Much of Britain’s aviation history has been marked by consolidation of its aircraft manufacturing industry, mostly out of necessity. Yet Britten-Norman stands as a testament of how a little can go a long way.
Specializing in the production of small piston airliners and light utility aircraft, Britten-Norman has managed to remain small enough to stave off the nationalization that consolidated many of its competitors, all whilst producing some of the best aircraft on the market!
Foundation
Britten-Norman takes its double-barreled name from its two co-founders: John Britten and Desmond Norman, two apprentices at de Havilland’s Hatfield works who’d met in 1947.
After completing their apprentices at de Havilland in 1949, the pair were uninterested in pursuing careers at the firm and instead chose to go out on their own, initially forming the Britten-Norman partnership.
However, neither men had access to the capital needed to fund such a business full-time and as such, could only afford to design and build the company’s first prototypes part-time whilst they saved it up.
For his part, John Britten found employment at his family’s theater, whilst Desmond Norman worked as an export assistant for SBAC and flew de Havilland Vampire’s for No. 601 Squadron in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force.
The pair’s first aircraft, the Britten-Norman BN-1 Finibee, was built in the garage of John’s home in Bembridge on the Isle of Wight and first flew in 1951.
Designed and built on the principles of cheap to buy, operate and easy to maintain, the pair hoped the Finibee the pair hoped it would be wildly successful.
But even after showcasing the design to several aircraft manufacturers both large and small, including de Havilland, no one was willing to mass produce the design. No one was willing to take a chance on two nobodies.
A Peculiar Start
Undeterred by this failure, the pair were able to win a Sudanese contract converting former RAF de Havilland Tiger Moths trainers into aerial crop dusters. Having done such a great job, the pair received another similar contract, this time from New Zealand.
Completing this quickly, the pair made arguably one of their greatest moves: they went no further. Whilst this may sound counterintuitive as these contracts were highly lucrative, it was a stroke of genius on the part of both men.
You see, they had seen the postwar rise of turboprop aircraft, which were safer, more reliable and perhaps most importantly, cheaper to operate (per hour, on average) than pistons. The pair knew that turboprops would soon start to replace pistons, especially as crop dusters.
By this point, the Britten-Norman partnership had become a limited company (having done so in 1953) and the pair were joined by a third business partner, Australian-born engineer Jim McMahon.
Together, the three established Micronair Limited to develop a revolutionary atomiser that would be less accident-prone and more accurate than the dozens of boom-and-nozzle dispersion devices available at the time.
Known as the Micronair Rotary Atomiser, it sold incredibly well following its release in 1955 and prompted the establishment of yet another company, Crop Culture (Aerial) Ltd., to perform crop dusting activities.