A reply I put on a post on the P-39 about an article the aeronautical pundit CG Grey wrote, prompted a request for information about his judgement of the Boeing B17. So I have started this thread to cover all aspects of CG Grey's influence on British aviation. I hope it will be a "slow burner" that will attract replies and comments for years to come. He is a fascinating figure whose history has largely been (in my view) sanitised. I will first write a short history of the man and then follow up with examples of his writings, starting with his view of the B17.
This forum MUST NOT become a venue to discuss his vile anti-semitic views. If it does, then the moderator has my full permission to close this thread down. However, I feel it is pertinent to cover some of his racist and xenophobic views since these obviously coloured his writing about the aircraft designs of other countries. He carried racism to absurd lengths, even writing disparagingly about the Welsh, Scottish and Irish. If anyone is interested in reading some of his more loathsome rants they are featured in the book "Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933-1939" by Richard Griffiths.
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Charles Grey Grey was born in 1875. He trained as an engineer and got a job writing for "The Autocar" weekly magazine. In his mid-30s he became caught up in the new aeronautical frenzy and founded "The Aeroplane" weekly, which he edited. In this position, he got to know all of the great pioneers of British Aviation. One particularly strong friendship was that with Frederick Handley Page. To his credit, he seems to have been a good employer to work for and was a charming man to converse with face-to-face. He entered into many long-standing correspondences with aviation enthusiasts (as long as their initial letter was written with deference) and he was adept at getting people a "leg-up" in the aeronautical world and thus acquired a host of influential friends (it is said that a friendship with Winston Churchill helped him avoid call-up in WW1). He was almost a caricature of an upper-class Englishman, bowler-hatted, monocle-wearing, plus-four attired he would not have been out-of-place in a PG Wodehouse or Agatha Christie novel (would she have cast him as the villain?).
His greatest impact on the whole course of military aviation in Britain came in World War One. The British Navy had long had its own shipyards but in the 1800s it began to switch to using commercial companies to produce its ships, with its own shipyards concentrating on repairs. It took the same course with regard to aircraft and it accepted designs from commercial firms for testing to conform to the needs of the Royal Navy Air Service (RNAS). This is usually seen as a great success since it resulted in the adoption of such brilliant designs as the Sopwith Pup, Strutter, Triplane and Camel, the Felixstowe Flying boats and the various Short seaplanes. However, there is a strong case of "Survivor Bias" in this view since it neglects the various designs that failed and the waste in resources and lives that entailed (who now remembers the Pemberton-Billing PB25, Graham White XV, Bristol TB8 etc…). The British Army had come up with an entirely different method. With a history of government-owned Ordnance Factories to produce weapons (a policy widely carried out throughout the world to keep the means of producing arms out of rebellious hands), they had established the "Royal Aircraft Factory" to design, test and do small-scale production of aircraft (and balloons) to meet the Army's needs. In wartime, the construction of these designs would be sub-contracted out to civilian firms. This resulted in designs closely tailored to what the Army's Royal Flying Corps (RFC) thought it needed. Chief amongst these designs was the safe, docile, slow BE2. Now many in the British Aircraft industry resented this policy, and CG Grey was the perfect mouthpiece for their dissent. He had been campaigning against the Royal Aircraft Factory from the early days of "The Aeroplane" magazine (in fact from when it was called the Army Balloon Factory). When BE2 aircraft started to fall victim to the "Fokker Scourge" in 1915 Grey was instrumental in whipping up a public frenzy that resulted in his pal Noel Pemberton-Billing (another highly controversial character it is worth googling) getting elected to Parliament on a ticket of closing down the Royal Aircraft Factory. Fortunately, this did not happen until the factory had produced the outstand SE5 fighter. However, the Factory had even more advanced designs in the pipeline and a truly outstanding engine (later to become the AW Jaguar, one of the most successful British engines between the wars). It also led directly to Britain losing the brilliant Sam Heron to the USA.
