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William Beardmore and Company
was a Scottish engineering and shipbuilding conglomerate based
in Glasgow and the surrounding Clydeside area. It was active
from 1886 to the mid 1930s and at its peak employed about 40,000
people. It was founded and owned by William Beardmore, later
Lord Invernairn, after whom the Beardmore Glacier was named.
The company first became involved in aviation in 1913, when it
acquired British manufacturing rights for Austro-Daimler aero-engines
and later those for D.F.W. aircraft. It later built Sopwith Pup
aircraft at Dalmuir under licence. Later, a shipborne version
of the Pup,the Beardmore W.B.III, was designed by the company.
A hundred of these aircraft were produced and delivered to the
Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). Beardmore also built 50 of the
Nieuport 12 under licence, incorporating many of their own refinements
however production was delayed sufficiently that by the time
they entered service the aircraft were obsolete and were primarily
relegated to training duties or placed into storage and never
used. The company built and ran the Inchinnan Airship Constructional
Station at Inchinnan in Renfrewshire. It produced the airships
R27, R32, R34 and R36. In 1924, the company acquired a licence
for stressed skin construction using the Rohrbach principles.
An order for two flying boats using this construction idea was
placed with Beardmore. It had the first aircraft built for it
by the Rohrbach Metal Aeroplane Company in Copenhagen, building
the second itself and they were delivered to the RAF as the Beardmore
Inverness. In addition, a large, experimental, all-metal trimotor
transport aircraft was designed and built at Dalmuir and delivered
to the Royal Air Force as the Beardmore Inflexible. Beardmore
produced a line of aircraft engines, including the Cyclone, Meteor,
Simoon, Tornado (used in the R101 airship), Typhoon and Whirlwind.
As well as aircraft, ships, airships, motorcycles and cars, they
finally built the famous black London taxi's. |
