Our Aviation Heritage

Frederick Slingsby and the Birth of British Gliding

Frederick Nicholas Slingsby MM, C.Eng, FRAeS was born in Cambridge in 1894, the son of a builder. In 1914, he joined the Royal Flying Corps as a gunner and observer, serving until 1920. On one sortie over the Western Front, his pilot was killed by enemy fire. Slingsby climbed from the observer’s position into the pilot’s cockpit and flew the aircraft back to British lines, earning the Military Medal.

After the war, Slingsby bought a partnership in a woodworking and furniture factory in Queen Street, Scarborough. His interest in flight never faded. Inspired by gliding demonstrations by the Austrian pilot Robert Kronfeld, he co-founded the Scarborough Gliding Club in February 1930, one of the first in Britain. He served as its ground engineer, and after acquiring a set of plans from Germany, built his first glider in his own workshop: the Type 1 Falcon, based on the German Falke. He made his first soaring flight in 1931, along the ridge close to the old Rosedale railway incline on the North York Moors.

Word spread quickly. By November 1933, the first Slingsby advertisement appeared in Sailplane and Glider magazine, offering primary training gliders for £45 complete. In 1934, at the invitation of Major J. E. D. Shaw, a local landowner who had a small aerodrome on his estate at Welburn Hall, Slingsby moved the business to Kirkbymoorside in North Yorkshire, where it has remained ever since. Shaw’s aim was to bring employment to a fairly underdeveloped part of the North Riding, and he offered Slingsby financial backing. The firm began operating under the name Slingsby, Russell and Brown Ltd, with Shaw as Chairman and Fred Slingsby as Managing Director and Chief Designer.

That same year, Slingsby and the celebrated pilot Philip Wills established the Yorkshire Gliding Club at Sutton Bank, near Thirsk. Amy Johnson was among its early members.

A new purpose-built factory was constructed at Welburn and was ready for use in 1939. The company was formally incorporated as Slingsby Sailplanes Ltd. The factory officially opened on 4 September, the day after Britain declared war on Germany.

Frederick Nicholas Slingsby MM, C.Eng, FRAeS, 1894-1973

The Kirby Kite at the Shuttleworth Collection, one of the earliest Slingsby designs still flying today.

The War Years

The Slingsby Hengist (DG676) under tow at Sherburn-in-Elmet, Yorkshire, 25 April 1943. Photograph: Imperial War Museum.

The Second World War transformed the small glider workshop into a serious manufacturing operation. Slingsby built rudders for the Avro Anson, supplied gliders for radar experiments, and produced large numbers of primary training gliders for the Air Training Corps.

The most ambitious wartime project was the T.18 Hengist, a 15-seat military troop-carrying glider with an 80-foot wingspan. Designed by John “Jack” Frost to an Air Ministry specification, the first prototype flew in January 1942. Production was ultimately halted when American-built Waco Hadrian gliders became available in quantity through Lend-Lease, and the Hengist never saw operational service. But the experience of building large, stressed wooden structures at scale would prove formative.

The factory also manufactured the Baynes Bat, an experimental one-third-scale model of a proposed tank-carrying glider, one of the more unusual aircraft of the war.

The Golden Age of British Gliding

A Slingsby T.21 Sedbergh launching at Booker airfield, 1954. Photograph: M J Richardson.

Anticipating post-war demand, Slingsby had designed new training gliders during the war itself. The result was the T.21 Sedbergh, a side-by-side two-seat trainer that became one of the most recognisable gliders ever built. Around 220 were produced, with the RAF taking more than 90 for Air Cadet training. The Sedbergh remained in military service until the mid-1980s. Several fly today, maintained by the Air Cadet Historic Flight.

Other training types followed for the Air Training Corps: the solo T.30 Prefect, the tandem T.31 Cadet, and the delightfully simple T.38 Grasshopper, a primary trainer launched by bungee cord for ground slides and low hops to a maximum height of about three metres. Sixty-five Grasshoppers were delivered in 1952–53 and served with the ATC until the late 1980s.

But it was in competition that Slingsby made its name internationally.

The T.34 Sky dominated the 1952 World Gliding Championships in Madrid. Eight were entered. They finished first, third, and fourth, with Philip Wills winning the Open Class title. The Skylark series that followed became the company’s post-war best-seller. The T.43 Skylark 3, with its 59-foot wingspan and laminar-flow wing sections, won the 1960 World Championships. The T.42 Eagle, a high-performance two-seat tandem sailplane, won the two-seater class at the 1956 Worlds.

The T.38 Grasshopper — a bungee-launched primary trainer used by the Air Training Corps from 1952 to the late 1980s.

The T.34 Sky at the Gliding Heritage Centre, Lasham — the aircraft that dominated the 1952 World Championships.

The T.51 Dart, first flown in November 1963, was the last genuine Slingsby design to be built in significant numbers. With metal-reinforced spar booms, it marked the end of the era of wooden gliders. The original 15-metre version was awarded the OSTIV Prize in 1965 for the best Standard Class design. In its 17-metre variant with retractable undercarriage, the Dart achieved a glide ratio of 36:1. Eighty-two were built. It was the last type designed under Fred Slingsby’s direction.

