Beginnings
Henry Coxwell and James Glaisher were the first to fly from Hendon in a balloon called the Mammoth in 1862, and ballooning at the Brent Reservoir was a very popular spectacle for the crowds gathered on bank holidays late in the 19th century. The first powered flight from Hendon was in an 88-foot (27 m) long non-rigid airship built by Spencer Brothers of Highbury. It took off from the Welsh Harp Reservoir in 1909 and was piloted by Henry Spencer. Its only passenger was the Australian suffragette Muriel Matters. The first attempt at aeroplane flight was by H.P. Martin and G.H. Handasyde again at the Welsh Harp. They constructed a monoplane with four engines in the ballroom of the hotel, but were never able to get the result airborne.
Inspired by Louis Bleriot’s flight across the Channel, Everett, Edgecumbe and Co began to experiment with an aircraft to be built at their works at Colindale near Hendon, erecting a small hangar to house the it. Between 1908 and 1910 their “Grasshopper”, as the plane was called, taxied about and left the ground briefly, but refused to get truly airborne,these attempts attracting quite a crowd.
In 1906, before any powered flight had taken place in Britain, the Daily Mail newspaper had challenged aviators to fly from London to Manchester or vice-versa, offering a prize of £10,000. The journey had to be completed within twenty-four hours, with no more than two landings. Aircraft and engine design had improved sufficiently by 1910 to make an attempt to win the prize realistic, and both Claude Grahame-White and the French aviator Louis Paulhan prepared for the challenge during April 1910. Grahame-White made two attempts, but it was Paulhan who succeeded. He chose a field on the future aerodrome site as his point of departure. On 27 April he flew 117 miles from Hendon to Lichfield, easily the longest flight in the UK at that time. Before dawn on 28 April he took off and reached Burnage on the outskirts of Manchester after three hours 55 minutes in the air, during a period of just over twelve hours. This was the first true flight from the Hendon site.
Read more about this topic: Hendon Aerodrome
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