Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft

When hydraulics and crane engineer William George Armstrong amalgamated with shipbuilder Charles Mitchell in 1882, they formed The Armstrong Mitchell & Company, based on a 1-mile stretch of the River Tyne at Elswick, Newcastle. Five years later they merged again, this time with The Joseph Whitworth Company and expanded into the manufacture of cars and trucks as Armstrong Whitworth Ltd.  Joseph Whitworth had made their name through the development of the ‘British Standard Whitworth Thread’, which soon became the accepted standard for design for bolts, nuts and screws throughout the UK engineering industry.

With the war looming, in 1913 they created an ‘Arial Department’ at Dukes Moor, Gosforth in Newcastle. They a lucrative government order producing 250 planes for the RAF. The Government insisted that they recruited Dutch Engineer Frederick Koolhoven. Virtually all of Armstrong Whitworth's production during the First World War were ‘F.K designs' and by far the most successful of which was the F.K.8 ‘Big Ack’ with some 1,650 examples being produced at Gosforth

Gosforth remained in use until June 1916 when it was declared unsafe and although the buildings remained, a new aerodrome was established at the Newcastle Town Moor. After Koolhoven departed the company in 1917, and following the industry-wide fall off in aircraft orders at the end of the war, it was decided to close the Aerial Department in October 1919, with the Town Moor Aerodrome closing shortly afterwards in 1920. Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft merged with Siddeley-Deasy and production moved their factory at Parkside, near Coventry.