1909–1914 Brooklands was also one of Britain's first airfields. In 1908,
Alliott Verdon-Roe was based at Brooklands and carried out the first taxiing and towed flight trials of a British full-size powered aircraft by a British pilot. On Friday, 29 October 1909 the first official powered flight at Brooklands was made by Frenchman
Louis Paulhan and his
Farman biplane: this special event attracted 20,000 people and was the first public flying display at Brooklands. Operating from specially prepared land inside the Race Track and given his own aeroplane shed, Paulhan made a series of flights on the following days, flying to a height of some on the Saturday and setting a new British endurance record of 2 hr 49 min 20 s on the Monday. During 1910, Brooklands rapidly became a major centre of flying in Britain and that summer,
Hilda Hewlett and
Gustave Blondeau opened Britain's first flying school at Brooklands. Hewlett and Blondeau also started their aircraft manufacturing company,
Hewlett & Blondeau Limited there before moving to larger premises in
Clapham in London. Later in 1910 the
Bristol Aeroplane Company also established a flying school, its first instructor and test pilot was
Archie Low; Roe also started a flying school there.
Vickers opened a flying school on 20 January 1912, and among its first instructors was
R. Harold Barnwell; 77 pupils including
Hugh Dowding were taught to fly until the school closed in August 1914. In February 1912,
Thomas Sopwith opened his flying school and in June, with several others, he set up the
Sopwith Aviation Company there, although their manufacturing premises were at
Kingston upon Thames. Other aviation pioneers came to Brooklands before World War One including Prince Serge de Bolotoff who tried to build a large tandem triplane in a shed there in 1913.
Blériot,
Martinsyde and
Vickers also later produced military aeroplanes at Brooklands which became Britain's largest aircraft manufacturing centre by 1918. Many flying schools operated here before 1914 and the aerodrome became a major flying training centre between the wars.
World War I During
World War I Brooklands closed to motor racing and was requisitioned by the War Office.
Vickers Aviation Ltd set up a factory in 1915, and Brooklands soon became a major centre for the construction, testing and supply of military aeroplanes. Civilian flying schools closed down or were merged into one Military Training School and flying training continued until at least the end of 1915. Several Royal Flying Corps squadrons including numbers 1, 8, 9 and 10 (plus No. 2 and 23 Reserve Squadrons) were formed (or reformed) and based briefly at Brooklands during the war years. Continuing significant pioneering air-ground wireless trials pioneered by a
Marconi team at Brooklands from 1912, the aerodrome also housed various RFC units testing and training with airborne wireless communications equipment and the World's first voice to ground wireless message was successfully transmitted over Brooklands in 1915. Major changes were made to the Flying Village with the construction in late 1917 of three large 'Belfast-truss' General Service Sheds for a new Aircraft Acceptance Park (later No. 10 AAP). This handled the assembly and testing of large numbers of new aeroplanes and finally closed in early 1920.
Inter-war years Brooklands Aviation Ltd was formed in 1931 - with Percy Bradley, Duncan Davis,
Fred Sigrist and Ted Jones as Directors - to operate the aerodrome, and commissioned British airport architect
Graham Dawbarn to design the
Art Deco Brooklands Aero Clubhouse, which opened in May 1932. The company also operated the resident Brooklands School of Flying which was registered as a limited company in 1931 with Duncan Davis and Ted Jones as Directors, as well as those at
Lympne,
Shoreham and
Sywell Aerodromes in the later 1930s. The original pre-WWI Brooklands Aero Club was re-formed by the
BARC in May 1930 with Percy Bradley as Manager and the Brooklands Flying Club was established by Brooklands Aviation in early 1933. Brooklands Aviation won a
War Department contract for pilot training for the
Royal Air Force. and opened No. 6 Elementary Flying Training School at Sywell on 10 June 1935, training pilots with a fleet of 20
de Havilland Tiger Moths, and in 1937 the RAF Volunteer Reserve School was set up at Sywell with a further 16 training aircraft. During WWII, Brooklands Aviation became a contractor to the
Civilian Repair Organisation, repairing various types of damaged aircraft, particularly Vickers Wellingtons. After ending its RAF flying training in 1946, the company diversified and built plywood and
GRP cabin cruiser boats designed by Alan Eckford, until 1974. The first flight of the
Hawker Hurricane, later a fighter aircraft in the
Battle of Britain, occurred at Brooklands on 6 November 1935.
