Edgar Percival - Interwar Period

Interwar Period

Following the First World War, Percival returned to Australia with three surplus aircraft, two Avro 504s and a de Havilland DH.6 aircraft to do film work, stunt flying and barnstorming plus charter flights, operating his own charter company. A number of notable flights occurred: in 1921, he surveyed the Melbourne-Brisbane route in an Avro 504, in 1923, he won the Melbourne to Geelong Race.

In Australia, Percival began to take a further interest in aircraft design; he built the winning entry in the 1924 Australian Aero Club competition to design a light aircraft. In 1926, flying an aircraft that he helped design, he competed in a Federal Government challenge for both design and piloting skills, winning £940 in prize money.

Later in the same year, Percival was involved in a landmark series of proving flights that helped establish the use of carrier-borne fighters, culminating in his being catapulted in a "navalised" Sopwith Pup off the USS Idaho battleship, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Percival returned to England in 1929 where he was appointed as an Air Ministry test pilot, specializing in amphibians, seaplanes and Schneider Trophy racers and went on to set up his own firm, the Percival Aircraft Company, to produce his aircraft designs. Edgar Percival was also very active as a pilot during the interwar period; not only did he compete with regular success, but his designs were widely used by other racing and record-setting pilots who held his products in very high regard. Noted racing pilots of the time who also flew Percival's machines included C.W.A. Scott, Jim and Amy Mollison, Charles Gardner and Giles Guthrie. Many came to Percival to have their machines specially built and modified for the task in hand – usually to extend their already long range.

Percival was a noted character on the air racing scene at the time, and was often referred to in the aeronautical press of the day as "The Hat," an epithet resulting from his omnipresent hat, which, characteristically (and resplendent in a lounge-suit), he also wore while flying. He was respected as a highly competitive and able pilot, taking great pride in being awarded the prize for "fastest time" in handicap air racing, as well as being a rather fiery, impatient and irascible businessman and employer. During this period, Edgar Percival served in the Reserve of Air Force Officers, 1929–1939 and was a founding member of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators.