W. E. W. Petter

William Edward Willoughby "Teddy" Petter (8 August 1908, Highgate in Middlesex – 1 May 1968, Béruges) was a British aircraft designer.

He is noted for Westland's wartime aeroplanes, as well as the Canberra, the early design of the Lightning, and his last plane, the Folland Gnat.

Edward 'Teddy' Petter was the eldest of the three sons and one daughter of Sir Ernest Petter (co-founder of Westland Aircraft Works) and his wife, Angela Emma.

Because his father spent much time in London, Teddy's early childhood was spent mostly with his mother, from whom he inherited a strong religious conviction and firm ethical principles.

He was educated at Marlborough College in Wiltshire then Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

During his first two years at Cambridge he focused his studies on subjects relevant to oil engines, the traditional product of Petters Limited, but in his third year he concentrated on aerodynamics and aircraft engineering.

In 1929 he was awarded a first class in the mechanical sciences tripos and shared the John Bernard Seely prize in aeronautics.

Petter joined Westland Aircraft Works as a graduate apprentice in 1929 and for the next 2 1/2 years he worked in every department, not seeking any favour despite being the chairman's son.

In the drawing office it was noted that he was a very poor draughtsman but had good ideas.

Years later he said "I looked on this as sheer drudgery at the time, but knew afterwards that without workshop knowledge I would never have become a designer".

In May 1932 he was appointed personal assistant to the managing director, Robert Bruce, a position previously held by Petter's friend and colleague Harald Penrose.

Bruce did not welcome the appointment and ignored him, leaving Petter spare time to modify and compete an Austin 7.

Despite his interest in sports cars, Petter had no interest in learning to fly.

Penrose gave him a flying lesson at this time, but later commented that Petter had a 'lack of the requisite sensitivity coupled with hopeless judgment of speed and distance'.

His father appointed Petter to the board in May 1934, making him technical director (at the age of 26) in preference over more experienced engineers such as Arthur Davenport and Geoffrey Hill.

This was not welcomed by the older members of the management, ultimately prompting Bruce and Hill to resign, and placing the older and more experienced Davenport in an intolerable position as his subordinate.

One of his first actions as technical director was to terminate development of Hill's Pterodactyl, a pioneering tailless swept-wing aircraft.

However, other business decisions by Ernest Petter infuriated Teddy.

In July 1935 Ernest Petter convened a shareholders meeting to propose a merger with British Marine Aircraft for the purpose of expanding Westland's workshops.

This proposal was thwarted by Teddy and Peter Acland who threatened to resign.

But in July 1938 Ernest Petter sold the controlling shares in Westlands to John Brown Ltd, forming Westland Aircraft Limited as a separate company, with Eric Mensforth brought in to share the managing directorship with Peter Acland.

Teddy saw the loss of family control of the company as the loss of his birthright, and this dispute would divide the Petter family for years, not being resolved until shortly before Ernest Petter's death in 1954.

The Air Ministry was initially reluctant to award Westland contracts due to Petter's inexperience, but his reputation as a successful designer was strengthened after it was demonstrated that the automatic slats on the PV 7 were both effective and reliable.

As a result, and after internal discussion, the Air Ministry added Westland to the list of bidders for Specification A.39/34 (the replacement for the Hawker Hector army co-operation aircraft).

Petter started the design by interviewing the Army Cooperation pilots and ground crew.

Based on this information, he placed pilot visibility, the ability to take off and land in small spaces, and ease of ground maintenance as the prime requirements.

The resulting design, the Westland P8 (later named the Lysander), was clearly an evolution of Westland's high-winged monoplane designs, but Petter incorporated a number of innovative features including extensive use of extruded sections throughout the airframe, something that would be a feature in his future designs.

The early flight testing revealed attitude control problems that the wind tunnel tests had not predicted.

Petter instructed Penrose to conceal these problems from Ernest Petter.

Later, when these problems had been addressed by a larger, variable-incidence tailplane, it was realised that if a landing was aborted and the throttle opened up fully, the Lysander could rear up and stall.

While Penrose and RAF test pilots lobbied for modifications, Petter refused because redesign would affect production.

Also, in his zeal to reduce weight, Petter had used glider fabric instead of specification Irish linen to cover the wings on the second prototype.

This nearly caused a disaster when an RAF pilot dived it to the limit, causing the fabric on the top surface to tear off.

Petter's next fixed-wing aircraft design was a radical departure from the Westland's typical high-wing fabric-covered airframe.

The Westland P9 was a low winged twin-engined aircraft employing the latest technology.

It was designed to meet Air Ministry specification F.37/35, which called for a single-seat cannon-armed fighter, at least 40 mph faster than a contemporary bomber and not less than 330 mph at 15,000 ft. To obtain this performance Petter and Davenport chose to minimise drag; the two Rolls-Royce Peregrine engines were fitted in closely streamlined nacelles, and their radiators were fitted inside the wing inboard sections (something that would be later copied in the de Havilland Mosquito and the Hawker Tempest I).

In the two prototypes the engine exhaust was routed through the fuel tanks in the wings to reduce parasitic drag.

The Air Ministry thought that this was dangerous and insisted that conventional exhaust stacks be fitted.

The airframe was of thin-walled stressed skin construction, with the rear fuselage skinned in magnesium alloy.

Like the Lysander, it made extensive use of extrusions in the airframe.