Dart Aircraft Limited was a British aircraft manufacturer during the 1930s. Its facilities were located at 29 High Street North, Dunstable, Bedfordshire.
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Dart Aircraft Limited was a British aircraft manufacturer during the 1930s. Its facilities were located at 29 High Street North, Dunstable, Bedfordshire.
The company was founded by Alfred R.Weyl and Erich P.Zander, [1] as Zander and Weyl Limited at Dunstable. In March 1936 the company name was changed to Dart Aircraft Limited. The company began by constructing gliders, and also constructed replicas of several historic aircraft including in 1937 a replica of the Blériot cross-channel aircraft.
Alfred Richard Oscar Weyl, A.F.RAe.S., A.F.I.A.S., F.B.I.S., died on 23 February 1959. Born in Berlin 1898, he came to the UK in 1935 and acquired British nationality. In Germany he had held a number of responsible technical posts following active service in the Royal Prussian Air Corps in the First World War. He was a senior staff officer in the D.V.L. (Research Institute for Aeronautics) and was subsequently principal assistant to the professor of the aeronautical engineering department at Berlin university. At other periods he was in charge of special projects and did a considerable amount of test flying of prototypes. After the war he turned to design work and was responsible for a light sporting monoplane built by Udet-Flugzeugbau at Munich (later the Messerschmitt works). Soon after coming to England he founded the firm of Zander & Weyl in partnership with E. P. Zander. Later, as Dart Aircraft Ltd., the company produced the ultra-light Dart Kitten. Alfred Weyl was also an authority on armament (on which subject he contributed some important articles to Flight) and self-sealing fuel tanks, and his researches included tailless aircraft development, guided-missile design and aircraft plastics technology.(FLIGHT, 6 March 1959)
In 1946 E P Zander and H E Bolton founded the Hawkridge Aircraft Company, as a two-man business with a workshop for glider manufacture and maintenance in the main street of Dunstable, UK (northwest of London) to develop the Venture Glider prototype. Bolton, who had a lifelong interest in gliding, was referred to at the time as "one of the best engineers of his field". Venture BGA-640 (later BGA-688), registered G-ALMF, flew at Dunstable the following year (1947). The Venture was Hawkridge’s only design, but they also produced five Dagling primary gliders, two Grunau Babies, and a converted Slingsby Gull 3 which they called the Hawkridge Kittiwake. The Dunstable factory closed in 1950, and work carried on at Denham (London) for two years before the company dissolved and its founders went their separate ways. [2]
By 1936 the company had begun designing and constructing light single-engine aircraft:
Slingsby Aviation is a British aircraft company based in Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire, England. The company was founded on the building and design of gliders and sailplanes. From the early 1930s to around 1970 it built over 50% of all British club gliders and had success at national and international level competitions. It then produced some powered aircraft, notably the composite built Firefly trainer, before becoming a producer of specialised composite materials and components.
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The Dart Pup was a British single-seat ultralight monoplane designed and built by Zander and Weyl at Dunstable, Bedfordshire.
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The Sproule-Ivanoff Camel was a 1930s British single-seat medium performance glider designed by J.S Sproule and Alexander Ivanoff and built by Scott Light Aircraft of Dunstable, Bedfordshire.
The Dart Cambridge was a single-seat competition sailplane built in the United Kingdom in the 1930s. A development of the Grunau Baby, only two were built, flying with gliding clubs.
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The Manuel Crested and Willow Wrens formed a series of wooden, single-seat gliders designed in the UK by W. L. Manuel in the early 1930s, intended for slope soaring. Some were built by the designer, others from plans he supplied. The Dunstable Kestrel was a further development.
The Scott Viking 1 was a single seat, high-performance glider designed and built in the UK just before the Second World War. Only four were constructed, one setting records in Argentina and another remaining active into the 1980s.
The Jacobs Hols der Teufel was a single seat trainer glider produced in complete and plan forms in Germany from 1928. It was built and used worldwide.
