hard and Leonard Pelham Lee, who had taken over from his father, diversified into the production of water-pumping equipment and the "Godiva" was born. Going into the war, Coventry Climax used their marine diesel experience to further develop and build the Armstrong Whitworth supercharged H30 multifuel engine for military use; this has been fitted as an auxiliary engine in the British Chieftain and Challenger battle tanks and Rapier anti-aircraft missile systems. In the late 1940s, the company shifted away from automobile engines and into other markets, including marine diesels, fire pumps, forklift trucks.
In 1946, the ET199 was announced, which the company claimed was the first British-produced forklift truck. The ET199 was designed to carry a 4,000 lb load with a 24-inch load centre, with a 9 ft lift height. In 1950, Harry Mundy and Walter Hassan joined Coventry Climax, a new lightweight all-aluminium overhead camshaft engine was developed in response to the government's ambitious requisition outline asking for a portable fire pump, capable of pumping double the amount of water specified in the previous outline, with half the weight; this was designated the FW, for "Feather Weight". The engine was displayed at the Motor Show in London and attracted attention from the motor racing fraternity for its high "horsepower per pound of weight". With strong persuasions at the show including those by Cyril Kieft and a young Colin Chapman, Lee concluded that success in competition could lead to more customers for the company and so the team designed the FWA, a Feather Weight engine for Automobiles; the first Coventry Climax racing engine appeared at the 1954 24 Hours of Le Mans in the front of one of two Kieft 1100 sports racers, but both cars failed to finish the race due to problems unrelated to the engines.
The FWA became popular in sportscar racing and was followed by the Mark II and by the FWB which had a capacity of nearly 1.5-litres. The new Formula Two regulations suited the 1.5-litre engine and it became the engine to have in F2 racing. The following year, the first Climax engines began to appear in Formula One in the back of Cooper chassis; these were FWBs but the FPF engine followed. Stirling Moss scored the company's first Formula One victory, in Argentina in 1958, using a 2-litre version of the engine. In general terms, the engines were not powerful enough to compete with the 2.5-litre machinery and it was not until the 2.5-litre version of the FPF arrived in 1959 that Jack Brabham was able to win the world championship in a Cooper-Climax. At the same time, the company produced the FWE engine for Lotus Elite and this enjoyed considerable success in sports car racing, with a series of class wins at the Le Mans events in the early 1960s. In 1961, there was a new 1.5-litre formula and the FPF engine was given a new lease on life, although the company began work on a V8 engine, designated the FWMV, this began winning races in 1962 with Jim Clark.
There were a total of 22 Grand Prix victories before 1966 with crossplane, two- and four-valve versions of the FWMV. When the new, 3-litre, formula was introduced, Coventry Climax decided not to build engines for the new formula and withdrew from racing after the unsuccessful FWMW project, with the exception of the new 2-Litre version of the FWMV. In the early 1960s, Coventry Climax was approached by Rootes to mass-produce FWMAs for use in a compact family car project called Apex with an all-aluminium alloy over head cam engine combined with a full-syncromesh aluminium transaxle; this combination was considered radical at the time the syncromesh on all forward gears, declared'impossible' by Alec Issigonis of BMC Mini fame. The adoption to mass-production was successful, the project came out to the market as the 875cc Hillman Imp totaling over 400,000 units made by 1976 including the 998cc version. At Earls Court in 1962 Coventry Climax' chairman Leonard Pelham Lee announced the withdrawal from building Formula 1 e
Fairey Aviation Company
The Fairey Aviation Company Limited was a British aircraft manufacturer of the first half of the 20th century based in Hayes in Middlesex and Heaton Chapel and RAF Ringway in Lancashire. Notable for the design of a number of important military aircraft, including the Fairey III family, the Swordfish and Gannet, it had a strong presence in the supply of naval aircraft, built bombers for the RAF. After World War II the company diversified into mechanical boat-building; the aircraft manufacturing arm was taken over by Westland Aircraft in 1960. Following a series of mergers and takeovers, the principal successor businesses to the company now trade as FBM Babcock Marine Ltd, Spectris plc, WFEL, the latter manufacturing portable bridges. Founded in 1915 by Charles Richard Fairey and Belgian engineer Ernest Oscar Tips on their departure from Short Brothers, the company first built under licence or as subcontractor aircraft designed by other manufacturers; the first aircraft designed and built by the Fairey Aviation for use on an aircraft carrier was the Fairey Campania a patrol seaplane that first flew in February 1917.
