Frank McClean

by Philip Jarrett

  For the last Coupe Deutsche de la Meurthe air race in Etampes, France, held on 29–30 September, Britain entered Jimmy James with the Gloster Bamel. The British sent a strong contingent of supporters, for whom Frank McClean laid on an excellent lunch, but unfortunately James lost his way after his maps blew out of the cockpit.

  In 1922 Frank McClean entered Sopwith Gnu G-EAGP in the King’s Cup Circuit of Britain Air Race. It was piloted in the event by Flight Lieutenant Walter H. Longton, but was unplaced. Longton is on the left in this picture. McClean subsequently bought the aeroplane. (AUTHOR)

  At the other end of the speed range, McClean went to watch the gliding at Itford Hill on 16–17 and 21 October.

  1923

  McClean was elected Vice-Chairman of the RAeC for 1923/24, and at the Annual General Meeting on 31 March he was presented with the Gold Medal of the Royal Aero Club ‘for pioneer work in aviation’. He was in illustrious aeronautical company, for this award had previously been given to Wilbur and Orville Wright, Louis Blériot, Henry Farman, Hubert Latham, the Hon. Charles Rolls, Cecil Grace (posthumously), Claude Grahame-White, S F Cody (Cowdery), Sir John Alcock and Sir Arthur Whitten Brown, and Sir Ross Smith and Sir Keith Smith. On 18 April he was elected Chairman of the RAeC for 1923/24.

  This was evidently McClean’s year, for on 23 June he achieved his long-sought-after racing success. He had entered Sopwith Gnu G-EAGP, now registered in his name and again flown by W H Longton, in the Grosvenor Challenge Cup Point-to-Point Handicap Race, staring from Lympne. Longton won the cup and £100. (Gnu G-EAGP, constructor’s number W/O 2976/3, originally registered K-163, was awarded its Certificate of Airworthiness on 3 October 1919 and owned by the Sopwith Aviation Co, Brook-lands. It was registered to Lieutenant-Colonel F K McClean in June 1923, passed to Major S A Packham of Cramlington in November 1924, went to the Southern Counties Aviation Company at Shoreham in July 1925 and crashed at King’s Lynn on 2 May 1926.)

  Another view of McClean’s Sopwith Gnu, G-EAGR Designed as a three-seat tourer or taxi aircraft, the Gnu could be built with a cabin for the passengers or with an open rear cockpit, McClean’s example being of the latter type. (AUTHOR)

  On 13 and 14 July McClean attended the King’s Cup Race, and on 6 August he was at the Aerial Derby, held this year at Croydon.

  The 1923 Schneider Trophy Race was held at Cowes on 28 September, and it was won by Lieutenant David Rittenhouse of the USA, flying a Curtiss CR-3 seaplane. That same evening McClean attended a dinner in the Americans’ honour at the Royal London Yacht Club.

  As part of the Motor Glider Competitions at Lympe the Duke of Sutherland, Under-Secretary of State for Air, offered a prize of £500 restricted to British competitors flying British machines. Competition flying began on Monday 8 October, though there was a great deal of activity on the aerodrome over the preceding weekend. McClean was there on 6–8 October, and Longton was flying the English Electric Wren. At the end of the week-long event Long-ton shared the Sutherland prize with J H James, flying an Air Navigation and Engineering Company (ANEC) monoplane, and they also shared the Daily Mail’s £1,000 prize.

  Colonel McClean, centre, holds the trophy after winning the Grosvenor Challenge Cup Point-to-Point Handicap Race on 23 June 1923. Longton, who piloted Gnu G-EAGP to first place, is second from right, looking on, and Lord Edward Grosvenor; who donated the trophy, is on the left. (AUTHOR)

  A happy team. McClean, second from left, Walter Longton and Lil Longton pose in front of the Gnu after winning the Grosvenor Challenge Cup on 23 June 1923. (AUTHOR)

  1924

  From early January to late March 1924 McClean was on holiday, spending 22 January to 29 March in Egypt and visiting old haunts. Among several aeronautical functions, including the RAF Display, the King’s Cup and that year’s Lympne Light Aeroplane Trials, on 15 June he was at the Gordon Bennett balloon race, and on the 27th he visited the Supermarine works at Southampton. At Croydon on 16 July the American round-the-world flyers arrived in their Douglas World Cruisers, and two days later the RAeC held a banquet in their honour, which McClean attended.

