Lytham St Annes
Note: This map only gives the position of Lytham St Annes within the UK. If anybody can offer advice, this will be much appreciated.
LYTHAM St ANNES: Flying boat assembly site and slipway
Note: Not to be confused with the later WARTON airfield, just to the east, also associated with English Electric.
Operated by: The English Electric Manufacturing Co (Also the Phoenix Dynamo Manufacturing Co?)
Location: In Lytham on the A584, 10nm W to WSW of Preston centre
Period of operation: 1915 to 1926
NOTES: The first mention of this site I’d found attributed to it being operated by the Phoenix Dynamo Co based in Bradford, Yorkshire. According to Ron Smith in his book British Built Aircraft Vol.5 the English Electric Manufacturing Co used this site for final assembly and presumably flight-testing of the Felixstowe F.3 and F.5 flying boats mostly manufactured by Dick, Kerr & Co in Preston. The part of the Phoenix Dynamo Manufacturing Co seems to involve the construction of the N.4 Atlanta Mk.1, N119.
In his autobiography As I Remember Harold Bridges OBE, (born in 1900), a well known Lancashire figure in road transport during the 1950s and 60s, tells of his early childhood in the village of Warton. He says that there was an aerodrome constructed, not just a slipway and assembly sheds. See CLIFTON HALL for another memory.
Ron Smith reckons the N.4 Atlanta was assembled here in 1921 but was transported by road to the ISLE of GRAIN (KENT) where it flew in 1923, but he also says the hull was built by May, Harden & May. As soon as I looked into just how aircraft are built I could not believe what an incredibly complex picture emerged. And, how very often, the factories were well away from any airfield where they were eventually assembled and flight tested.
Oddly enough a picture reflected in more recent years in the home-builder movement which I have been involved with. Collecting various almost finished aircraft from the builders home to transport it to an airfield for final assembly and flight-testing.
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