by Phil Delnon
From an early age he took an interest in flying. Living in Reading, not far from London, there were aircraft to see. In 1910 he saw his first, a Bristol Boxkite, and in 1911 saw Cody in his biplane and had his baptism of the air in a local park: a very short lift to a little over head-height hitched to the cable of a Cody kite. In 1912 he sat in the cockpit of Henri Salmet's Bleriot monoplane and later watched the Frenchman's flying display, and in 1913 saw the Morane-Saulier monoplane of Englishman Gustav Hamel. 1914 saw his first visit to Hendon, where he first expressed his ambition to be a pilot. This did not go down too well: his father wanted him to become a doctor. It went down even less well when Hamel went missing over the Channel soon afterwards.
The First World War brought aircraft to Reading: a French Caudron, three DH1's, a DH2, and three Avro 504J's which were fenced-off after landing, but not well enough to keep him away for long. In 1916 a small aerodrome was built nearby, and during the Summer Holidays the twelve-year old Penrose was often there, hoping to see some flying. To his heroes of Guynemer and Ball he added a local pilot and flying instructor, Keith Jopp, whose artificial hand didn't stop him from a wide range of aerobatics. Before the end of the War a new arrival at school proved to be the son of the RFC Flying School's C.O. and was able to arrange a few visits. In this way Penrose was able to see and touch all of the aircraft then in service. When not watching aircraft, he was building models and tinkering with a very old motorbike.
1918 brought a sharp decline in military flying, but it wasn't long before civil aviation came along - not least in the barnstorming displays of ex-RFC pilots flying ex-RFC aircraft. So in 1919 Penrose and his aunt took a joy-ride in the Avro 504K of Alan Cobham, then aged 25 and not yet the great trailblazer.
Being 16 years of age, Penrose was desperate to enter the aircraft industry, now in desperate post-war contraction. The Martynside company offered him a job - working on motorcycles to begin with - but before he could join them, Martynside went bankrupt, joining a long list of casualties which included even Sopwith's.
Getting nowhere fast, at his father's insistence Penrose stayed on at school for another year, winning one prize for long-distance running and another for Shakespearean Literature. Meanwhile he was pestering aircraft companies with letters. It paid off: Handley Page wrote back, declining to take him on but advising a four-year aeronautical course at London University. This was a quite stunning revelation: Penrose had not even imagined that such a course existed.
It nearly didn't: the course began with science and general engineering, and after 18 months Penrose was the only student to choose the aeronautics option, which therefore could not run. Fortunately he was able to twist the arms of two friends, and together with an older student who had failed the exams and had to repeat the year, the four were enough for the course to survive.
In the meantime he had joined the Royal Aeronautical Society and co-founded its Student Section and visited Hendon again. His father - now Customs & Excise Surveyor for East Anglia - had moved to a house in Suffolk not far away from the Air Ministry's test field at Martlesham Heath. In those innocent days the young Penrose was able to cycle there and watch Britain's latest secret aircraft from the totally-unsurveilled viewpoint of unfenced public roads.
On his aeronautics course, Penrose was sent for work experience to the Handley-Page factory at Cricklewood, where he had two surprises. The first was being paid a wage of 25 shillings a week. The second was being employed as a wind-tunnel assistant, where he was entrusted with the redesign of the company's standard tail fin and rudder. He goofed -by drawing the fuselage too short- but was saved by a modification which ended up providing Handley-Page with their best configuration so far. It's typical of Penrose that you have to read carefully to understand that (a) he was able to break in to the aeronautical industry at a time when it was shedding experienced men, and (b) he must have very soon demonstrated a quick grasp of what makes an aeroplane fly.
Going back to College, Penrose was again immersed in aviation theory - and for all that these were Early Days, there was already a great deal of it. So now Penrose studied aerodynamics, aircraft structures, advanced mathematics, methods of stressing, elements of design, and drawing. And our young polymath also played rugby and listened to classical music.
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