  1925

  On 1 September 1924 the Air Ministry had announced a scheme of assistance for light aeroplane clubs, whereby ten such clubs were to be assisted financially for an initial period of two years. The first grant to each club would be £2,000, to be secured by a mortgage on club property, and would only be made if the club used ‘approved types’ of aeroplanes. The RAeC was designated as the responsible body, and was to put up financial and other contributions for at least £2,000 and insure equipment provided.

  By 8 April 1925 Major-General Brancker had communicated with the Under Secretary of State for Air and the Air Member for Supply, and they had agreed to the purchase of de Havilland D.H.60 Moth aeroplanes out of the Air Ministry grant of £10,000. The Air Ministry agreed to appoint the RAeC as its agents for the purchase of the Moths for the five selected light aeroplane clubs, and the RAeC set up a committee which formulated a scheme. Frank McClean was on this committee, all but two of whom became directors of the duly registered ‘London Aero Club, Ltd’. It started operations on 19 August 1925, and by 14 October was able to report that 200 hours’ flying had already been completed. Many members had flown solo and one had gained his aviator’s certificate.

  1926 to 1955

  In 1926 McClean appeared in the list of the King’s Birthday Honours (publication post-poned from 3 June to 3 July owing to dislocation caused by the General Strike): ‘Knight. Lieut-Colonel Francis Kennedy McClean. In recognition of his services to aviation.’ An RAeC banquet was held at the Savoy on 27 July to celebrate the honour conferred on McClean and present the prizes to the winners of that year’s King’s Cup Race. After presentation of the prizes the Duke of Sutherland proposed a toast to the health of ‘Sir Francis K. McClean’ and then read letters from the Secretary of State for Air and Mr Holt Thomas, expressing their appreciation of Sir Francis’s pioneering work.

  Lieutenant-Colonel J T C Moore-Brabazon, who was now the Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Transport, said that everyone attended the dinner in a spirit of better late than never, and that he felt it was rather like giving an award for services at the Battle of Agincourt. He said the dinner might have been held fifteen years ago, and that many of the pioneers would have liked to be present if they had survived. He recalled that he had himself been classed as an amiable lunatic on account of his early interest in flying. ‘In those days,’ he recalled, ‘Frank McClean’s purse had been a cornucopia for aviation.’ Air Commodore A M Longmore paid a tribute to Sir Frank on behalf of the first four naval aviators. The veteran aviation journalist C G Grey, who covered the evening’s proceedings for The Aeroplane, observed that Longmore referred to the guest as Sir Frank, rather than Sir Francis. ‘One imagines,’ wrote Grey, ‘that everybody who has been associated with aviation for any considerable time will prefer the more familiar Christian name, even with a handle to it.’

  In response, Sir Frank, whom Grey on occasion had described as ‘the worst speaker in the world, bar one, and that is oneself’, ‘made a speech which would have been a good effort for the most practised speaker. He evidently forgot all that nervousness which with which his naturally modest and retiring nature afflicts him on public occasions, and felt that he was just speaking to a room full of friends – which he was.’ Sir Frank said that to have done something, however small, was its own reward, but that the recognition of his friends was very pleasant. As to the honour conferred upon him by His Majesty, he felt that this was an honour to the Aero Club, and that the work of the RAeC before the First World War was not fully understood. It had paved the way for the flying done during the war. Describing Eastchurch as the home of pioneering, he said that before there was any real naval flying it had an amphibian that really amphibbed.

  Grey reported that ‘there were not so many people there as Sir Frank McClean deserved, but perhaps he was all the happier for that’. At any rate, almost all the survivors of his
old friends in aviation turned up to celebrate the occasion with him. Grey recalled:

  One first met Sir Frank McClean at Leysdown, or rather at Shellness, in the extreme east of the Isle of Sheppey, quite early in 1909, when he and the never-to-be-forgotten Horace Short were conspiring in the construction of an aeroplane which Frank McClean hoped to fly some day.