From the early 1930s to around 1970, Slingsby built over half of all British club gliders. Fred Slingsby’s contribution to aviation was recognised with the Paul Tissandier Diploma from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (1958), the British Silver Medal for Aeronautics from the Royal Aeronautical Society (1958), and the Silver Medal of the Royal Aero Club (1962). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1964. He retired that same year, at the age of 70, having suffered from poor health. He died in May 1973.

Fire, Rescue, and a New Material

After Major Shaw’s death in 1955, a major shareholding in the company was taken up by the Shaw-Slingsby Trust, formed by leading members of the British gliding movement and chaired by Philip Wills. But the Trust eventually ceased to be viable following a ruling by the Inland Revenue. With Dart production coming to an end and little steady new work, the parent group went bankrupt. Shortly afterwards, in November 1968, a fire destroyed the main workshop. The company went into liquidation in July 1969.

It was rescued by Vickers Ltd, which acquired the business not for its gliders but for its growing expertise in glass-reinforced plastic (GRP). Slingsby had been working with composite materials since the 1950s, and Vickers saw the potential.

Under Vickers ownership, the company produced the T.65 Vega, its last and most technologically advanced glider. First flown in June 1977, the Vega was the first sailplane in the world designed from the outset with a carbon fibre main spar. Around 70 were produced before production ended in 1982. With it, the era of Slingsby gliders came to a close.

But the composites capability that the Vega represented was just the beginning. The story of how it led to today’s Slingsby Advanced Composites is told on our main history page.

The T.65 Vega — the last Slingsby glider and the first sailplane designed with a carbon fibre main spar.

The Firefly: From Gliders to Powered Flight

The T67M260 Firefly prototype lifts off from the Slingsby factory airstrip at Kirkbymoorside, 1993. Photograph: WagTheTaildragger.

In 1981, Slingsby acquired the development rights to the Fournier RF-6B, a French two-seat aerobatic trainer. What followed was a progressive transformation: the wooden and fabric aircraft was redesigned into an all-composite machine with increasingly powerful engines, emerging as the T.67 Firefly.

The definitive variant, the T67M260, powered by a 260-horsepower Lycoming engine, became one of the most widely used military screening trainers of its generation. Over 250 Fireflies were built.

The Royal Air Force operated 22 T67M260s as basic trainers, logging over 100,000 flight hours at RAF Barkston Heath and Church Fenton between 1995 and 2010. The United States Air Force purchased 113 as the T-3A for its Enhanced Flight Screening Programme. The Royal Jordanian Air Force, the Bahrain Air Force, and the Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force also operated the type.

The Firefly programme demonstrated that Slingsby could design and certify a composite aircraft to full military standards, a capability that would define its future.

T-3A Fireflies on the production line at Kirkbymoorside for the United States Air Force, 1993. Photograph: WagTheTaildragger.

Beyond Aviation: Hovercraft and Submarines

The LR5 submarine rescue vehicle — originally built by Slingsby in 1978 — deploys during a multinational naval exercise. Photograph: US Navy.

The composites expertise developed through gliders, sailplanes, and the Firefly opened doors far beyond aviation.
In the late 1970s, the company developed a three-man mini-submarine in GRP, followed by the “Spider” one-man submersible and, most significantly, the LR5 submarine rescue vehicle, built in 1978 and operated by the Royal Navy from 1978 to 2009.

The SAH 2200 hovercraft, developed in the early 1980s, was built almost entirely from composite materials: a 75mm epoxy-resin GRP sandwich hull with a Kevlar underside. Capable of carrying 23 passengers or 2,200 kg of cargo, the SAH 2200 was sold to military operators worldwide and saw service in conditions from the Arctic to equatorial Africa. It also achieved a measure of fame when it appeared in the James Bond film Die Another Day in 2002.

The marine and subsea division eventually became Perry Slingsby Systems and was later acquired by Forum Energy Technologies, which has since delivered over 800 manned and unmanned underwater vehicles globally and built the NATO Submarine Rescue System.

The Heritage Lives On

A restored T.21 Sedbergh on display at the Royal International Air Tattoo. Photograph: Ronnie Macdonald.

Slingsby gliders remain a cherished part of British aviation. Dozens are still airworthy, maintained by a dedicated community of owners, restorers, and enthusiasts.

The Vintage Glider Club, founded in 1973, holds the largest archive of Slingsby design drawings, production records, and flight test reports in the world. The Yorkshire Gliding Club at Sutton Bank, co-founded by Fred Slingsby himself, hosts an annual Slingsby Week celebrating the company’s aviation heritage.

The Gliding Heritage Centre at Lasham Airfield in Hampshire houses over 40 historic gliders, many of them airworthy Slingsby types. The Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden flies the original Kirby Kite prototype (BGA 400, Certificate of Airworthiness issued 1937) at its evening displays. The Air Cadet Historic Flight operates a fleet of restored ATC gliders to full British Gliding Association standards, including a Sedbergh, Grasshopper, Cadet, Prefect, and Swallow, keeping alive the types that trained generations of young pilots. And the Yorkshire Air Museum at RAF Elvington holds a wartime-era Kirby Cadet in its collection.

The T.13 Petrel (BGA 651) — built in 1938, the sole surviving pre-war Slingsby sailplane.