by Nevil Shute
The prices of our shares upon the Stock Exchange reflected something of my own feelings. As success came to the company through Air Ministry contracts, the price of our shares dropped to an all-time low. The shares issued to the public were 5/- Preference shares, and the quotation of these shares upon the Stock Exchange had been buoyant in spite of our continuing losses. In no month did the average of the dealings in our shares represent a price below par until the first order for 136 Oxfords had been received from the Air Ministry, but from that point onwards there was a steady fall in the value of our shares upon the market. I think investors realised that on Air Ministry contracts the margin of profit was so small that there would be little hope of reimbursing shareholders for previous losses. While we retained freedom of action in the field of civil aeroplanes the high quality of our work technically might well bring profits in the end from which past losses might be recovered, but the flooding of the company with military orders meant an end to these financial hopes. We got the first Oxford production order in October 1936 and in November a steady and continuous fall in our shares commenced which was to go so far as a price of 1/6, and few buyers at that, as deliveries of the Oxford commenced in December 1937. The value of our shares was to recover somewhat as the initial absurdities of the I.T.P. procedure were negotiated out, but I do not think they ever recovered much above par value.
A further 52 Oxfords were ordered from us in November 1937, and yet another batch of 140 in April 1938, but these orders did nothing to restore the spirit that had once inspired the company. Perhaps it had all become too easy. For my own part, I was learning what a better man than I had learned before me, that to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.
11
IN APRIL 1938 my Board decided to attempt to quell the disputes that were plaguing the company by getting rid of me, and in this they were probably quite right. I would divide the senior executives of the engineering world into two categories, the starters and the runners, the men with a creative instinct who can start a new venture and the men who can run it to make it show a profit. They are very seldom combined in the same person. In Airspeed the time for the starters was over and it was now for the runners to take over the company. I was a starter and useless as a runner; there was nothing now for me to start, and I was not unwilling to go after the first shock to my pride.
The settlement that the Board made with me was a generous one. While we all thought things over they sent me on indefinite leave till the conclusion of my contract with the company fifteen months ahead; when the final settlement was made it gave me enough money to keep myself for five or six years at my then standard of living. I found myself in the totally unaccustomed position in the summer of 1938 of having enough money to live on and no work to do. A holiday abroad to collect my thoughts seemed to be the first thing; my wife and I made arrangements to park the children, and opened the atlas at the map of France. With an unaccustomed sense of freedom I shut my eyes and stabbed the map with a pencil, saying, “Let’s go there.” The point fell on St. Claude in the Jura mountains; it could not have fallen on a better place.
Ruined City, known in America as Kindling, had been delivered to Watt a few months previously; my American publishers had got very excited about it and had taken an option to buy the film rights for a stated sum within three months. In St. Claude, only a few weeks after leaving Airspeed, I got news by cable that this option had been taken up and the film rights sold. My wife and I retired to a small café opposite the post office and read the cable through again, struggling to believe the written words. We had never been affluent, never had more than a pittance in the bank at any time. Now several thousand pounds had dropped into my bank account for doing what to me had been a relaxation from real work. Our security for five or six years had grown to ten. For ten years, if I chose, I could just sit in the sun drinking Pernod, and not bother about work. It seemed incredible, but it was all quite true.
We had another Pernod.
When I left Airspeed the orders in hand were worth £1,262,000 and we employed 1,035 people. In the eight years that I was joint managing director the company never made a profit; I left the company in the ninth month of our financial year and in that year a small, tenuous profit was shown for the first time.
In the month that I left the company an order for 200 Oxfords was placed with de Havillands, so that we had the satisfaction of seeing our old friends and competitors pocketing their pride and building aeroplanes of our design while they prepared to wipe our eye again with the Mosquito, perhaps the most successful day bomber of the war. In turn, and later on, Airspeed was to build Mosquitoes. This close association with de Havillands was to lead in the end to an amalgamation. In all, 8,751 Oxfords were built by four companies, of which 4,961 were built by Airspeed. It was a good twin engined trainer for its day, and most of the pilots for Bomber Command were trained upon the Oxford.
Two years after I left the company Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson gave up their venture into aviation and sold their controlling interest in Airspeed Ltd to the de Havilland Company. By that time the urgent need for ships was absorbing all their energies and was to do so for many years to come; in these circumstances they judged it better to yield control of Airspeed to a company more conversant with the nature of the aircraft industry. I think this transfer was a fitting one, for both Tiltman and I had learned our business with de Havillands; if we could not carry on the company ourselves my own vote would have been to let de Havillands take it over.
At the time of that transfer, in June 1940, only two of the original York working shareholders were left in the company, Tiltman and Tom Laing. The rest had either branched off into other and more profitable jobs arising from their work with us, or, in one or two cases, had left the company feeling that they had had a raw deal, which I regret. I do not think that anybody who invested in the company at par lost money if they held on to their shares, although they may not have made anything commensurate with the risk taken. All shares were finally transformed into share capital of the de Havilland Aircraft Company on favourable terms.
Tiltman resigned from Airspeed shortly after de Havilland assumed control and only Tom Laing was left, our first shareholder. He became works manager of the great Airspeed shadow factory at Christchurch, Hants, where he built a very large number of Oxfords and Mosquitoes. He always retained the appearance of a country gentleman in a changing industry, and his interests were very close to the good earth. Apart from family happiness he was devoted to shooting, fishing, dogs, good company, and Airspeed Ltd.
He died in the service of the company that he had joined as its first employee seventeen years before. He had been to Market Harborough in the Midlands on business and, driving back after dark, he rang up his wife from Newbury to say that he was very tired and he was going to stop there for the night; she was not to wait up for him. Apparently he failed to get a room because an hour later, travelling at a high speed, he hit a railway arch near Whitchurch and was killed instantaneously. Probably he went to sleep.
Airspeed Ltd has now ceased to exist as a separate entity. It is still known as the Airspeed division of the de Havilland enterprise but the last Airspeed designed aeroplane has probably taken off and it may well be that in a few years’ time the name that I dreamed up in my bedroom of the St Leonards Club in York will be forgotten.
So ended a chapter of my life. I have never gone back to manufacturing and I shall probably not do so now, for that is a young man’s game. Industry, which is the life of ordinary people who employ their civil servants and pay their politicians, is a game played to a hard code of rules; I am glad that I had twenty years of it as a young man, and I am equally glad that I have not had to spend my life in it till I was old. My gladness is tempered with regret, for once a man has spent his time in messing about with aeroplanes he can never forget their heartaches and their joys, nor is he likely to find another occupation that will satisfy him so well,
even writing novels.