  The Short Brothers at that time held the British agency for the Wright Brothers, which had been wished on to them, one believes, by Griffith Brewer. [This was not strictly correct; the Shorts merely had a contract for the construction of six Flyers. Grey harboured a long and strong bias against the Wright aeroplanes which he expressed whenever the opportunity presented itself.] Frank McClean had a Wright biplane at Shellness and on it he was launched along a rail by that catapult device which was necessary to the early Wright machine.

  One well remembers one’s first sight of the apparatus in action. The actual flight lasted fully fifty yards. And as usual something broke when the machine sat down. A little later the flight extended still further and the machine sat down still harder, with the result that the upper plane descended and enclosed Frank McClean as in a tent. In no wise discouraged, he climbed out of his machine time after time with that same good humoured smile which we all know so well, and merely set to work again. [Grey might well be remembering the trials with the first Short machine here, rather than the Wright Flyer.]

  Apart from his generosity, which has helped so many lame ducks over stiles that it has justified the wealth which he has expended on entirely unworthy human objects in an equally earnest desire to help them, Frank McClean’s outstanding characteristic is his good temper. Presumably somebody must have seen him lose his temper at some time or another, but one has not yet met the individual who has done so. Therefore there is nothing surprising in the fact that he has more real friends than any man can reckon.

  If Frank McClean had not inherited wealth one doubts whether he would ever have made it, for he is far too good-natured and generous, and he would never have pursued any of the various hard-headed hard-fisted policies by which alone money can be made. But he would certainly have done good work in the world.

  In spite of having been born with a golden spoon in his mouth, Frank McClean has always used his very considerable mental ability to good purpose… the fact that he backed aviation when he did, and that he devoted himself so particularly to the naval side of aviation shows that he has foresight and an appreciation of political developments…

  It is only now, when war production has ceased and something approximating to peace conditions have arisen, that we can look back calmly on the history of aviation since it began in this country seventeen years ago and assess without prejudice the value of the work done by the real pioneers of aviation. And there is not one among those pioneers who will not agree with a whole heart that of all their number none is more worthy to be honoured by His Majesty than is Frank McClean.

  On 28 April 1931 McClean said a few words at a dinner held to some of the pioneers of aviation at the Aviation Section of the Forum Club, under the chairmanship of the Hon. Mrs Forbes Sempill. Among other things, he described how,

  … at Eastchurch, they used to look for the bumps on the aerodrome and then taxy hard at these bumps in the hope of being thrown up into the air and thus fly for a few yards. He recalled how, later on, they were always told that they could not turn to the right with a Gnome engine, but one day he nearly ran into a tree and had to turn to the right, and after that everyone else followed suit, finding it was not so dangerous as they had been told. He was very lucky to be able to have a photograph of himself in the air in those days, and this was done by getting a photographer to lay on the ground just in front of him and, by the Grace of God, he just missed the photographer, who thus got a beautiful photograph. The Short Bros., he said, were also at Eastchurch in those days, and on one occasion Horace Short wished him to fly into a large net in order to test out a method by which landings might be made on board ships, but he declined gracefully.

  Sir Frank was High Sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1932–3, and was again elected chairman of the RAeC for 1941–3. From 1944 to 1951 he was again vice-president.

  Hurren, in Fellowship of the Air, records that McClean had a series of gold tie-pins, ‘unique in the world’, fashioned after the balloons and aeroplanes he had flown. ‘It arouses a profound sense of nostalgia aeronautiea,’ he writes, ‘to see this tall, twinkling eyed, virile airman wearing a tie offset by a gold aeroplane of a design 40 years old or more.’ Hurren also recalls how the pioneer members travelled from London to Eastchurch in the early days.

  The normal routine was to decide that the weather was satisfactory for flight, and then if no car were available take the boat train from Victoria to Sheerness – there was a service in those days of the South-Eastern and Chatham Railway from Sheerness to Flushing. At Queenborough, a light railway was taken to Eastchurch, and the flying ground was a mile distant. In the evening, or perhaps as much as ten days later, the boat train back to London.

  Being a pioneer demanded determination as well as courage. No wonder McClean opted for private on-site accommodation in his bungalow.

