by Phil Delnon
Westland had staked a lot on the Cierva autogyro, having constructed the fuselage and mounted the bought-in engine, rotor and tail components. Cierva himself insisted on conducting the tests. They were a disaster. High vibration made the aircraft impossible, and the known factors were not responsible. The rotor-blades were balanced, and expertise gained from Louis Brennan and from the RAE at Farnborough did not help.
Only much later was it possible to deduce the cause: out-of-balance cyclic vibration of the rotors combined with a response from the undercarriage. In the meantime the design was abandoned.
On the upside, a new diesel aero-engine had been designed. Fitted with a supercharger, the Phoenix II engine combined high power with low fuel consumption: fitted to an old Wapiti, Penrose took it up to a new altitude record for diesels of 27,453ft - a modest record which was to stand for quite some time. A token of Penrose's enthusiasm is that the aircraft retained its open cockpit and that he went up in unheated clothes - no more than a padded flying suit and sheepskin gloves. At least he had an oxygen supply...
Meanwhile the F7/30 was having problems with its cooling-system, and while this was being resolved the Air Ministry changed over to multi-gun fighters and abandoned it. The Pterodactyl suffered a complete wing-failure when taxying over bumpy ground. Enlarged and strengthened in various places, it now began to give problems in flight, too, and was unlikely to go into production. And then the P7 shed a wheel on take-off. Penrose found himself flying a fully-laden aircraft with no radio. Three hours of flying around burnt up most of the fuel: the P7 was now Westland's only hope of an Air Ministry contract, and it had to be saved. An experienced test-pilot by now, Penrose landed across the airfield, using the wind to help balance the plane on its one remaining wheel. Penrose managed to keep the port side up long enough so that when the bare axle eventually did touch and dig in, the resulting slew was not violent enough to damage the aircraft.
It's a measure of the experimental nature of aeronautical engineering at that time that Penrose was asked to dive the P7 under full load for the Air Ministry at Martlesham in Suffolk before the calculations had been concluded. Up he went, reaching 14,000 feet against a strong headwind, ignorant of the fact that there was some consternation at the airfield he could see below him. A telegram had arrived from Westland, warning that at the weight loading requested by the Air Ministry, the plane would not meet the strength requirements.
That was correct: in a steep dive Penrose heard a thud and felt a lurch. The P7 was falling, and he could not save it. It was time to save himself - but he could not open the canopy: upward suction had jammed the sliding roof section firmly shut. The P7 did have an entrance-panel at the side: he went out through that, and the slipstream pulled him clear.
This was Penrose's first ever parachute descent, and -again quite typically for the times- he had had no training at all. But he had read the handbook, so now he put theory into practice, and waited until his personal airspeed fell enough for him to dare pull the ripcord. To his relief the parachute opened; to his dismay he found himself travelling backwards. Pulling on the shroud-lines slowly turned him round - to find himself heading for a railway line, with a train approaching... Penrose heaved at the shroud-lines, air spilled out of the parachute and he landed at speed, dragged face-down until the parachute hit a hedge and collapsed. The train went past 300ft away: the Perils of Penrose ended for a while. After near-tragedy came near-farce: when he stood up his trousers began to slide down: all the buttons had been torn off.
Penrose was picked up and later on went to his father's house, where he was staying. Typically, he said nothing - which was unfortunate, because at midnight the reporters arrived: in the morning Penrose's escapade was in the newspapers.
Another typical scenario just about put the lid on the whole thing. Westland had cancelled their insurance when the Air Ministry took on the P7, and it was the Air Ministry which had requested the dive. The Air Ministry denied liability because Penrose was a civilian pilot - conveniently ignoring his status as an RAFO flying officer. By the time the matter was resolved and the Air Ministry paid up, Westland had not been able to afford a replacement P7 and rival company Vickers had secured the contract with their own equivalent aircraft.
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