In the third report of the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors, reported in Flight magazine of 15 January 1925, aviation figures prominently. C. R. Fairey and the Fairey Aviation Co. Ltd, was awarded £4,000 for work on the Hamble Baby seaplane. Fairey subsequently designed many aircraft types and, missiles; the Propeller Division was located at the Hayes factory, used designs based on the patents of Sylvanus Albert Reed. C. R. Fairey first encountered Reed’s products in the mid-1920s when investigating the possibilities of the Curtiss D-12 engine; the Curtiss company manufactured propellers designed by Reed. Another example of utilising the talents of independent designers was the use of flaps, designed by Robert Talbot Youngman which gave many of the Fairey aircraft and those of other manufacturers improved manoeuvrability. Aircraft production was at the factory in North Hyde Road, with flight testing carried out at Northolt Aerodrome, Great West Aerodrome, Heston Airport, at White Waltham.
Losing the Great West Aerodrome in 1944 by requisition by the Air Ministry to build London Heathrow Airport, with no compensation until 1964, caused a severe financial shock which may have hastened the company's end. One notable Hayes-built aircraft type during the late 1930s and World War II was the Swordfish. In 1957, the prototype Fairey Rotodyne vertical takeoff airliner was built at Hayes. After the merger with Westland Helicopters, helicopters such as the Westland Wasp and Westland Scout were built at Hayes in the 1960s. Receipt of large UK military contracts in the mid-1930s necessitated acquisition of a large factory in Heaton Chapel Stockport in 1935, used as the National Aircraft Factory No. 2 during World War I. Flight test facilities were built at Manchester's Ringway Airport, the first phase opening in June 1937. A few Hendon monoplane bombers built at Stockport were flown from Manchester's Barton Aerodrome in 1936. Quantity production of Battle light bombers at Stockport/Ringway commenced in mid 1937.
Large numbers of Fulmar fighters and Barracuda dive-bombers followed during World War II. Fairey's built 498 Bristol Beaufighter aircraft and over 660 Handley Page Halifax bombers in their northern facilities. Postwar and Gannet naval aircraft were supplemented by sub-contracts from de Havilland for Vampire and Venom jet fighters. Aircraft production and modification at Stockport and Ringway ceased in 1960. On 13 March 1959 Flight reported that Fairey Aviation Ltd was to be reorganised following a proposal to concentrate aircraft and allied manufacturing activities in the United Kingdom into a new wholly owned subsidiary called the Fairey Aviation Co. Ltd; the Board felt that the change, taking effect on 1 April 1959, would enable the Rotodyne and other aircraft work to be handled by a concern concentrating on aviation. It is proposed to change the company's name to the Fairey Co. Ltd, to concentrate general engineering activities in the Stockport Aviation Co. Ltd, whose name would become Fairey Engineering Ltd.
Under these changes, the Fairey Co. would become a holding company, with control of policy and finance throughout the group. The government in the late 1950s was determined to rationalise the UK's aero industry; the Ministry of Defence saw the future of helicopters as being best met by a single manufacturer. The merger of Fairey's aviation interests with Westland Aircraft took place in early 1960 shortly after Westland had acquired the Saunders-Roe group and the helicopter division of the Bristol Aeroplane Company. Westland Aircraft and the Fairey Company announced that they had reached agreement for the sale by Fairey to Westland of the issued share capital of Fairey Aviation, which operated all Fairey's UK aviation interests. Westland acquired all Fairey’s aircraft manufacturing business and Fairey's 10% investment in the Aircraft Manufacturing Company Fairey's workforce employed on manufacture of the outer wings of the Airco D. H.121. was transferred to Westland. Fairey received 2,000,000 Westland shares of 5 shillings each and a cash payment of £1.4m.
The sale did not include Fairey Air Surveys or the works at Heston, home to the weapon division, which had a contract for research into advanced anti-tank missile systems. Fairey's remaining net worth was £9.5m. In 1977 the Fairey Group went into receivership and was nationalised by th
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