  In 1950 McClean was elected an Honorary Fellow of the RAeS.

  At Eastchurch on 25 July 1955 Marshal of the RAF Lord Tedder unveiled a memorial to the pioneer airmen who began flying in the vicinity in 1909. Among those present were Lord Brabazon, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Longmore and Air Commodore E L Gerrard. Sadly, Sir Francis McClean was unable to attend owing to ill health, and the last surviving Short brother, Oswald, was also absent, but sent a message of greeting, as did Alec Ogilvie. In his speech Lord Brabazon paid tribute to McClean and the Short brothers. Located on a corner site opposite Eastchurch Church, the memorial commemorates the original aerodromes at Leysdown and Eastchurch, where the Shorts established the first dedicated aircraft factory in Great Britain, and the formation of the RNAS station in 1911. Reporting on the event in its 29 July issue, Flight said ‘… Frank McClean, as he then was, could justifiably be called the father of the RNAS’. The idea of the memorial had been put forward in a letter published in The Times of 11 February 1950, signed by the then Mr Winston Churchill, Lord Brabazon and Oswald Short, and it was designed by Sidney Loweth, BRIBA, and sculpted by Hilary Stratton, FRBS. The patrons of the fund opened to cover the cost of the memorial were the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Sir Winston Churchill, Lord Brabazon, Sir Francis McClean and Oswald Short.

  This sketch by Edward Newling, dated 5 February 1950, was made in preparation for a portrait of Sir Frank McClean that was subsequently hung in the lounge of the Royal Aero Club’s premises in Londonderry House, Park Lane, London. McClean died five years after the sketch was made. (AUTHOR)

  The main part of the memorial is a wall of Portland stone, curved in plan on one side, like the camber of an aeroplane wing, and straight on the other. The wall incorporates panels in mezzo-relief depicting aircraft of the 1909–11 era, while a central figure representing Zeus, the mythological God of the Heavens, looks down from the clouds. Beneath the central figure are four tablets recording the purpose of the memorial, the names of twelve pioneers, headed by Moore-Brabazon, Rolls and McClean, the three Short brothers and the names of the first four naval officers who learnt to fly. Two frieze tablets record Moore-Brabazon’s first flight by a British subject and first circular mile in Great Britain in a British aircraft, and the facts that Mr F K McClean leased part of the site to the Aero Club for the use of members and also provided aeroplanes free of charge for the instruction of naval officers.

  The pioneer passes

  On 11 August 1955 Sir Francis McClean died, aged 79, in the London Clinic ‘after a long illness’. A private cremation on 15 August was followed by a memorial service at Christ Church, Down Street, London, on 25 August. The address was given by Lord Brabazon of Tara, who had written in The Times for 16 August 1955:

  By the death of Frank McClean there passes the great patron of aviat
ion. He was not known so much to the present generation, but his influence, his benevolence, and his enthusiasm in the early days were so remarkable as to leave him on a plane never equalled by another.

  He could not have had an enemy in the world. His great size, his shaggy appearance, his gentle ways endeared him to all who were lucky enough to know him.

  Those he leaves behind will for ever be conscious of the debt they owe him, and of the love they bear him.

  In its issue of 19 August The Aeroplane published an obituary of McClean under the heading ‘Godfather to Naval Aviation’. He had served on the RAeC’s Committee from 1909 until his death, either by election or as a vice-president or chairman.

  In a tribute in the November 1955 issue of The Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society Alec Ogilvie recalled: ‘My last glimpse of him was at the Society of Arts in 1953 when Captain Pritchard [of the RAeS] was giving a lecture about the Wrights. To me, he looked pretty well, but when I asked if he was coming to dinner next day to celebrate 50 years of flying, he said that the insides the doctors had left him were capable of absorbing a little food but no drink, which was no way to celebrate the first flight of the Wright brothers whom he knew and admired very much.’ Ogilvie said the last letter he received from Frank McClean, dated 16 October 1954, began: ‘My dear Alec, Thanks for your kind wishes for my health, but in view of the fact that for nearly 80 years I have survived the strain of finding enjoyment in this world and have very few stones unturned in the process, I can’t complain.’ Ogilvie commented: