14 Dec 06
Bristol
Bristol dates back to 1910, when the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company built its first Boxkite in Filton. The Boxkite was similar to the French Voisin biplanes, and BCAC made 76 of them, first fitted with a Gregoire engine and then a Gnome rotary. Eight Boxkites were sold to Russia - the UK's first aeroplane exports - and one was delivered to the British military in 1911, the army's first plane. Boxkites were used in the early days of WWI, but they were slow and susceptible to wind; the F.2A/2B Fighter and Scout were far more accomplished, the Rolls-Royce-engined Fighter playing a key role on the Western Front. Post-war, BCAC bought bankrupt engine-maker Cosmos Engineering, which had formed out of the defunct Brazil-Straker car company, and renamed itself the Bristol Aeroplane Company.
Cosmos had developed an aircooled, two-row 14-cylinder engine and a smaller nine-cylinder unit that became known as the Bristol Jupiter. This reliable and powerful Jupiter engine was supplied for planes including the Handley-Page Hannibal and De Havilland Giant Moth passenger aircraft in the 1920s, the Junkers G31 and, for the RAF, the Gloster Gamecock and Boulton-Paul Sidestrand bombers. It was also built under licence in Japan, Russia and in Europe. Its successor, the Mercury, was similarly acclaimed, used by manufacturers worldwide including Saab.
Bristol Boxkite
Engine supply was more profitable for Bristol between the wars than its own range of aircraft, though around 350 single-seat Jupiter-engined Bulldogs, a lightweight interceptor biplane, were supplied to the RAF in 1928-35. Its World War II planes are perhaps its most famous, however: the Blenheim, Beaufort and Beaufighter bombers, powerful and strong planes with the Mercury, Taurus and Hercules engines.
Post-war, Bristol had a lot of spare capacity at its Filton site. It formed a joint venture with Frazer-Nash, which had been building pre-war BMWs in the UK, and created Bristol Cars - aided by plans and blueprints taken from BMW as part of post-war reparations. Production of the BMW 327-derived Bristol 400 began in 1946, shortly before Bristol created its large Brabazon airliner (a stillborn project), its more successful Britannia turbo-prop passenger plane, Freighter cargo planes and the Belvedere and Sycamore helicopters.
Bristol 156 Beaufighter
Despite groundbreaking research work into supersonic aircraft, the company was losing money and was split up. The Bristol Aero Engines division was merged with Armstrong-Siddeley in 1956 to form Bristol-Siddeley, and then again with Rolls-Royce in 1966; the remaining aircraft division merged with companies including Vickers and Hunting to form the British Aircraft Corporation and was later absorbed into British Aerospace and then BAE Systems. The helicopter activities were sold to Westland and missile research activities to Matra. Bristol Cars remains one of the few independent British car-makers, and continues to produce cars named for its aeronautical heritage, the Blenheim and the Fighter.
Discover our other Automobile and Aeroplane Retrospectives
