The Role of Private Enterprise in British Air Transportation

Extract

It is a great honour to be asked to give the Barnwell Memorial Lecture. It is now nearly 29 years since Barnwell was killed test flying at the age of 57 an aeroplane which he designed and built himself. He was a man of many parts and a man for all seasons. It is a measure of the passing years that now there is a Barnwell Memorial Lecturer who did not enter aviation until three years after Barnwell's death and has never participated in the design of any aircraft. Yet Barnwell's ideas and actions have indirectly, anonymously and through others, had important effects on the life and work of myself and thousands of people like me. I did my operational flying in the last World War on Beaufighters, and in more recent years have been concerned with Britannias, both aircraft designed and built in Bristol by members of Barnwell's old team. It is curious to note that exactly 50 years ago Barnwell was sitting on a committee of the Royal Aeronautical Society charged with considering the future of the Society. We are still at it. At a meeting of the Future Activities Committee the other week, I wondered what Barnwell would have thought of the discussion and recalled Isaac Newton's remark that if we now see a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.