Bristol Aeroplane Company

The Bristol Aeroplane Company (formerly British and Colonial Aeroplane Company) was a major British aircraft company which, in 1959, merged with several major British aircraft companies, to become the British Aircraft Corporation, later part of British Aerospace, now BAE Systems. The BAC works were located in Filton, about 4 miles north of Bristol city centre.

History

The British and Colonial Aeroplane Company began building primitive Bristol Boxkites in a former tram shed at Filton in 1910. A few years later, during the First World War, the more advanced Bristol Fighter was in mass production for the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), later the Royal Air Force (RAF).

In 1920, BCAC became The Bristol Aeroplane Company. A major product during the interwar years was the Bristol Bulldog.

Later the Company became famous for the production of two military aircraft that were used by the RAF and Commonwealth units in the Second World War; the Bristol Blenheim light bomber and the Bristol Beaufighter heavy fighter. A shadow factory was built at Weston super Mare during the Second World War which produced these aircraft as well.

By the end of the Second World War, the Filton site was one of the largest aviation complexes in the world, certainly in Europe. In 1946, with surplus capacity left from wartime expansion, the company started an offshoot, Bristol Cars, using pre-war BMW designs as the basis for a new car, the Bristol 400. The car company became independent in 1960, around the same time as the consolidation the British aircraft industry, but is still based at the Filton site. Pre-fabricated buildings and composite materials were also early post-war activities, but these were eventually sold off.

Bristol was involved in the post war renaissance of British civilian aircraft as inspired by the Brabazon Committee report. In 1949, the Bristol Brabazon airliner prototype, at the time one of the largest aircraft in the world, first flew. The Brabazon airliner project was a step in the wrong direction and ultimately cancelled in 1953. At the same time the Bristol Britannia turboprop-powered airliner proved a success and it and Bristol Freighter transport aircraft were produced in quantity during the 1950s. Bristol was involved in helicopter development with the Bristol Belvedere and Bristol Sycamore helicopters going into quantity production. The whole of the helicopter side was later transferred to Westland Aircraft.

Another post-war activity was missile development, culminating in the production of the Bristol Bloodhound anti-aircraft missile. The guided weapons division eventually became part of Matra BAe Dynamics Alenia (MBDA).

In the late 50's the Company undertook supersonic transport (SST) project studies, which were later to contribute to Concorde.

In 1959 BAC was forced to merge with English Electric, Hunting Aircraft and Vickers-Armstrongs to form the British Aircraft Corporation, later itself to merge with the remaining large British aircraft companies to become British Aerospace, now BAE Systems.

A research aircraft, the Bristol 188, was constructed in the 1950s to test the feasibilty of stainless steel as a material in a Mach 2.0 airframe. By the time the aircraft flew in 1962, the Company was already part of the British Aircraft Corporation.

Bristol Engine Company

The Bristol Engine Company was originally a separate entity, Cosmos Engineering, in turn formed from the pre-First World War automobile company, Brazil-Straker. In 1917 Cosmos was asked to investigate air-cooled radial engines, producing what would become the Bristol Mercury, a 14 cylinder two-row (helical) radial, which they launched in 1918. This engine saw little use, but a smaller and simpler 9 cylinder version known as the Bristol Jupiter was clearly a winning design.

With the post-war rapid contraction of military orders Cosmos Engineering went bankrupt, and the Air Ministry let it be known that it would be a good idea if the Bristol Aeroplane Company purchased them. The Jupiter competed with the Armstrong Siddeley Jaguar through the 1920s, but Bristol put more effort into their design, and by 1929, the Jupiter was clearly superior. In the 1930s they developed a new line of radials based on the sleeve valve principle, which would develop into some of the most powerful piston engines in the world, and could continue to be sold into the 1960s.

In 1956 the division was renamed Bristol Aero Engines, and then merged with Armstrong Siddeley in 1958 to form Bristol Siddeley as a counterpart of the airframe-producing company mergers that formed BAC. In 1966 Bristol Siddeley merged with Rolls-Royce, leaving only one major aero-engine company in England, Rolls-Royce (now Rolls-Royce plc)