1887-1979, Knight Aeronautical Designer and Engineer
Wallis is best known to the general public for his development of the bouncing bomb during World War II, made famous in the Dambusters film. He was born on 26 September 1887 at Ripley in Derbyshire. He was a pupil at Christ's Hospital School and then served as an apprentice, first at the Thames Ironworks, Shipbuilding and Engineering Company Limited, from 1905-1907, then as an apprentice fitter (later draughtsman in the Marine Engine Department) at John Samuel White and Company, Limited, at Cowes on the Isle of Wight from 1907-1913.
Wallis' lifelong involvement with aeronautics and association with Vickers began when he was invited to join the Chief Draughtsman - Airships at Vickers as Chief Assistant in the designing of the R9 airship from 1913-1915. Wallis was intermittently engaged on war service and airship design. Towards the end of the First World War, Wallis became engrossed in the design of the R80 airship, but the Royal Air Force discontinued the project in 1921. In 1922 Barnes Wallis took a degree by correspondence in engineering from London University. He served as Chief Engineer, for the Airship Guarantee Company, Vickers Limited, London and Howden, Yorkshire, from 1922-1929. In 1924 the British Government initiated a programme for the construction of two experimental airships, one of which, the R100, was designed and constructed by the Airship Guarantee Company, as subsidiary of Vickers. Barnes Wallis designed this airship individually. The loss of the R101 in 1930 brought an abrupt end to all airship development in Great Britain. Wallis' attention was diverted to aircraft.
Wallis was invited to join the Aviation Department of Vickers as Chief Designer (Structures) and was almost entirely associated with the Weybridge Design Office, which post he filled from 1930-1937. He was appointed Special Director in 1936, where he worked on the use of geodetic design and construction for Wellesley and Wellington aircraft. In aircraft design, Wallis is best known for his use of geodetic construction. He had the opportunity of applying this method when Vickers constructed a single engine low wing monoplane that came to be known as the Wellesley. The next aircraft with which Wallis was associated was the Wellington twin-engined bomber, which first flew in 1936. For much of the time during the Second World War, Wallis was heavily engaged in supervising improvements to the Wellingtons and adaptations for special purposes. At the same time, he developed his ideas on strategic bombing of German industrial targets, including the dams in the Ruhr district. For this purpose Wallis devised the bouncing bombs. The authorities gave Wallis permission to put into practice his long held idea of a ten-ton bomb, nicknamed Tallboy to destroy targets conventional bombs would hardly dent. Towards the end of the Second World War, Wallis' ten ton bomb, Grand Slam was first dropped in March 1945. Wallis served as Assistant Chief Designer (Aviation Section) for Vickers-Armstrong at Weybridge from 1938-1944. He was awarded the CBE in 1943.
After the Second World War, Wallis served as Chief of Aeronautical Research and Development at Vickers-Armstrong from 1945-1971 and was appointed Special Director and Head of Independent Research in 1946, with freedom to develop at will. Wallis turned his attention to variable geometry or swing-wing aircraft. Over the next thirteen years, with first the Wild Goose, then Swallow models, Wallis developed this revolutionary concept, overcoming technical problems as he worked towards the prototype stage. Various potential applications of the principle were cancelled in the light of changing operational requirements and increasing costs. Wallis continued to work on designs for high speed aeroplanes, eventually proposing the adoption of a rectangular fuselage as the most efficient form for hypersonic aircraft, as well as on a new form of submarine.
He was knighted in 1968 and retired from Vickers in May 1971, by now the British Aircraft Corporation. He died on 30 October 1979 in Leatherhead Hospital.
Date
October 1931-January 1934
Scope and ContentCorrespondence between Barnes Wallis and Dr Hans Ebner and Barnes Wallis and Hugo Eckener, mainly regarding the loaning of lantern slides. Also includes four articles on airships from German magazines
Born in Flensburg in 1868, Eckener earned a doctorate at the University of Leipzig before joining the Germany army Infantry Regiment. He subsequently worked as a journalist and editor. During his time as a journalist, Eckener covered the first flights of Zeppelins LZ-1 and LZ-2. Whilst he was critical of the airships' performance, he admired Graf von Zeppelin and subsequently discussed Zeppelin's plans with him. Eckener was so impressed that in October 1908 he agreed to become a part-time publicist for Zeppelin's company. Eckener's interest in airships grew to the extent that he joined the company full-time and obtained his airship licence in 1911.
When Graf von Zeppelin died in 1917, Eckener succeeded him at the head of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin. As he was prevented from constructing airships of the size needed for translatic flight under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Eckener lobbied both the German and US governments to allow the company to build a Zeppelin for the US navy as part of German's war reparations. The company went on to build LZ 126, later renamed the USS Los Angeles, which became the longest-serving rigid airship to operate in the US navy.
The next ship the company built under Eckener's leadership was the Graf Zeppelin, which became the most successful rigid airship ever. Eckener was at the helm of Graf Zeppelin during most of its record-setting flights, including the first intercontinental passenger airship flight in 1928 and the Graf Zeppelin's flight around in the world in 1929.
Eckener wanted to run against Hitler in the 1932 German presidential election, which angered the Nazi party to the point that when they came to power in 1933 they arrested Eckener. Despite his dislike for and regular criticism of the Nazis, Eckener survived the war. fter the Hindenburg crash he redesigned LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin II to work with helium but could not obtain it because of the geo-political situation at the time. After the war he tried to build large rigid airships with Goodyear Zeppelin Corporation but nothing came of that plan.
Eckener died in Friedrichshafen on 14 August 1954.
Hans Ibner was born in Breslau, Germany on 21 June 1900. From 1919 to 1924 he studied civil engineering at the TH Aachen before working in aircraft construction. In 1927 he joined the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (DVL) in Berlin-Adlershof as a research assistant. He remained at DVL until 1937, during hich time he became department head for strength and head of the Institute of Sea Aviation and dealt with the statics of aircraft and airships. In 1929 he received his doctorate aon three-dimensional trusses for airplanes and 1937/38 he developed the shear field theory with Hermann Köller, which anticipated essential ideas of the later finite element method in structural engineering.
From 1946 to 1953, Ebner was an independent engineer, focusing in particular on measuring technology on buildings and developing and building measuring devices. Subsequently, from 1955 until his retirement in 1968, he was a professor of lightweight construction at RWTH Aachen University and founder of the Institute for Lightweight Construction at RWTH Aachen University.
Ebner was a corresponding member of the German Academy of Aviation Research and an associate fellow of the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences in New York. He received the award from the Lilienthal Society for Aviation Research for the investigation of shell strength. Ebner died in Aachen, Germany on 24 April 1977.
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