Cierva Autogiro Company

Cierva Autogiro Company, Ltd

Type	Limited company
Industry	Aviation
Founded	March 24, 1926 (1926-03-24)
Founder(s)	James George Weir
Key people	Juan de la Cierva

The Cierva Autogiro Company was a British developer of autogyros established in 1926. It was set up to further the designs of Juan de la Cierva with the financial backing of James George Weir, a Scottish industrialist and aviator.

History

Cierva's first British-built autogyro was the C.8 design. It and some other designs were built in conjunction with Avro. The pre-war Cierva C.30 proved popular. Nearly 150 were built under licence in the UK (Avro), Germany (Focke-Wulf) and France (Lioré-et-Olivier).

In 1936, Cierva was killed in the Croydon KLM airliner accident when it the flight crashed after taking off in fog. From 1936-1939 J.A.J. Bennett was Chief Technical Officer of the of the company. In keeping with the late Juan de la Cierva's wish to offer the Royal Navy a more reliable and efficient alternative to the helicopter, J.A.J Bennett's gyrodyne design, the C.41, was tendered to the Air Ministry (Specification S.22/38) but the preliminary work was abandoned with the outbreak of World War II. Bennett joined Fairey Aviation in 1945, where he led the development of the Fairey FB-1 Gyrodyne.

In 1943 the Aircraft Department of G & J Weir Ltd. was reconstituted as Cierva Autogiro Company to develop helicopter designs for the Air Ministry. The post-war Cierva Air Horse was at the time (1948) the world's largest helicopter. However the crash of the first prototype killing three led Weir to cease further investment in the company and its development contracts were transferred to Saunders-Roe.

Aircraft

Cierva C.8 Cierva C.9 Cierva C.12 Cierva C.17

Cierva C.19 Cierva C.24 Cierva C.30A Cierva Air Horse

Cierva W.9 Cierva CR Twin Saunders-Roe Skeeter - originally the Cierva W.14 Skeeter

Notes and references

• CIERVA AUTOGIRO Co., Ltd Flight DECEMBER 9, 1926 p810