Colonel Bowden

Well done chaps. I see some more data has been un-earthed. However, looks like the current birth date is 10 years too early.

Cheers,

Rod

Bit confusing as I see it's also been added to 1899 births...

The ME Obituary gives a wrong age for him, the National Archive has a date of October 1897, which is much more believable if he had time to be in the army and then become a pilot on active duty during the great War!

I've found his miltary record in his school archives!

What does reg. commn. mean? It's all over service records but I can't find what it expands to - Regimantal Command?

I would think that reg. commn. means regular commission as a career officer in the army, rather than a wartime rank for someone who had, initially, just signed up for the duration of the war.

Cheers,

Rod

In the Southampton Model Aeroplane Club in the 50s, there were some senior members who had met Col. Bowden and seen his models. Not wishing to defame him, as I'm sure he was a legendary pioneer in so many fields, but the consensus of opinion that his model aeroplanes looked like the had been covered in "sackcloth and porridge". Maybe he was someone who put function before form??

cheers

Bill

Bill, I imagine he used traditional cotton and dope, but having seen photos of his models they were definitely functional rather than for show.

Thanks Rod!

Neil

As a pioneer of both free flight and, later, radio control I suspect Col Bowden's models underwent many, many repairs. They probably ended up looking like my models used to

Rod

Hi Neil,

That is is a very interesting clip of Col Bowden in 1932 ,flying a model that must have been very similar to what the RAF had full size at the time. One thing I noticed is that the engine was running clockwise and the propellor was carved for that direction.I have had model engines since about 1947 and they have all been designed to run anti-clockwise.

I would be interested in finding out when the change came about. As a two stroke will usually run either way and in those days everything was home made, including the prop, perhaps you made the decision of direction yourself.

My recent involvement with the 4 stroke Vee-twin involved me in looking up timing charts in the various books I have and I will admit to being puzzled by the fact that they show crankshaft timing rotating clockwise.

Keith

I think the model in the clip was Kanga.

My dad once rebuilt the engine from a Reliant Robin. It took a few weeks of swearing before he realised it span the opposite way to most vehicle engines.

Neil

Col. Bowden seems to have been a reader of Motor Sport magazine - there are a few letters by him in the archive **LINK**

This extract gives some more hints on his early military career:

...Hucks and his looping demo. fired my schoolboy imagination and not long afterwards as a youthful soldier I became seconded to the RFC, where I learnt to fly on the curious aeroplane known as the "Clutching Hand", which had everything "square" including all wingtips. From that I graduated to the lovely little single-seater Sopwith Pup. Everyone who flew one agreed it was the most beautiful aeroplane to fly of any aircraft. I ended up on the famous SE5A which was the fastest thing in the war at the time, at around 119 m.p.h. and climbed to 15,000 ft. in 8 minutes...

The Clutching hand was an Airco DH6 .He also mentions being a " kid subultarn in the DCLI" which was the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry.

Cheers,

Rod

Sopwith Pup AND SE5a - he was spoilt!

Neil

I seem to remember being told that, in general, full size British engines ran clockwise and American engines counter-clockwise. The big growth in model engine availability came with the glow plug engines from the US (then Japan) so presumably their direction of rotation became the standard.

Rod

Since he seems to have been in it from the beginning he did rather well to survive - perhaps he wasn't on the western front.

Rod