Picture Perfect Painting of Spartan G-ABYN

There are artists and there are top flight artists. Isle of Wight artist Ivan Berryman is a master of detail who has executed this extraordinary painting of the Spartan bi-plane G-ABYN flying over Queen Victoria’s beloved home of Osborne House, East Cowes, Isle of Wight.
The plane was built by Spartan Aircraft, a subsidiary of Saunders Roe of East Cowes, in 1932.
Ivan was commissioned to paint this picture as part of the fundraising campaign to buy the aircraft and return it to England and the Isle of Wight from New Zealand.
Ivan has incorporated into his painting pilot Pauline Gower and her engineer Dorothy Spicer.

Dorothy Spicer and Pauline Gower with Spartan 3-seater G-ABKK. Copyright Michael Fahie.

Both women are forever associated with Spartan bi-planes, in which they made their names in the 1930s pioneering days of flying circuses. Dorothy trained in secret for one of her aircraft engineering licences at Saunders Roe, East Cowes, and Spartan Aircraft, Somerton Airfield, West Cowes. It was done in secret because women were prevented from gaining advanced qualifications at that time – preserved for men only.
Ivan’s original painting has been reproduced as a limited edition of 250. Each print is individually numbered and signed by the artist. Actual size of the print is 48 x 33 cm (19″ x 13″).
All profits from sale of the prints will go towards to fundraising campaign.
If anyone is interested in having one of these prints, please make enquiries here where you will be given details of how to obtain one.
Alternatively, visit Wight Aviation Museum website if you are not able to actually visit the museum yourself at Sandown Airport. 

Saunders Roe Princess Flying Boat G-ALUN model at Wight Aviation Museum, Sandown Airport.

See more of Ivan Berryman’s artwork on his own website, including other Isle of Wight historic aircraft, painted with the same level of accurate attention to detail. Browse and enjoy.     http://www.ivanberrymandirect.com/print_store.htm

 

International Women’s Day 2023 – Women Were Not Dopes

The old saying is that behind every great man is a woman. Back in the pioneering days of aviation that was certainly true. Gladys Simmonds was the wife of Spartan Aircraft designer and engineer Oliver Simmonds.

Pauline Gower with her Spartan photographed by Thomas Hiett signed by Pauline. Courtesy of Christopher Hiett

Oliver left the employment of Supermarine in Southampton in 1928 to start his own company, Simmonds Aircraft Ltd. He based himself in Warsash and built the fuselage of a prototype Spartan inside his house. In another room, Gladys stitched together the fabric for the interchangeable wings. No easy job. 

This fabric had to be coated with dope, a vanish applied to the cloth surface to strengthen it and keep it airtight. The fumes from this varnish, especially in an enclosed room, could have a stupefying effect.

Oliver was initially successful with his light aircraft design. When his business became financially unviable in 1931 he sold out to Whitehall Securities and Spartan aircraft production moved across the Solent to the Isle of Wight. The new manufacturing site was at Northwood, Cowes, with the design office in East Cowes at Saunders Roe (SARO). Oliver and Gladys were no longer involved in the business.

One man who stayed with Spartan production was Thomas Hiett, Oliver’s foreman. Thomas had joined Oliver in 1928 from Supermarine. In 1931 Hiett moved to Cowes with his family, to head up production there and stayed with it until the final days of Spartan Aircraft. He saw the very last Spartan completed. Hiett was a keen photographer. He took many snaps of Spartan planes he worked on and flew in, including the historic image (above) taken at Cowes of Pauline Gower with her Spartan 3 Seater. 

Spartan Aircraft staff Fred Overton, Basil Brown, Maude Hodder, Mr Vance, Mabel Knight. Image taken by Thomas Hiett. Courtesy Christopher Hiett

Thankfully, he also recorded for posterity some of the men and women who were his workforce. That is how we now know the names of two, previously invisible, women who applied the varnish to Spartan wings during the SARO production years. Maude Hodder and Mabel Knight are pictured here with Fred Overton, Basil Brown and Mr. Vance.

Spartan ZK-ARH

Hiett’s grandson Christopher has kept safe Thomas’s photograph album. A copy of this album will be donated to Wight Aviation Museum, along with a written record of Spartan production compiled by Christopher’s father Thomas junior. Thanks are due to Christopher for his kind offer to the museum. This pictorial and written record will tell the Spartan story, along side Spartan II Three Seater G-ABYN, seen here with New Zealand registration ZK-ARH and flown by owner Rod Hall Jones.

Invariably, during the early aviation years, it was more often women who worked in the aircraft dope shops, including SARO Spartan. In Portsmouth, women worked for the Airspeed aviation company. It is on record that men, who worked in the production sheds, laughed at the Airspeed girls who had breathed in too many fumes from the varnish. The dizziness had made them ‘dopey.’

