Sydney Camm

by John Sweetman

ISBN: 9781526756220

Published: 2019-10-19

'This Man Saved Britain' ran a headline in the News Chronicle on 18 February 1941, in a reference to the role of Sydney Camm, designer of the Hawker Hurricane, during the Battle of Britain. Similarly, the Minister of Economic Warfare, Lord Selborne, advised Winston Churchill that to Camm 'England owed a great deal'. Twenty-five years later, following his death in 1966, obituaries in the Sunday Express and Sunday Times, among other tributes, referred to 'Hurricane Designer' or 'Hurricane Maker', implying that this machine represented the pinnacle of Camm's professional achievement. Sir Thomas Sopwith, the respected aircraft designer and Hawker aircraft company founder, believed that Camm deserved much wider recognition, being 'undoubtedly the greatest designer of fighter aircraft the world has ever known.' Born in 1893, the eldest of twelve children, Camm was raised in a small, terraced house. Despite lacking the advantages of a financially-secure upbringing and formal technical...