Unusual Rotorcraft - Historic Fairey Rotodyne
In 1947 the Fairey Aviation Company designed a large winged-helicopter known as the "Rotodyne". This was a 20-seat machine with a four-bladed rotor and twin three-bladed propellors for forward flight. Government support for the project was granted in October 1950 for Rolls-Royce Dart powered prototype. However Rolls-Royce was unable to produce the Dart on time and Armstrong Siddeley Mamba engines were selected instead. Various engine changes were made during the final design phase. The rotodyne emerged with a 58 feet 8 inches long fuselage, rectangular in cross-section, with clamshell rear doors for vehicle loading and with a wingspan of 46 feet 4 inches. The stainless steel rotor was 90 feet in diameter with tip jets fed from bleed air from the engine compressors.
Interest from both the military and civil air freight firms meant that the second protype would be a pure cargo version. A city-centre to city-centre passenger route was planned from London to Paris which would take 88 minutes flying time and in the US Kamen Helicopters were interested in licenced production. Serious problems started to appear with the weight of the aircraft and the noise from the rotor tip jets was causing great concern. Even after considerable tests with silencers the rotodyne at 200 feet altitude produced a sound level of 106 dB, a factor which went against the city-centre use of it. In September 1958 the Canadian firm of Okanagan Helicopters of Vancouver ordered the first production rotodyne, New York Airways and Japan Airlines also expressed an interest with NYA publicly stating that they would order 5. JAL wanted to use it on the Tokyo-Osaka route. British European Airways wanted 20 and Silver City also wanted to buy it as a replacement to their Bristol Freighters. On the military front the RAF wanted 12 whilst the US Army was rumoured to be about to order 200, the US Marines also showed an interest in it. Kamen would build all the Rotodynes for the American market. The production version of the rotodyne would have a wingspan of 56 feet 7 inches and a rotor diameter of 104 feet.
The curse of Duncan-Sandys was about fall on the project when he made it known that he only wanted one helicopter manufacturer in Britain and that was to be Westland. The first company to be merged was Saunders-Roe Helicopter Division in 1959. In March 1960 it was Bristol's turn to link up with Westland and on 2 May 1960 Fairey finally gave up making Westland the sole builder of rotary wing aircraft in the UK. Westland was awarded a £4 million contract to develop the rotodyne further with £1.5 million of Government money to bring it into service with the State-owned BEA. Westland altered the design once again by increasing the rotor to 109 feet, enlarging the wingspan to 75 feet and adding a third vertical fin. The weight went up to 58,500 pounds. The RAF version would be capable of carrying 75 fully equipped troops, armoured vehicles or a complete Hawker Hunter fuselage. It could also lift a 100 feet span bridge slung under its fuselage. However promising the developments were, the problem of the noise from the rotor tip-jets continued (even though it was quiter than the DC-8). The Government was begining to get "cold feet" over the project and in February 1962 funding was withdrawn.
D.Marker email: dmarker@internetage.com
Created: 04 Apr 2000 - Updated: 10 Apr 2000