Fred Handley Page’s penguins

[Rheged]

I'm not sure where this article belongs. It's not a build, but it is about a 1920's rescue vehicle.  If anyone wants to have a go at actually building one, I'd love to see it!!

Frederick Handley Page's  penguins.

At the end of the First World War a vast quantity of surplus military equipment was in need of disposal. Ships were scrapped or laid up in reserve and lorries by the thousand were sold to recently demobbed servicemen who had learned to drive during the conflict. His Majesty's Disposals Board was established  to dispose of surplus material, including  aircraft not required for use by the diminishing RAF. The Aircraft Disposals Company (ADC) or Airdisco , was a British firm established in March 1920 to take over from the Board. One of the founders was Frederick Handley Page, the British aviation pioneer. ADC bought the entire available stock of surplus aircraft engines and spares, including 10,000 airframes and 30,000 engines, for the sum of £1,000,000 plus a share of any profits. Many ex-military aircraft were converted to various civil roles before being sold on while others were sold to military buyers.  Whilst a reasonable market existed for more up to date airframes and engines, many obsolete machines remained unsold. De Havilland DH2s , Vickers FB 5 s and   Royal Aircraft   Factory FE 2b s and FE 8 s were totally obsolete military aircraft with no apparent civilian use.


Fred Handley Page, keen to extract maximum value from these obsolete aircraft,  put his engineering people to work on them to convert some of them into ground vehicles.  Seeing a possible market as beach racers, the obsolete machines were converted into what became known as "Penguins"


The prototype Penguin was a Vickers FB5 with the wings removed, the tail shortened and a wide ski undercarriage installed. A lengthened tail ski was fitted with a rudder above it.  The resulting device travelled remarkably smoothly on sand, snow and even grass.  The intention was to sell single or tandem seat Penguins to rich young men to race along such beaches as Pendine Sands.


Following a near tragedy in Morecambe Bay, when a mother and children were cut off by the rising tide and only rescued with extreme difficulty, Handley Page had the nacelle of the prototype Penguin widened, wide flat bottomed floats fitted and the vehicle stationed at Hest Bank for the summer of 1922.  That year, seven lives were saved from the sands.

 
The Penguin was thereafter  marketed as a rescue craft.  Obsolete pusher fighter aircraft were repurposed  by the U S and Canadian federal governments as a means of  allowing medical staff to cross the great plains of North America in winter,  to reach isolated settlements at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour.  The Australian railways purchased Penguins, fitted railway wheels and used them to take rapid medical aid to the isolated settlements on the line across the Nullarbor Plain.


In 1924, the  Scott Polar  Research Institute took three Penguins  to York Factory, a Hudson's Bay Company post in Northern Manitoba, to test their use as Polar research vehicles. The tests were reasonably successful, and Penguins were taken south two years later  when a small survey team successfully mapped large areas of the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.


By 1928, more appropriate polar vehicles and rescue craft had been developed and  Fred Handley Page's Penguins  were scrapped.   It is believed that the British Antarctic Survey have the engine and nacelle of a Penguin awaiting restoration, and the remains of a further machine were recently identified in a scrap yard at Heysham.