The UK’s Farnborough Airport has always been associated with advancements in aviation and so is a fitting location for the biennial air show staged there. After being the site of the country’s first powered flight in October 1908, it became the headquarters of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) during the First World War and the site of the Royal Aircraft Factory, which designed and built hundreds of airplanes during the war.
In 1918 when the RFC was renamed the Royal Air Force (RAF), it was thought to be too confusing to have two entities with the initials RAF. And so, the aircraft design and manufacturing facility was renamed as well to the Royal Aircraft Establishment, a name which it would hold for much of the 20th century.
While several successful aircraft came out of the Farnborough facility during the 1914-1918 conflict—the first war in which aircraft played a major role—the British government decided it would change the RAE’s role.
“They said you should leave the building of aircraft to the companies that had emerged to make them,” said Richard Gardner, chairman emeritus and former president of the Farnborough Air Sciences Trust Museum. “They had to make thousands of them, and the RAE would be concentrated on development, evaluation, and testing, all aspects of aviation basically.”
The successful designs would then be handed over to industry for mass production. “RAE did the initial build in parallel with industry because the RAE had its own designers and they had workshops and the facilities to actually put the engines and the airframes together and test them. It was obvious with the needs of the first world war you had to get the wider industry involved," explained Gardner. “That sort of set a pattern and established Farnborough as one of the, if not the leading aviation research center in the world.”
Among the early successes in material sciences developed at the RAE was the creation of anti-inflammatory dope and paint coatings for the fabric that covered the early, flimsy airplanes that had previously been easy to set on fire with incendiary ammunition. New camera housings that allowed for the easy removal and exchange of film canisters for battlefield intelligence were developed, and pioneering work in aerial radio communications was conducted.
The facility continued to grow with the addition of ever more sophisticated wind tunnels and eventually employed thousands including many of the top scientists and engineers in the industry. “They were developing absolutely everything, from the evacuation of aircraft, survivability of aircraft in ditching, bombing equipment, radar, and electronic countermeasures, all of these pioneering things were all tested there,” said Gardner.
That pioneering spirit included the first flights of Britain’s first single-engine and twin-engine jets.
By 1945, RAE had more than 100 aircraft based there for research and development and test flying, and the following year, after the Allied victory in World War II, a public display was held at Farnborough with approximately 60 captured German aircraft on exhibit. It would be the first large-scale public aviation display at Farnborough, but certainly not the last.
Airshow Grows Into Global Role
The ancestor of today's Farnborough International Airshow was an RAF Pageant held in 1920. It was first held in the north London suburb of Hendon as a gathering of RAF aircraft including a flight display. This continued into the 1930s as a combination of RAF flight displays along with exhibits from the companies that produced the aircraft, showing off their latest designs and innovations.
Organized by the Society of British Aircraft Constructors (SBAC), the event grew and was forced to change venues several times, first to Hatfield, and then to the Radlett Aerodrome in 1946. Initially meant as a showcase for British-built aircraft, it was gradually expanded to include aircraft powered by UK-built engines or equipped with other British content such as avionics. After the war, SBAC began considering a permanent site for the annual show. With convenient access to London by road or rail, and with plenty of available space, the first Farnborough Airshow took place in 1948.
“Most of the UK industry had been geared up for wartime production, but by 1948, they realized there was a slowly growing civil market that could do with new designs,” Gardner told AIN. “There were some very radical aircraft for that time being considered, big airlines with the possibility of powering them with jet engines or turboprop engines, and SBAC was very keen to show them off.”
The formula of what became the typical Farnborough show solidified the following year. “You had an industry banquet to start it off and the SBAC had the list of VIPs to invite, which would be the chief executives of the major companies, and invited foreign guests, and then they widened it out to include what were then the dominions Australia and Canada, which also had sizable aircraft industries at the time,” Gardner explained. “In 1949 they decided to make more publicity about having a flying display at the end of this exhibition week, and 275,000 visitors came on the last two days.”
The 1950's saw the heyday of the UK aircraft industry with new aircraft of all categories emerging every year, and SBAC built a 67,000-sq-ft exhibition hall at Farnborough to house company stands. “There was more of a development of high technology from the late 1950s onwards, and although the aim of SBAC remained to sell British aircraft and equipment, the show was also huge what we now call a networking opportunity,” Gardner said. In those pre-internet days, if your company was producing a component to go on an airplane, you could just walk a few yards to speak with a key person from Boeing or de Havilland.
Iconic Venue, Exceptional Views of Flying
In addition to the stands, exhibitors would also tow hospitality trailers up to the hill terraces above the runway where the rows of corporate chalets stand today. It was that view that made the site an iconic airshow venue.
“You were so close to the runway and you had such a good overall view of everything because you were on the hill, only a hundred yards from the runway,” explained Gardner, “whereas if you were down by the flight line, you were only just beyond the wing tips actually, incredibly close which made it very popular on the public days.”
While safety rules have limited the maneuvers demonstration pilots can perform, the displays were designed to amaze. The RAF’s Black Arrow demonstration team showed up one year with a routine involving 22 Hawker Hunters, while the Royal Navy pilots performed a stunt where two Supermarine Scimitars landed and folded their wings as they taxied down the runway while a third Scimitar landed between them in the opposite direction. In another year nine Hawker Seahawks landed simultaneously in a diamond formation.
“That really reached a climax in the 1960s where you had a lot of competition between the navy and the air force,” said Gardner. “The RAF and navy had whole series of staged mock attacks on the airfield, with multiple aircraft one year, where virtually everything the air force had they threw at it, and that sequence was about an hour of continuous flying.”
Yet, as airframers consolidated in the post-war years, it slowed the number of new aircraft arriving on market and diminished the need to have an annual show, particularly when the rival Paris Air Show was taken into consideration.
“Farnborough was traditionally in September, and the Paris show was always late May or June, and it was very expensive for the exhibitors to basically repeat the show for Farnborough,” Gardner explained, adding Farnborough organizers in 1962 made a decision that they wouldn’t have a show the following year. “The next one would be in ’64, and it was established that it would be biennial thereafter and would alternate with Paris so they didn’t duplicate things.”
New Aircraft Take a Bow
One of the most exciting moments at the show was always the first demonstration of a new aircraft but Gardner noted that the most recent Farnborough debut on the civil aviation side was the Airbus A350 a decade ago, with Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner arriving on the scene in 2010. Given the current backlogs held by the two leading civil manufacturers stretching for years, he believes it might be a while until the next one. “I suspect we won’t see all new serious aircraft emerging for at least another decade,” he said. “If an airline wants to stay in business it’s got to have aircraft that make money. As long as airlines want to buy sort of bulk standard A320s and 737s, [the airframers] will keep doing it.”
Yet Gardner still describes the show as a must-go event for the industry even as the focus shifts with the emerging emphasis on new technology such as 3D printing manufacturing, urban air mobility, and sustainability.
On the military side, he expects to see some changes among the exhibit stands due to the recent geopolitical situation and the development of future air combat systems. “We’ve had almost three decades where all the combat experience has been in anti-terrorism in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and now we’ve got what would have been unthinkable until a few years ago, that sort of state-on-state threats, China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia,” he said. “With the Ukrainian war underway, a lot of lessons are being learned with what you can and can’t do.”