Throughout his career, Lanchester’s phenomenal engineering output was directed mainly towards the automobile which proved in his day to be a more suitable vehicle than the aeroplane for the practical application of the products of his genius. Aeronautics remained always a compelling avocation “wholly individual … never backed by funds from external sources”, to quote his own words. During the First World War he did contribute to the practical solution of a serious tail flutter problem on Handley Page and de Havilland aircraft, making him probably one of the first applied aeroelasticians. However, his major contributions, cited in the 1931 award of the Guggenheim medal, were to the fundamental theory of aerodynamics. The full extent of these contributions is still being explored as Dr. J. P. Jones in the Thirteenth Lanchester Lecture points out. His contributions to automotive engineering, on the other hand, were immediately reduced to practice and it therefore seems appropriate in this Fourteenth Lanchester Lecture which it is my great privilege to present, to examine whether, as we continue the full exploitation of his discoveries in aeronautics, the aeroplane will ever be able to complement, possibly even replace to a degree, the ubiquitous automobile to whose practical realisation as a safe, comfortable and reliable transport medium he contributed so much.

In 1912 Sydney Camm was the enthusiastic secretary of the Windsor Model Aeroplane Club (WMAC) designing and making models and starting the design of a man-carrying glider. In the early months of 1966 Sir Sydney Camm was in correspondence with Dr. Jamison of Bristol Siddeley Engines about the possibilities and potential of hypersonic fighter aircraft. In the intervening period he had been Chief Designer, and later a Director and Chief Engineer of the Hawker Company at Kingston for 41 years. This shows how impossible it is to cover, or even attempt to cover, his life and Work in any detail in a lecture of reasonable length. There is enough material for a series of lectures, of which this must be looked on only as the first. Because this is the first, I propose to take advantage of the fact and give a broad general review highlighting the main periods and achievements of his career, although even this is difficult in view of the steady intensity of his effort and his constant devotion to aviation right up to his death.