L. E. Baynes - Career

Career

After leaving school, Baynes started work in the fledgling aircraft industry with Airco (The Aircraft Manufacturing Company) at Hendon Aerodrome. From there, he moved on to Short Brothers at Rochester, where he redesigned the Short Singapore flying boat.

In 1930, Baynes designed the Scud light sailplane, built at first by Brant Aircraft Limited at Croydon. The Scud was successful, and in 1931, Baynes went into partnership with E.D. Abbott as Abbott-Baynes Sailplanes Ltd, of Farnham, Surrey, to build Scud I sailplanes, and later the Scud II (1932). In 1935, a Scud II flown by Mungo Buxton took the British Height Record for a glider to 8,750 feet (2,666 m).

In 1935, Sir John Carden, an authority on tank design who was interested in gliding, outlined to Baynes his requirements for a self-launching sailplane. Baynes designed the Scud III sailplane, built by Abbott-Baynes Sailplanes, which when fitted with an engine was called the Carden-Baynes Auxiliary. That carried a retractable 249 cc Villiers engine mounted on the top of the fuselage. The engine drove a pusher-propeller and produced 9 bhp, and the capacity of the fuel tank was enough to run the engine for thirty minutes. The 249 cc Auxiliary is believed to be the lowest-powered aircraft in the history of powered flight.

Also in 1935, the Mignet HM.14 Pou du Ciel "Flying Flea" built and flown by Stephen Appleby, was rebuilt by Abbott-Baynes Sailplanes, incorporating modifications designed by Baynes, who had witnessed its forced landing at Heston Aerodrome. The success of the Flying Flea family of homebuilt aircraft arose from an English translation of Mignet's book, The Flying Flea (1935), showing readers how to build their own aircraft at home. Abbott-Baynes Sailplanes Ltd went into limited production of a developed version named the Baynes Cantilever Pou.

Following the death of John Carden in December 1935, in April 1936, Baynes set up Carden-Baynes Aircraft at Heston Aerodrome, and designed the Carden-Baynes Bee, a two-seat wooden aircraft with two Carden-Ford engines in pusher configuration.

During the Second World War, Baynes was the aviation adviser to Alan Muntz & Co at Heston Aerodrome, specialists in weapons systems, and he organized an aircraft division of the company. In 1941, he put up a proposal for a detachable wing with a 100-foot wingspan which when attached to a tank would turn it into a glider. This concept was developed as far as the famous Baynes Bat prototype, with most of the test flights being piloted by Flight Lieutenant Robert Kronfeld.

Baynes also worked on designs for long-range bombers, and the V-22 Osprey was an American aircraft very similar to a bomber design submitted to the British government by Baynes during the Second World War.

After the war, in the 1940s and 1950s, Baynes was busy with research in the area of variable-sweep supersonic aircraft: In 1948 he patented in Britain and US a design for a supersonic variable-sweep wing and tail fighter, the design was built and wind tunnel test were completed successfully, but the design failed to receive government backing.

He also designed interiors for airliners, invented the vertical lift plane and the high-speed hydrofoil.

Baynes designed the Youngman-Baynes High Lift, an experimental, flying test-bed for the system of slotted flaps invented by R.T. Youngman. It used components from the Percival Proctor, and was built by Heston Aircraft Company Ltd. The first flight was at Heston Aerodrome on 5 February 1948, carrying the military serial VT789.

A Scud II built in 1935 is still airworthy, and is believed to be the oldest flying glider in the United Kingdom.