INTRODUCTION

The end of the 1914–18 war saw Britain at the forefront of aircraft developments. Under the stress of war, the new science of aviation had developed at breakneck speed, and the quality of aircraft, pilots and engineering staff had improved beyond all recognition. Despite these advances, the end of the war removed the need for the large air forces that then existed, and the successful pilots, designers and engineers found themselves out of work in their own countries. But the developments had not gone unnoticed elsewhere, and there were soon opportunities overseas. Thus Cecil Lewis, a noted British fighter pilot, found himself recruited by the Vickers Aircraft Company, which had secured a contract with the warlord government based in Beijing, and spent two years trying to teach Chinese officers to fly.

Japan too was eager to capitalize on British wartime experience. The 1921 unofficial British aviation mission to Japan led by the Master of Sempill (Colonel William Forbes-Sempill) is well-known, not least because many see it as a foretaste of Sempill's later alleged leanings towards the Axis powers in the Second World War. Far less known is the presence of another, also unofficial yet arguably equally important, British aviation delegation in Japan at the same time. John Ferris hints at its presence in a reference to the British government allowing ‘aircraft manufacturers’ to go to Japan in 1921, though that is not an accurate description. As we shall see, this was not a group sent by British manufacturers, but one recruited from redundant staff from the Sopwith Aircraft Company.

This group arrived earlier than the Sempill mission and stayed longer. It was based at the Mitsubishi factory at Nagoya which would become the centre, first of the Mitsubishi Aircraft Company, and later of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. It was then the headquarters of the Mitsubishi Internal Combustion Engine Company, established to make aero engines. The Sempill mission, which was a substitute for the official delegation that the Japanese had sought, had close contacts with the British embassy, and the ambassador's annual reports for 1922 and 1923 noted its presence and its problems. yet, although the reports also reported the existence of the Mitsubishi factory, describing it as having ‘the largest actual and potential output [of aircraft] in Japan’, the British staff who had helped make this possible went unmentioned.