Twin-engine 6-passenger aircraft - 1944

Schneiderman

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These documents fell out from between the pages of bound copies of Aeroplane that I recently purchased. They are dated February 1944 and were produced by R A H Johnson. I have no idea who he was or where he may, or may not, have worked. This is Brabazon Committee era but there is no way that individuals would have been approached to submit designs nor would they have been aware of the recommendations of the Committee. Any thoughts?
RAHJ 1.jpg RAHJ 2.jpg
 
He doesn't feature in Peter Amos' multi-volume tomes on Miles so I don't see a connection there.

R. A. H. Johnson comes up in Google searches as having designed a flying model aircraft, the "Wakefield Model" in 1942: https://aerofred.com/details.php?image_id=103158

Further sleuthing took me to an online copy of The Heathen, the school magazine of Heath Grammar School in Halifax, Yorkshire, dated September 1940. https://heatholdboys.org.uk/heathen/1940_1-24.pdf
It gives the following information on a Heathen alumni: "R. A. H. JOHNSON, B.Sc. (Engineering), 2nd Class Hons., Imperial College of Science."

Is this the same R. A. H. Johnson? Given the link with the Wakefield name of the model, another town in the West Riding of Yorkshire I think that it's a likely they are one and the same.
Assuming Johnson graduated in late summer 1940 aged 21, he would have been 23 when he designed his Wakefield model and 25 when he designed this unknown twin-engined aircraft. Designing a model aircraft seems something a young man would be likely to do at that time, perhaps earning a bit from the article/plans as additional income.
 
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From the RAeS membership records he was Raymond Albert Henry Johnson who was a stressman at Miles in 1946 and later went to Airspeed. Ancestry says born Nov 1919 and a student in 1939, so not an official Miles design but clearly influenced by his new employers
 
Some of those dates align then - being a student in 1939 and graduating in 1940.

I wouldn't dismiss the potential for this to be a preliminary design to what turned out as the smaller M.75 Gemini in 1945, I noticed the bottom of the weights breakdown is filed "RAHJ/EMC" which looks like an official company signature block rather than something he has been doodling in his spare time.

Looking over the weight breakdown it seems a little pessimistic compared to usual Miles weight estimates. For example the pilot's weight here is 200lb but most Miles figures from this period use a figure of 160lb. The other figures seem a tad high too, especially if it is using a Messenger wing and empennage.

The design seems to be a halfway-house between the M.75 Gemini and the M.57 Aerovan.
The tare weight of 2,730lb - just over twice that of the Messenger (1,360lb), 800lb more than the Gemini (1,930lb) but less than the Aerovan (3,070lb).

540lb of fuel in the 4-pax case is higher than the 495lb (65gal) of the Gemini and the 365lb (50gal) of the Aerovan (this would give the Johnson design a fuel load of around 72-73gal but only 270lb/~35gal in the 6-pax case); oil too is higher 60lb versus 36lb for the Gemini and 45lb (5gal) for the Aerovan (oil capacity around 6.6gal for this design?).

The Gemini only had a payload of 369lb but this design seems capable of 1,200lb, while the Aerovan was designed for much larger loads of 1,760-2,160lb. AUW at 4,730lb is 1,430lb more than the Gemini but less than the Aerovan (5,400lb with 10-pax or 5,800lb with freight).

So a much-longer ranged Gemini or a short-range 7-seater. Feels less economic that either of the built designs to operate.
 
Hood said:
Given the link with the Wakefield name of the model,
Click to expand...
Drifting off topic , but the 'Wakefield' in the model name isn't the town , it's the name of the competition it was designed and built for , and flown in . . .
From https://web.archive.org/web/20030809070124/http://www.btinternet.com/~kaynes/Wakebook/wkbkhome.htm

" . . . the history of the Wakefield International Cup, the first international trophy for aeromodelling competition. The history of the Cup can be traced back to the Wakefield Gold Cup presented by the then Sir Charles Wakefield in 1911 for a competition held at Crystal Palace, England. World War I intervened and this trophy was lost, but not forgotten. In 1927 the Society of Model Aeronautical Engineers (SMAE) approached Lord Wakefield concerning the Cup and were offered a new trophy for international competition. This trophy was the present Wakefield International Cup and was first awarded at a competition in 1928. The SMAE developed the international competition up to 1951 when it was handed to the authority of the FAI and became the award for the rubber power category at the FAI World Free Flight Championships."

cheers ,
Robin.
 

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