Ironically, Pemberton-Billing had to sell off his unsuccessful company when he was elected to Parliament. By this time the Royal Navy had changed its policy somewhat and set up its own "Air Department" (AD) to advise commercial companies and actually design aircraft itself – A bit like the Royal Aircraft Factory. The Pemberton Billing Company had been an outright failure producing aircraft of its own design, but under its new name of "Supermarine" it started to be a success when a young designer started to modify the "AD" designs to fit the needs of the post-war world, one RJ Mitchell, maybe you've heard of him?
The other great scheme CG Grey championed in his magazine was the "Aircraft Disposal Company", headed up by his mate Frederick Handley Page. On paper, this sounds like a worthy enterprise. – It was charged with selling off all the war surplus aircraft and equipment of the British and also the aircraft reparations handed over by the Germans. Half the profits were to be given back to the British treasury. In fact, it had the effect of stunting the British aviation industry for a decade. Why buy a new aircraft when you can buy a second-hand, barely used one? Why buy a new part when you can buy a bucket-load second hand for the same price? The ADC company even undercut engine manufacturers with a range of engines that used cylinders stripped off war- surplus Renault engines.
Of course, both the closure of the Royal Aircraft Factory and the operations of the Air Disposal Company were written up in the pages of "The Aeroplane" magazine as great successes, it was only in the 70s and 80s with the release of official documents that the truth slowly dawned.
And perhaps that was the secret of CG Grey's success. – His many attacks on the Air Ministry and other government departments could get no rebuff from serving officers or civil servants who were strictly bound to keep quiet, while politicians naturally avoided battles with a popular "authoritative" magazine.
He was very critical of any attempt by the British Government or any British enterprise, to buy aircraft or aircraft engines from the USA. He was also against any attempt by the Australians or Canadians to build up their own aircraft industries, saying they should rely on aircraft from the UK (he was particularly nasty about the Australians choosing to produce the "Wirraway" based on a North American design).
Between the Wars CG Grey made no secret of his admiration for the rise of the fascist dictators while also using every possible opportunity to pour scorn on communism and socialism (or Bolsheviks as he was more prone to call them). Russia, of course, came in for powerful criticism. He was an apologist for German and Italian aggression. He even toured Spain as a guest of the Nationalists, being flown around in an Italian bomber. He declared that Guernica had not been destroyed by bombing, but by the retreating Republican forces.
He had some peculiar pet-theories on how aircraft development should go. He was in many respects against travel by air, arguing it was much too dangerous (an odd position for someone editing an aeronautic magazine). He campaigned against the Royal Family ever flying and opposed the setting up of the "Royal Flight". He thought that the ideal aircraft engine for civil aircraft was a diesel engine and that the key to aircraft safety was as low a landing speed as possible (he was a great advocate of the flaps and slats of his friend Handley-Page). He championed the "slip-wing" designs of his other great friend, Pemberton-Billing (who had a great record of inventing new things but never actually getting them to work).
Another one of his beliefs was that the best training for piloting an aircraft was to ride a horse! Indeed he felt that only certain "horse-minded" people, descended from horse-bound warriors of old could make good-pilots, an off-shoot of his racist theories. He also believed that armies should go back to riding horses since this enabled them to "scatter more quickly when under aerial attack".
He had an irritating habit of inserting his own comments into other people's articles in "The Aeroplane". Often these would go off at a tangent to the article itself and involve one or other of Grey's prejudices.
Grey also served as editor of "Jane's All the World's Aircraft" from 1916 to 1940. This gave him great authority as the "expert" on the subject, not to be contradicted.
His pro-German sentiments, expressed right up to the outbreak of war, made his "retirement" as editor inevitable in September 1939. However, he continued to supply articles (often anonymously) including the one that rubbished the P-39 Airacobra. He took up the post of air correspondent with various provincial newspapers and bought out a series of books. These books seem really trite to modern readers, a series of less-than funny anecdotes with a lot of name-dropping (no-one name-drops quite like CG Grey!) that tell you little about the subject matter.
