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Sir Robert Lang Lickley CBE FRSE FREng FRAeS FIEE (19 January 1912 – 7 July 1998) was a Scottish aeronautical engineer, and Chief Engineer at Fairey Aviation during whose tenure the Fairey Delta 2 became the first aircraft to exceed 1,000 mph.

Early life

Lickley was born in Dundee in Scotland and was educated at the High School of Dundee. He studied Civil Engineering at the University of Edinburgh where he graduated BSc, and then went on to Imperial College London as a postgraduate, where he studied Aeronautics on a Caird Scholarship.

Career

Hawker

Lickley joined the stress office of Hawker at Kingston upon Thames in 1933. He worked on a new single-seat eight-gun monoplane for specification F5/34. This became the Hawker Hurricane, which first flew in 1935.

As a Chief Project Engineer he worked on the Typhoon, Tempest, and Sea Fury. He worked on Hawker's entry into jet flight, the P.1040, which became the Sea Hawk.

Cranfield

He became Professor of Aircraft Design in 1946 at the new College of Aeronautics at Cranfield, which became Cranfield University.

Fairey

In November 1951 Lickley became Technical Director and Chief Engineer of Fairey Aviation, initially working on the Fairey Gannet, including the AEW version. He put together a team of aerodynamicists and mathematicians at their headquarters at Hayes in Middlesex. Fairey was also based in northern Cheshire.

At the same time the Fairey Rotodyne compound gyroplane was being developed, although ultimately cancelled in 1962. The military version would have cost too much and BEA considered the commercial prospects to be not sufficiently assured. The 48-seat aircraft had been planned for the London-Paris route. Fairey also developed the Fairey Ultra-light Helicopter for the Royal Navy, but it was not adopted. The company developed the Fireflash, the UK's first air-to-air missile, at its site at Heston. The total engineering team and staff at Hayes was around 1,000. Lickley later became Managing Director. Part of the company also helped to build the Trawsfynydd nuclear power station.

The British Conservative government cancelled Fairey's new fighter, based on the FD2. A Fairey Delta 3 had also been planned. The French, however, saw the development potential for the FD2 concept, and their Dassault Mirage aircraft would be produced in many variants and exported to many countries. The FD2 had a drooped nose (10 degrees) which included the cockpit. A simpler droop nose, in so far as it was only the unpressurized part in front of the cockpit, was later developed for Concorde.

Institutions

In the 1950s Lickley was a member of the Aeronautical Research Council and Society of British Aerospace Companies. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of Edinburgh in 1973 and from the University of Strathclyde in January 1987. He worked with the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC).

In 1977 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Donald McCallum, Sir John Atwell, Francis Penny and Thomas Diery Patten.

On 25 November 1981, speaking as President of the Institution of Production Engineers, he said the Government appears to have developed a smooth transfer line which moves the oil revenues to the unemployed without any intervening checks or delays. Instead the checks and delays exist, it would seem, to restrain industry from becoming more efficient and to reduce the likelihood of more young people moving into engineering. At the time his words were echoed by Robert Inskip, 2nd Viscount Caldecote.

Personal life

Lickley married Doris May (d.1997) and they had a son and a daughter. They lived in Walton-on-Thames. He was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1973 and knighted in the 1984 Queen's birthday honours.

References

1. "Peter Twiss obituary". The Guardian. 2 September 2011. Archived from the original on 10 March 2023.
2. Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006. ISBN 0-902-198-84-X.
3. Requiem For The Rotodyne An Account of Unusual Problems Met and Solved, Flight International, 9 August 1962, p.200
4. Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006. ISBN 0-902-198-84-X.

External links

• Obituary from the Royal Society of Edinburgh
• IMechE Heritage
• Fairey Delta 2

Video clips

• Fairey Delta 2 footage on YouTube
• Air speed record on YouTube

• 1912 births
• 1998 deaths
• Academics of Cranfield University
• Alumni of Imperial College London
• Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
• Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
• Fairey Aviation Company
• Fellows of the Institution of Engineering and Technology
• Fellows of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers
• Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering
• Fellows of the Royal Aeronautical Society
• Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
• Hawker Siddeley
• Knights Bachelor
• People educated at the High School of Dundee
• Engineers from Dundee
• People from Walton-on-Thames
• Royal Aeronautical Society Gold Medal winners
• Scottish aerospace engineers
• 20th-century Scottish engineers