Sir Edwin Alliott Verdon Roe (April 26, 1877 – January 4, 1958) was a pioneer British pilot and aircraft manufacturer, and founder in 1910 of the Avro company. He was the first Englishman to make a powered flight (in 1908 at Brooklands) and the first Englishman to fly an all British machine a year later, on Hackney Marshes. Roe was born in Patricroft, near Manchester. The son of a doctor, he left home when he was 14 to go to Canada where he spent a year working odd jobs. April 26 is the 116th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (117th in leap years). ... 1877 (MDCCCLXXVII) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... January 4 is the 4th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1958 (MCMLVIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... An aerospace manufacturer is a company or individual involved in the various aspects of designing, building, testing, selling, and maintaining aircraft, aircraft parts, missiles, rockets, and/or spacecraft. ... Avro 504K. Avro was a British aircraft manufacturer, well known for planes such as the Avro Lancaster which served in World War II. One of the worlds first aircraft builders, A.V.Roe and Company was established at Brownsfield Mills, Manchester, England by Alliot Verdon Roe and his brother... Brooklands was a motor racing circuit built near Weybridge in Surrey, England. ... Hackney Marshes is an area of grassland on the bank of the River Lee in the London Borough of Hackney. ... Patricroft is an area of Eccles in the metropolitan borough of the City of Salford, Greater Manchester and within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire. ... Manchester is a major city and metropolitan borough within Greater Manchester in North West England. ...

Once he returned to Britain he served as an apprentice with the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway and later went to study marine engineering at King's College London. As well as dockyard work, the young Roe joined the ship S.S. Inchanga as fifth engineer. It was during this time that he first turned his mind to the possibility of actually building a flying machine. The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR) was one of the major British railway companies which existed before the 1923 Grouping; although in 1922 it had already entered into a working agreement with the London and North Western Railway. ... Kings College London is the largest college of the University of London and one of a number of university institutions founded in England in the early 19th century. ...

He began with small models and in this he was quite successful. When the Wright brothers made the very first flight in a heavier than air machine at Kittyhawk, U.S.A. he was almost immediately in correspondence with them. He cycled to Le Mans to meet them when they made their first, very impressive, European flights. He applied for and took a job with the Royal Aero Club. He then found a job in the U.S.A. with a firm trying to build a gyrocopter. The machine was a failure and Roe came back to Britain; but not discouraged. The Wright brothers, Orville (August 19, 1871–January 30, 1948) and Wilbur (April 16, 1867–May 30, 1912), are Americans generally credited with making the first controlled, powered, heavier-than-air human flight on December 17, 1903. ... The Curtiss P-40 was an American single-engine, single-seat, low-wing, all-metal fighter and ground attack aircraft which first flew in 1938 and was used in great numbers in World War II. Developed from the pre-war radial-engined P-36 Hawk, the P-40 was used... Le Mans is a city in France, located at the Sarthe River. ... The Royal Aero Club is the national co-ordinating body for Air Sport in the United Kingdom. ... An autogyro (only an autogiro when made by Cierva (see below)), sometimes called a gyroplane or Gyrocopter™, is an aircraft with an unpowered rotary wing, or rotor, that resembles a helicopter. ...

In 1899 he worked for the British & South African Royal Mail Company as an engineer. Gradually he developed an interest in birds and in flight, and began to construct flying models, winning a Daily Mail competition with a prize of £75 for one of his designs in 1907, against fierce competition. With the prize money he built a full size aeroplane based on his winning model. The Daily Mail is a British newspaper, a tabloid, first published in 1896. ...

Walthamstow marsh was the location of Roe's later attempts to build and fly his early aeroplanes. Despite many failures, Roe continued his experiments and there is now a blue plaque commemorating his first successful flight (in July 1909) on one of the railway arches he worked from. Walthamstow Marsh is now a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest, it was once an area of lammas land, strips of meadow used for growing crops and grazing cattle. ... A blue plaque showing information about The Spanish Barn at Torre Abbey in Torquay. ...

Soon he founded the A.V. Roe Aircraft Co. in 1910. His most popular model, the 504, sold more than 8,300. In 1928, he sold his shares and bought S. E. Saunders Co., and formed Saunders-Roe Aviation. Saunders-Roe Princess G-ALUN History Saunders-Roe Limited was a British aircraft manufacturing company based in East Cowes, Isle of Wight. ...

He was knighted in 1929. During the 1930s he was a supporter of Oswald Mosley. He was a great believer in monetary reform and thought it was wrong that banks should be able to create money by "book entry" and charge interest on it when they lent it out. In this respect he shared the same enthusiasm for reform as the American poet Ezra Pound, who also wrote for the Mosley press. Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (November 16, 1896 – December 3, 1980), was a British politician known principally as the founder of the British Union of Fascists. ... Ezra Pound in 1913. ...

External links

• Biography
• Biogrpahy at Oswald Mosely website