It was one of these books, "Bombers" that was to be the last step in discrediting him to his dwindling audience. A few brief sentences about Japanese aviators delivered only a few weeks before Pearl Harbour.
CG Grey died in 1953, a huge figure in British Aviation history if only because up until 1941 he largely wrote the history!
This forum MUST NOT become a venue to discuss his vile anti-semitic views. If it does, then the moderator has my full permission to close this thread down. However, I feel it is pertinent to cover some of his racist and xenophobic views since these obviously coloured his writing about the aircraft designs of other countries. He carried racism to absurd lengths, even writing disparagingly about the Welsh, Scottish and Irish. If anyone is interested in reading some of his more loathsome rants they are featured in the book "Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933-1939" by Richard Griffiths.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Charles Grey Grey was born in 1875. He trained as an engineer and got a job writing for "The Autocar" weekly magazine. In his mid-30s he became caught up in the new aeronautical frenzy and founded "The Aeroplane" weekly, which he edited. In this position, he got to know all of the great pioneers of British Aviation. One particularly strong friendship was that with Frederick Handley Page. To his credit, he seems to have been a good employer to work for and was a charming man to converse with face-to-face. He entered into many long-standing correspondences with aviation enthusiasts (as long as their initial letter was written with deference) and he was adept at getting people a "leg-up" in the aeronautical world and thus acquired a host of influential friends (it is said that a friendship with Winston Churchill helped him avoid call-up in WW1). He was almost a caricature of an upper-class Englishman, bowler-hatted, monocle-wearing, plus-four attired he would not have been out-of-place in a PG Wodehouse or Agatha Christie novel (would she have cast him as the villain?).
His greatest impact on the whole course of military aviation in Britain came in World War One. The British Navy had long had its own shipyards but in the 1800s it began to switch to using commercial companies to produce its ships, with its own shipyards concentrating on repairs. It took the same course with regard to aircraft and it accepted designs from commercial firms for testing to conform to the needs of the Royal Navy Air Service (RNAS). This is usually seen as a great success since it resulted in the adoption of such brilliant designs as the Sopwith Pup, Strutter, Triplane and Camel, the Felixstowe Flying boats and the various Short seaplanes. However, there is a strong case of "Survivor Bias" in this view since it neglects the various designs that failed and the waste in resources and lives that entailed (who now remembers the Pemberton-Billing PB25, Graham White XV, Bristol TB8 etc…). The British Army had come up with an entirely different method. With a history of government-owned Ordnance Factories to produce weapons (a policy widely carried out throughout the world to keep the means of producing arms out of rebellious hands), they had established the "Royal Aircraft Factory" to design, test and do small-scale production of aircraft (and balloons) to meet the Army's needs. In wartime, the construction of these designs would be sub-contracted out to civilian firms. This resulted in designs closely tailored to what the Army's Royal Flying Corps (RFC) thought it needed. Chief amongst these designs was the safe, docile, slow BE2. Now many in the British Aircraft industry resented this policy, and CG Grey was the perfect mouthpiece for their dissent. He had been campaigning against the Royal Aircraft Factory from the early days of "The Aeroplane" magazine (in fact from when it was called the Army Balloon Factory). When BE2 aircraft started to fall victim to the "Fokker Scourge" in 1915 Grey was instrumental in whipping up a public frenzy that resulted in his pal Noel Pemberton-Billing (another highly controversial character it is worth googling) getting elected to Parliament on a ticket of closing down the Royal Aircraft Factory. Fortunately, this did not happen until the factory had produced the outstand SE5 fighter. However, the Factory had even more advanced designs in the pipeline and a truly outstanding engine (later to become the AW Jaguar, one of the most successful British engines between the wars). It also led directly to Britain losing the brilliant Sam Heron to the USA.
Ironically, Pemberton-Billing had to sell off his unsuccessful company when he was elected to Parliament. By this time the Royal Navy had changed its policy somewhat and set up its own "Air Department" (AD) to advise commercial companies and actually design aircraft itself – A bit like the Royal Aircraft Factory. The Pemberton Billing Company had been an outright failure producing aircraft of its own design, but under its new name of "Supermarine" it started to be a success when a young designer started to modify the "AD" designs to fit the needs of the post-war world, one RJ Mitchell, maybe you've heard of him?
