Cloudcraft Glider Company Designations

[Apophenia]

This will probably be the shortest list ever - and they are names not actual designations!

Roger S. Dickson formed the Cloudcraft Glider Company of Osborne Road, Southampton in 1930 and it only lasted until the end of 1931. Dickson's primary purpose was to produce glider plans for sale to gliding clubs and individuals.

Cloudcraft Glider Company Design Names

Cloudcraft Dickson Primary - 1930 basic training glider [1]
- Dickson Primary: Zögling-type open-frame; Warren truss
- Dickson Primary: Span 10.45 m; airfoil Clark YH
- Dickson Primary: Intended for club constr. from plans
-- Dunning 'Lancia': Sailplane mod. of Dickson Primary
-- https://www.j2mcl-planeurs.net/dbj2mcl/planeurs-machines/planeur-fiche_0int.php?code=2725
-- http://claudel.dopp.free.fr/Les_planeurs/Descriptions_planeurs/Dickson-1930/Dickson-1930.htm

Cloudcraft Junior - (Project) 1931 single-seat sailplane
- Junior: Strut-braced, single-spar, stub-parasol wings
- Junior: Span 10.36 m; airfoil RAF 34 (modified)
- Junior: Constr. underway March 1931, never finished
-- Associated with the 1935 Penrose Pegasus sailplane [2]
-- https://www.j2mcl-planeurs.net/dbj2mcl/planeurs-machines/3vues/Cloudcraft_Junior_3v.jpg

Cloudcraft Phantom - 1931 single-seat high-perf. sailplane
- Phantom: Strut-braced, single-spar, stub-parasol wings
- Phantom: G158; span 15.54 m; airfoil RAF 34 (modified)
- Phantom: Long-span aerodyn. improved Junior deriv.*
-- Intended for cross-channel flight by owner Percy Michelson [3]
-- * Differed in span as well as rudder shape and cleaner nose
-- https://www.j2mcl-planeurs.net/dbj2mcl/planeurs-machines/planeur-fiche_0int.php?code=2729

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[1] There are no firm Dickson Primary construction numbers. Seven gliders were assigned British Gliding Association registery numbers. However, most Dickson Primary gilders were built from plans sold by Cloudcraft (and, later, by Flight magazine).

Wiki has an estimate of ~30 x Dickson Primary gliders built from ~100 x plans sold. I'm not sure if that includes the unlicensed production by the Nanchang Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation - or whatever that predecessor to the Central Nanchang Aircraft Manufacturing Factory was actually called.

[2] There has been the suggestion that Harald Penrose re-used partly complete wing panels from the unfinished Cloudcraft Junior. It's a nice story but highly dubious. For one, the airfoils are wrong - the Junior had a modified RAF 34 profile, the Pegasus a Göttingen 535-based profile. (There is also a difference in recorded span - 10.36 vs 10.47 m - although that may just be from rounding down the measurement for the Junior.)

[3] Michelson intended to fly cross-Channel to win the Cellon Prize - a £1,000 prize offered by the Kingston-on-Thames makers of Cellon dope. The Cellon Prize was for any flight of over 50 miles in a British-design and built sailplane (eventually won by R. G. Robertson who flew the Manuel Golden Wren the 52 miles from Derbyshire to York).

Percy Michelson's ventured ended when the Cloudcraft Phantom was vandalized by its "unruly" British Army guards/launch crew while on the cliffs of Dover while awaiting his flight. The remains of the sole Phantom ended up with Slingsby at Kirbymoorside but were never repaired or otherwise re-used.
-- https://www.j2mcl-planeurs.net/dbj2mcl/planeurs-machines/planeur-fiche_0int.php?code=2729

 

[Apophenia]

From Pre-War British Gliders: Part 2 - From 1923 to 1940: BGA 100 to 137 by Richard Cawsey in the Air-Britain Archive: The Air-Britain Civil Aviation Historical Quarterly No.1 2013 (Spring Issue March 2013), pp. 2013/139 and 2013/181.
-- https://air-britain.com/pdfs/archive/Archive_2013.pdf

The Air-Britain article is a listing of British Gliding Association registery numbers with brief histories. I have extracted the Cloudcraft entries and further summarized their ownerships.

127 - Cloudcraft Dickson Primary: To The Matlocks Gliding Club; late Sept. 1930

128 - Cloudcraft Dickson Primary: Cononley and District Aero Club; Sept. 1930
-- Later (date?) to the Scottish Gliding Union, Portmoak Airfield, Kinross-shire

129 - Cloudcraft Dickson Primary: Kilmarnock Gliding Club; October 1930

130 - Cloudcraft Dickson Primary: Bolton Light Aeroplane and Glider Club; Aug. 1930

131 - Cloudcraft Dickson Primary: To Selfridges (sales agent); October 1930
-- Probably to South Shropshire and North Herefordshire GC, then the Cotswold GC.

132 - Cloudcraft Dickson Primary: To Southampton Gliding Club; December 1930

133 - Cloudcraft Dickson Primary: Banbury Motor Cycle Club, gliding section; Jan. 1931

158 - Cloudcraft Phantom: To Percy Michelson (Lancashire GC); June 1931
- Unofficial 4.25 hour British duration record by G. M. Buxton; 18 July 1931

 

[Schneiderman]

Roger Savernake Dickson (1906 - 1981) was apprenticed at Supermarine in the mid 1920s and founded and ran Cloudcraft while still employed by them in the Technical Office under Alan Clifton. In 1934 he quit, dissatisfied at not having been promoted, and moved to Saunders Roe where he worked as a Senior Stressman. In 1937 he joined CW Aircraft as Chief Designer and was responsible for the design of the Swan, a twin-engine light transport aircraft project. However the company ran into financial difficulties, was taken over by General Aircraft Ltd. and the Swan was never built. At GAL Dickson was part of the design team for the GAL40 airliner before he moved back to Supermarine in 1939 on the outbreak of war. Back there he was part of the small Special Projects team that worked on things such as cabin pressurisation for the Spitfire and semi-laminar aerofoils. In the early '50s he moved to the US where he worked with Lockheed, eventually moving onto their space projects team.

Dickson's signature appears on many drawings for initial schemes at Supermarine and he clearly had a fine eye for good lines. His Primary trainer was well received by the gliding community while the Phantom is believed to have set a British speed record for sailplanes, but was not ratified. He held one patent with Supermaine for the design of retractable undercarriage. Yet he never quite made it to a senior position. All in all he was an excellent and somewhat underrated designer.