In England, Hawker obtained a job with the
Commer Car Company, moving to the
Mercedes company in January 1912 and then to
Austro Daimler. During this time he spent much of his spare time at
Brooklands, then the hub of British aviation, and in June 1912 he got a job as a mechanic for the
Sopwith Aviation Company. He soon persuaded Sopwith to teach him to fly, and succeeded in making his first solo flight after only three lessons. He was awarded his Royal Aero Club pilot's licence, No. 297, in September 1912 and shortly afterwards, on 24 October, he won the
Michelin Cup for flight endurance with a flight lasting 8 hours 23 minutes. He also appears to have been the first person to perform an intentional
spin and recovery, demonstrating in 1914 one method (though generally not the one used today) to return to level flight from this unusual attitude. Because spins had killed several pilots, this was a major advance in aviation safety. Having established his name as an aviator, he became chief test pilot for
Tom Sopwith. At Sopwiths in 1916, Hawker had the personal use of a small aircraft, the
Sopwith Bee. He was also a regular competitor in motor car and motorcycle races at Brooklands before and after the
First World War. Among his competitive achievements were a number of altitude records set in June 1913 He also won a £1,000 consolation prize in the
Daily Mail Circuit of Britain Waterplane Race on 25 August 1913.
Brief return to Australia In 1914, Harry Hawker returned to Australia to demonstrate the advanced
Sopwith Tabloid, which he had helped design. A wild crowd nearly wrecked the plane on one occasion, and he further damaged it during stunt flying. On his return to England, he continued designing and testing aircraft with Sopwith throughout the First World War.
Attempt at first transatlantic flight After the war, together with navigator
Kenneth Mackenzie Grieve, he attempted to win the
Daily Mail £10,000 prize for the first flight across the
Atlantic in "72 consecutive hours". On 18 May 1919, they set off from
Mount Pearl,
Newfoundland, in the
Sopwith Atlantic biplane. After fourteen and a half hours of flight, the engine overheated and they were forced to change course to intercept the shipping lanes, where they were able to locate a passing freighter, the Danish
Mary. The
Mary did not have a functioning radio, so that it was not until six days later, when the steamer reached
Butt of Lewis,
Scotland, that word was received that they were safe. Hawker and Grieve were awarded a consolation prize of
£5,000 by the
Daily Mail. Hawker later named his second daughter Mary after the ship that had rescued him and Grieve. The
Atlantic was found afloat and recovered by the US steamer
Lake Charleville. The wheels from the undercarriage, jettisoned soon after takeoff were later recovered by local fishermen and later donated to the Rooms Provincial Museum in
St John's. One wheel is currently on display at
Admiralty House Communications Museum in
Mount Pearl.
A new beginning In September 1920, Sopwith Aviation was liquidated because of fears the
government would examine the wartime aircraft production contracts of companies like Sopwith and impose a crippling retrospective tax liability on them. Harry Hawker, Tom Sopwith, Fred Sigrist, and Bill Eyre then formed a new company, each contributing £5,000. To avoid any possible claims against the new company for the wartime contracts of the old company, they chose to call it H.G. Hawker Engineering. (It was renamed
Hawker Aircraft in 1933.) As Tom Sopwith put it: to avoid any muddle if we had gone on building aeroplanes and called them Sopwiths—there was bound to be a muddle somewhere—we called the company the Hawker Company. I didn't mind. He was largely responsible for our growth during the war. ==Death==