Canley Lane
CANLEY LANE: Temporary aerodrome
Operated by: Berkshire Aviation Company
Location: E of the A45 in Earlsdon, about 1.5nm WSW of Coventry city centre
Period of operation: 16th to 24th October 1919
A MICHAEL T HOLDER GALLERY
We have, once again, Mike Holder who is a great friend of this 'Guide', to thank for both discovering this little known venue, and providng the following items to illustrate the listing.
The advert was placed in the Coventry Evening Telegraph on the 14th October 1919.
The local area view is from my Google Earth© derived database.
NOTES: When the Holmes brothers, Fred and Jack, decided to form the Berkshire Aviation Company in April 1919, at EAST HANNEY near Wantage in Berkshire, they invited Alan Cobham to join them in the enterprise as their main pilot. Indeed, it is easy to get the impression that Cobham was their only pilot. I strongly suspect that it was Cobham with his endless drive and enthusiasm that persuaded the company to keep flying all year round to ensure their survival.
Cobham resigned from the company in 1920 and later went on to achieve global renown, for which he was knighted, by pioneering routes for Imperial Airways to South Africa and across the Middle East to Asia. His National Aviation Days "Flying Circus" tours from 1932 until 1935 exceeded by far the number of venues visited by his competitors. His autobiography, A Time to Fly, is highly recommended.
Perhaps not generally remembered these days is that by the mid-1930s, he became determined to pioneer the concept of in-flight refuelling and formed a new company, Flight Refuelling at FORD aerodrome in Sussex. After WW2 they moved to TARRANT RUSHTON in Dorset and the rest, as they say, is history. Later the Cobham Group was formed and soon established itself as being also at the forefront of, for example, aerials for top line aircraft.
Indeed, when the Americans realised that at last they could take revenge for Concorde being successful, by insisting that it was fitted with TCAS, it was a Cobham group company, Chelton in Marlow, who saved the day, designing and making both the aerial and the blisters to contain it. That contract was initially awarded to Collins in the USA, and after the first proving flight only the fuselage fixings remained.
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