World War II In
World War II, the site was again used for military aircraft production, in particular the
Vickers Wellington,
Vickers Warwick and
Hawker Hurricane and was extensively camouflaged. Trees were also planted in some sections of the concrete track to help conceal the
Hawker and
Vickers aircraft factories there. Despite these efforts, the Vickers factory was successfully bombed by the Luftwaffe and extensively damaged on 4 September 1940 with nearly 90 aircraft workers killed and at least 419 injured. Five unidentified victims were buried in unmarked graves in Burvale Cemetery,
Hersham, on 9 September, one of whom was later confirmed to be 36-year-old William E Hunt. On 10 March 2016, thanks to the efforts of local residents, sponsors and supporters, permanent memorials to Mr Hunt and the other four civilians were dedicated by the Reverend Martin Fletcher and Elmbridge Borough Councillor Mary Sheldon. Attendees included relatives of Vickers factory worker Eric S Powell who also died on 4 September 1940 aged 26, and is now believed to be one of the remaining four unidentified casualties buried at Burvale. The Hawker factory was also bombed and damaged two days later, but with no loss of life or serious disruption to Hurricane production. On 21 September 1940, Lt
John MacMillan Stevenson Patton of the
Royal Canadian Engineers risked his life when he and five others manhandled an unexploded German bomb away from the Hawker aircraft factory at Brooklands and rolled it into an existing bomb crater where it later exploded harmlessly. His bravery was recognised by the award of the
George Cross. The crucial role of Brooklands in the Battle of Britain of 1940 is further explained in displays at Brooklands Museum. After the bombing of Brooklands in September 1940, the
Vickers-Armstrongs Design Department (including
Rex Pierson,
Barnes Wallis and several hundred others) was dispersed to a secret location at the nearby Burhill Golf Course, just east of St George's Hill in
Hersham and the Experimental Department led by
George Edwards was relocated to temporary premises at Foxwarren in Redhill Road,
Cobham. These two facilities played a crucial part in the successful development of the
'Upkeep' mine—better known today as the 'bouncing bomb'—conceived by Barnes Wallis and deployed to devastating effect by the
Avro Lancaster raid by
No. 617 "Dambuster" Squadron RAF led by
Guy Gibson against Germany's Ruhr Valley reservoirs on the night of 16–17 May 1943.
Post-1945 After the war, the circuit was in poor condition and was sold to Vickers-Armstrongs in 1946 for continued use as an aircraft factory. New aircraft types, including the
Viking,
Valetta,
Varsity,
Viscount,
Vanguard,
1-11 and
VC10, were subsequently, designed, manufactured and delivered from there. In 1951, construction of a new hard runway required a section of the motor circuit's Byfleet Banking to be removed to allow
Vickers Valiant V bombers to be flown out to nearby
Wisley Airfield, which offered a longer
runway and less built-up surroundings than Brooklands. That airfield opened as a flight test centre for Vickers in 1944, and was used until 1972, latterly by
BAC. After considerable expansion, due to increasing commercial success in the 1950s, the Vickers factory achieved its peak size in the early 1960s, in preparation for the VC10 manufacturing programme, and became the headquarters of the new
British Aircraft Corporation in 1960. Substantial investment in the site at that time saw many new buildings constructed and existing premises modified. First, in the mid-1950s, came a new assembly hall for the Vickers Viscount, known as 'B.1', presumably because it consisted of a number of repurposed standard wartime B.1-type hangars (together with some T.2 hangars), and was rebuilt as one long double-bay structure parallel to the runway. By 1962, a large new VC10 flight shed hangar was ready to house the prototype VC10 airliner, and a second, even larger, flight shed was added alongside by 1964. The latter was probably the largest aircraft hangar in Europe at the time and became known locally as "The Cathedral", while the smaller shed was called "The Abbey". The huge factory at Brooklands went on to design and build the
BAC TSR.2,
One-Eleven and major assemblies for
Concorde. The cancellation of the
V-1000 transport in 1955, the Labour government's cancellation of the TSR-2 in 1965, and the disappointing lack of significant orders for VC10s and Concorde, saw the factory contract in the early 1970s. It became part of the newly formed
British Aerospace in 1977, and focused on component manufacture for other aircraft. However, closure was announced on 29 July 1986, finally occurring on Christmas Day 1989. BAE's successor,
BAE Systems, retains a logistics centre at Brooklands. In November 2009, Brooklands was featured in an episode of a BBC TV series ''
James May's Toy Stories''. May undertook the task of recreating the original track using
Scalextric. The show featured May's attempt to lay the plastic track through and around the variety of obstacles that have replaced the original track, including a pond, a four-lane road, several houses, fences, and
Sony and
Procter & Gamble corporate campuses. ==Brooklands Museum==