The other great scheme CG Grey championed in his magazine was the "Aircraft Disposal Company", headed up by his mate Frederick Handley Page. On paper, this sounds like a worthy enterprise. – It was charged with selling off all the war surplus aircraft and equipment of the British and also the aircraft reparations handed over by the Germans. Half the profits were to be given back to the British treasury. In fact, it had the effect of stunting the British aviation industry for a decade. Why buy a new aircraft when you can buy a second-hand, barely used one? Why buy a new part when you can buy a bucket-load second hand for the same price? The ADC company even undercut engine manufacturers with a range of engines that used cylinders stripped off war- surplus Renault engines.
Of course, both the closure of the Royal Aircraft Factory and the operations of the Air Disposal Company were written up in the pages of "The Aeroplane" magazine as great successes, it was only in the 70s and 80s with the release of official documents that the truth slowly dawned.
And perhaps that was the secret of CG Grey's success. – His many attacks on the Air Ministry and other government departments could get no rebuff from serving officers or civil servants who were strictly bound to keep quiet, while politicians naturally avoided battles with a popular "authoritative" magazine.
He was very critical of any attempt by the British Government or any British enterprise, to buy aircraft or aircraft engines from the USA. He was also against any attempt by the Australians or Canadians to build up their own aircraft industries, saying they should rely on aircraft from the UK (he was particularly nasty about the Australians choosing to produce the "Wirraway" based on a North American design).
Between the Wars CG Grey made no secret of his admiration for the rise of the fascist dictators while also using every possible opportunity to pour scorn on communism and socialism (or Bolsheviks as he was more prone to call them). Russia, of course, came in for powerful criticism. He was an apologist for German and Italian aggression. He even toured Spain as a guest of the Nationalists, being flown around in an Italian bomber. He declared that Guernica had not been destroyed by bombing, but by the retreating Republican forces.
He had some peculiar pet-theories on how aircraft development should go. He was in many respects against travel by air, arguing it was much too dangerous (an odd position for someone editing an aeronautic magazine). He campaigned against the Royal Family ever flying and opposed the setting up of the "Royal Flight". He thought that the ideal aircraft engine for civil aircraft was a diesel engine and that the key to aircraft safety was as low a landing speed as possible (he was a great advocate of the flaps and slats of his friend Handley-Page). He championed the "slip-wing" designs of his other great friend, Pemberton-Billing (who had a great record of inventing new things but never actually getting them to work).
Another one of his beliefs was that the best training for piloting an aircraft was to ride a horse! Indeed he felt that only certain "horse-minded" people, descended from horse-bound warriors of old could make good-pilots, an off-shoot of his racist theories. He also believed that armies should go back to riding horses since this enabled them to "scatter more quickly when under aerial attack".
He had an irritating habit of inserting his own comments into other people's articles in "The Aeroplane". Often these would go off at a tangent to the article itself and involve one or other of Grey's prejudices.
Grey also served as editor of "Jane's All the World's Aircraft" from 1916 to 1940. This gave him great authority as the "expert" on the subject, not to be contradicted.
His pro-German sentiments, expressed right up to the outbreak of war, made his "retirement" as editor inevitable in September 1939. However, he continued to supply articles (often anonymously) including the one that rubbished the P-39 Airacobra. He took up the post of air correspondent with various provincial newspapers and bought out a series of books. These books seem really trite to modern readers, a series of less-than funny anecdotes with a lot of name-dropping (no-one name-drops quite like CG Grey!) that tell you little about the subject matter.
It was one of these books, "Bombers" that was to be the last step in discrediting him to his dwindling audience. A few brief sentences about Japanese aviators delivered only a few weeks before Pearl Harbour.
CG Grey died in 1953, a huge figure in British Aviation history if only because up until 1941 he largely wrote the history!
