Gone but not forgotten

Sir Roy Fedden, Celebrated aero engineer and workaholic who twice tried, and failed, to trigger a revolution in car design

- DELWYN MALLETT

IN NOVEMBER 1942, at the height of World War Two, Lord Brabazon of Tara rose in the House of Lords to call the attention of His Majesty’s Government to the dismissal from the Bristol Aeroplane Company of Sir Roy Fedden, their chief engineer. Work disputes rarely, if ever, reach their lordships but in this case Sir Roy was the world’s foremost designer of radial aero-engines, and more than half the aircraft of the Royal Air Force were powered by Fedden-designed units. He had just been knighted in recognition, yet was given the bullet by his employer at a time of the nation’s greatest need. Brabazon wanted to ensure that Fedden’s prodigious talent was not wasted. Although a renowned workaholic, he had somehow found time to race his cars at Brooklands, be a prize-winning powerboat and ocean yacht racer, and become an accomplished fly-fisher. On the road he was a press-on driver at the wheel of his Alfa 8C 2300 or 3% Litre Bentley. He is remembered for his remarkable achievements in aero engineering, yet Fedden’s career was topped and tailed by car designs the top’ being successful, the tail’ not so. Alfred Hubert Roy Fedden was born in Bristol in June 1885, the youngest of Henry Fedden’s three sons in a long line of eminent and wealthy Bristolians engaged in the sugar trade. Roy was educated at Clifton College and was destined for an Army career, but he dismayed his tutors and parents by declaring that he wanted to become an engineer, then considered little more than a trade.