Order of the Circular Wag: Henry Cave-Browne-Cave and Dame Fanny Houston
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I learned about these deserving nominees from Tim Harford's new book, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure, which was recently excerpted in Slate. Harford writes of how a philanthropic lady donated money to develop fighter planes in the 1930s when her government wouldn't, and how later, during WWII, a government bureaucrat took a chance on a descendent of that very fighter plane, which ended up saving Britain from the Nazis:
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"When Supermarine approached the ministry with a radical new design, an enterprising civil servant by the name of Air Commodore Henry Cave-Browne-Cave decided to bypass the regular commissioning process and order the new plane as "a most interesting experiment." The plane was the Supermarine Spitfire. [. . .]
Thanks to the Spitfire, Britain's tiny Royal Air Force defied overwhelming odds to fight off the Luftwaffe's onslaught in the Battle of Britain. It was a dismal mismatch: Hitler had been single-mindedly building up his forces in the 1930s, while British defense spending was at historical lows. The Luftwaffe entered the Battle of Britain with 2,600 operational planes, but the RAF boasted fewer than 300 Spitfires and 500 Hurricane fighters. The wartime Prime Minister himself, Winston Churchill, predicted that the Luftwaffe's first week of intensive bombing would kill 40,000 Londoners. But thanks in large part to the Spitfire's speed and agility, the Germans were unable to neutralize the RAF.
This meant the Germans were unable to launch an invasion that could quickly have overwhelmed the British Isles. Such an invasion would have made D-Day impossible, denying the United States its platform to liberate France. It would likely have cost the lives of 430,000 British Jews. It might even have given Germany the lead in the race for the atomic bomb, as many of the scientists who moved to the United States to work on the Manhattan Project were living in Britain when the Spitfires turned back the Luftwaffe. Winston Churchill was right to say of the pilots who flew the Spitfires and the Hurricanes, "Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few."' [. . .]
In 1929 and 1930, Mitchell's planes—the direct ancestors of the Spitfire—held the world record for speed, winning the Schneider Trophy set up to test competing designs. But the government, which was providing much of the funding for these record attempts, decided that they were frivolous in a time of austerity. Sir Hugh Trenchard, marshal of the Royal Air Force at the time, called high-speed planes "freak machines." Without the development money for the latest world record attempt—and with Henry Cave-Browne-Cave not yet on the scene to pay for an "experiment"—Supermarine was set to abandon the project.
Rescue came from the most unlikely character: Dame Fanny Houston, born in humble circumstances, had become the richest woman in the country after marrying a shipping millionaire and inheriting his fortune. Lady Houston's eclectic philanthropy knew few bounds: She supported oppressed Christians in Russia, coalminers, and the women's rights movement. And in 1931 she wrote a check to Supermarine that covered the entire development costs of the Spitfire's predecessor, the S6. Lady Houston was furious at the government's lack of support: "My blood boiled in indignation, for I know that every true Briton would rather sell his last shirt than admit that England could not afford to defend herself against all-comers." The S6 flew at an astonishing speed of 407.5 mph less than three decades after the Wright Brothers launched the Wright Flyer. England's pride was intact, and so was the Spitfire project. No wonder the historian A.J.P. Taylor later remarked that "the Battle of Britain was won by Chamberlain, or perhaps by Lady Houston."
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The book goes on to praise the need for diversity because we never know what bit of research or what prototype is going to be the one that ends up being critical. For their role in taking such chances and funding such experiments, the Order of the Circular Wag is hereby awarded to Cave-Browne-Cave and Dame Fanny.
-
I learned about these deserving nominees from Tim Harford's new book, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure, which was recently excerpted in Slate. Harford writes of how a philanthropic lady donated money to develop fighter planes in the 1930s when her government wouldn't, and how later, during WWII, a government bureaucrat took a chance on a descendent of that very fighter plane, which ended up saving Britain from the Nazis:
*
"When Supermarine approached the ministry with a radical new design, an enterprising civil servant by the name of Air Commodore Henry Cave-Browne-Cave decided to bypass the regular commissioning process and order the new plane as "a most interesting experiment." The plane was the Supermarine Spitfire. [. . .]
Thanks to the Spitfire, Britain's tiny Royal Air Force defied overwhelming odds to fight off the Luftwaffe's onslaught in the Battle of Britain. It was a dismal mismatch: Hitler had been single-mindedly building up his forces in the 1930s, while British defense spending was at historical lows. The Luftwaffe entered the Battle of Britain with 2,600 operational planes, but the RAF boasted fewer than 300 Spitfires and 500 Hurricane fighters. The wartime Prime Minister himself, Winston Churchill, predicted that the Luftwaffe's first week of intensive bombing would kill 40,000 Londoners. But thanks in large part to the Spitfire's speed and agility, the Germans were unable to neutralize the RAF.
This meant the Germans were unable to launch an invasion that could quickly have overwhelmed the British Isles. Such an invasion would have made D-Day impossible, denying the United States its platform to liberate France. It would likely have cost the lives of 430,000 British Jews. It might even have given Germany the lead in the race for the atomic bomb, as many of the scientists who moved to the United States to work on the Manhattan Project were living in Britain when the Spitfires turned back the Luftwaffe. Winston Churchill was right to say of the pilots who flew the Spitfires and the Hurricanes, "Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few."' [. . .]
In 1929 and 1930, Mitchell's planes—the direct ancestors of the Spitfire—held the world record for speed, winning the Schneider Trophy set up to test competing designs. But the government, which was providing much of the funding for these record attempts, decided that they were frivolous in a time of austerity. Sir Hugh Trenchard, marshal of the Royal Air Force at the time, called high-speed planes "freak machines." Without the development money for the latest world record attempt—and with Henry Cave-Browne-Cave not yet on the scene to pay for an "experiment"—Supermarine was set to abandon the project.
Rescue came from the most unlikely character: Dame Fanny Houston, born in humble circumstances, had become the richest woman in the country after marrying a shipping millionaire and inheriting his fortune. Lady Houston's eclectic philanthropy knew few bounds: She supported oppressed Christians in Russia, coalminers, and the women's rights movement. And in 1931 she wrote a check to Supermarine that covered the entire development costs of the Spitfire's predecessor, the S6. Lady Houston was furious at the government's lack of support: "My blood boiled in indignation, for I know that every true Briton would rather sell his last shirt than admit that England could not afford to defend herself against all-comers." The S6 flew at an astonishing speed of 407.5 mph less than three decades after the Wright Brothers launched the Wright Flyer. England's pride was intact, and so was the Spitfire project. No wonder the historian A.J.P. Taylor later remarked that "the Battle of Britain was won by Chamberlain, or perhaps by Lady Houston."
*
The book goes on to praise the need for diversity because we never know what bit of research or what prototype is going to be the one that ends up being critical. For their role in taking such chances and funding such experiments, the Order of the Circular Wag is hereby awarded to Cave-Browne-Cave and Dame Fanny.
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