Dopes, they were not. They were earning their own wage and during the war years they were proud to ‘do their bit.’ Such women also worked at Saunders Roe in the Sea Otter workshops at Osborne, East Cowes. Whether lengthy exposure to all those varnish fumes had any long term, ill health effects can never now be fully assessed. Anecdotally, it has been suggested that maybe it did. 

Behind every great aircraft is a great number of women who played their part, one way and another, just like Gladys Simmonds, Maude Hodder and Mabel Knight.

Pauline Gower Pioneering Leader of the Spitfire Women

 A talk on the life of Pauline Gower will be given, at the RAFMuseum on International Women’s Day 8 March, by Alison Hill. Click on this link for more information. Those who attend the talk get the opportunity to sit in a Spitfire.

Spartan Home to UK Campaign

Spartan II 3-seater ZK-ARH flown by owner Rod Hall-Jones

The campaign to buy for Great Britain the last 3-seater Spartan bi-plane, which is still flying, and to get it back to the Isle of Wight where it was manufactured, started as long ago as 2015. At that time there was no aero museum on the Isle of Wight. Seven years later, things have changed. Wight Aviation Museum was born and is gaining momentum with new exhibits being added, year on year.

Wight Aviation Museum – WAM – of Sandown Airfield, Isle of Wight, England

The WAM logo was inspired by Spartan Aircraft of Cowes.

The Spartan, though, still remains in New Zealand, where the owner Rod Hall-Jones, has waited patiently for funding to become available to buy his historic aircraft for Britain and the Isle of Wight. Time has almost run out and Rod cannot delay much longer. He needs to sell very soon.  If it is to be saved for the nation, the money must be found urgently.

Spartan II 3-seater EI-ABU before it became ZK-ARH. The wreck found in Ireland.

The story of how Spartan G-ABYN (Gabby) moved from Cowes to Heston (London), to Ireland, to Hampshire UK and on to New Zealand, where it was fully restored from a near wreck, is little short of a flying miracle. There, she graces the South Island fiordland skies as ZK-ARH.

To read the bi-plane’s history and marvel at what can only be described as a true labour of love and one of restoration dedication, download this document here Solent Aviatrix Spartan G-ABYN presentation V4
It also contains an explanation on Solent Aviatrix website involvement in asking Rod Hall-Jones to delay selling his Spartan elsewhere in the world.

You’ll Never Make It. A New Zealand Pilot’s Story. Image: R. Hall-Jones

‘You’ll Never Make It’ is the title of Rod’s autobiography. His life story reads more like adventure fiction, just waiting to be filmed as an action movie. Movie makers are you reading this? Follow this link for details on Rod’s book You’ll Never Make It.

It is to be hoped that the book’s title will not be prophetic of this Spartan Home To UK Campaign. If you would like to be part of this campaign or can help in any way, please get in touch via the Contact Us page.

Click on this link for more information about G-ABYN.

Pauline Gower and Dorothy Spicer with Spartan G-ABKK ‘Helen of Troy’. Copyright Michael Fahie.

Click on this link to learn about the first female fully qualified ground engineer in the world, Dorothy Spicer, who trained at Spartan Aircraft of Somerton, Cowes, at a time when women were banned from gaining advanced aviation engineering licences. Dorothy was the Spartan engineer to pilot Pauline Gower when they were a flying business partnership in the 1930s, first with the now legendary flying circuses, then later as an independent business called ‘Air Trips.’ The two women owned two Spartans during the 1930s, setting records for the number of passengers flown and the number of flying hours clocked up in Pauline’s log books. Keeping the planes airworthy was Dorothy’s job.
The names Gower, Spicer, Spartan go hand in hand. Spartan Aircraft was a subsidiary of Saunders-Roe (SARO) of Cowes. Without the permission of SARO’s top managers, Dorothy would never have been allowed to study for her Spartan construction and testing licence. That fact alone is truly remarkable. Why? The Isle of Wight is sometimes mocked for being behind the times (some people say this is part of its charm) and yet SARO and the Wight led the world in 1934, by trail-blazing Dorothy Spicer’s engineering skills.
How did she and SARO do it? Read their autobiography by clicking on this link to a free download of their Women With Wings book.
When the Second World War started Pauline Gower campaigned for women to be allowed to become ferry pilots, to serve the R.A.F. in a civilian capacity. In 1940 Pauline won the argument and she became female leader of the women’s section of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA). The rest is history. One of Pauline’s pilots was Mary Wilkins Ellis. Mary’s flying life is a major exhibit at Wight Aviation Museum.  You could say, it all started with a Spartan!