William Edward Willoughby "Teddy" Petter CBE FRAeS was born on August 8, 1908, in Highgate, Middlesex, and died on May 1, 1968, in Béruges. He was a British aircraft designer known for creating airplanes used during wartime by Westland. He also designed the Canberra, helped develop the early version of the Lightning, and created the Folland Gnat, which was his final airplane design.

Early life

Edward "Teddy" Petter was the oldest of three children, including two brothers and a sister. His father was Sir Ernest Petter, one of the founders of Westland Aircraft Works, and his mother was Angela Emma. Because his father spent much time in London, Teddy's early childhood was mostly with his mother, from whom he learned a strong belief in religion and a strong sense of right and wrong. He attended Marlborough College in Wiltshire and later studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. During his first two years at Cambridge, he focused on subjects related to oil engines, which were the main products of Petters Limited. In his third year, he studied aerodynamics and aircraft engineering. In 1929, he received a first-class degree in mechanical sciences and shared the John Bernard Seely prize in aeronautics.

Career

In 1929, Petter began working at Westland Aircraft Works as a graduate apprentice. For the next 2½ years, he worked in every department without seeking special treatment, even though he was the chairman's son. In the drawing office, it was noted that he was not a skilled draftsman but had useful ideas. Years later, he said, "At the time, this work felt like hard and repetitive labor, but I later realized that without hands-on workshop experience, I would never have become a designer."

In May 1932, Petter was appointed as the personal assistant to the managing director, Robert Bruce, a role previously held by his friend Harald Penrose. Bruce did not welcome Petter and ignored him, giving him free time to modify and compete with an Austin 7. Although Petter was interested in sports cars, he had no interest in learning to fly. Penrose gave him a flying lesson, but later said Petter lacked the necessary skill and had poor judgment of speed and distance.

In May 1934, Petter’s father placed him on the company board and made him technical director at the age of 26, choosing him over more experienced engineers like Arthur Davenport and Geoffrey Hill. This decision upset older members of the management, leading Bruce and Hill to resign. Davenport, who had more experience, was forced into a difficult position as Petter’s subordinate. One of Petter’s first actions as technical director was to stop the development of Hill’s Pterodactyl, a new type of aircraft with a unique design.

Other business decisions by Ernest Petter angered Teddy. In July 1935, Ernest proposed merging Westland with British Marine Aircraft to expand the company’s workshops. Teddy and Peter Acland opposed this plan and threatened to resign. However, in July 1938, Ernest sold the majority of Westland’s shares to John Brown Ltd, creating Westland Aircraft Limited as a separate company. Eric Mensforth and Peter Acland shared the managing director role. Teddy felt the loss of family control over the company was a loss of his birthright, and this disagreement caused long-term division within the Petter family. The conflict was not resolved until shortly before Ernest Petter’s death in 1954.

At first, the Air Ministry was hesitant to give Westland contracts because of Petter’s lack of experience. However, his reputation as a successful designer grew after it was proven that the automatic slats on the PV 7 were both effective and reliable. Because of this, the Air Ministry added Westland to the list of bidders for Specification A.39/34, which called for a new type of army cooperation aircraft. Petter began designing the Westland P8 (later named the Lysander) by talking to Army Cooperation pilots and ground crew. He prioritized pilot visibility, the ability to take off and land in small spaces, and ease of ground maintenance. The Lysander was based on Westland’s earlier high-winged monoplane designs but included new features, such as the use of extruded sections in the airframe, which became a common element in his future designs.

Early flight tests of the Lysander revealed control problems that wind tunnel tests had not predicted. Petter told Penrose to hide these issues from Ernest Petter. Later, when the problems were fixed with a larger, adjustable tailplane, it was discovered that if a pilot aborted a landing and opened the throttle fully, the Lysander could stall. Although Penrose and RAF test pilots wanted changes, Petter refused because redesigning would delay production. In his effort to reduce weight, Petter used glider fabric instead of the required Irish linen on the wings of the second prototype. This nearly caused a disaster when an RAF pilot tested the plane to its limits, tearing the fabric on the top surface.

Petter’s next design, the Westland P9, was very different from Westland’s usual high-winged, fabric-covered aircraft. It was a low-winged, twin-engine plane using the latest technology to meet Air Ministry specification F.37/35, which required a single-seat, cannon-armed fighter faster than a bomber and capable of at least 330 mph at 15,000 feet. To achieve this speed, Petter and Davenport focused on reducing drag by placing the two Rolls-Royce Peregrine engines in streamlined nacelles and fitting their radiators inside the wings. In the prototypes, exhaust was routed through the fuel tanks to reduce drag, but the Air Ministry considered this dangerous and required conventional exhaust stacks instead.

The airframe used thin-walled, stressed-skin construction, with the rear fuselage made of magnesium alloy. Like the Lysander, it used extrusions in the airframe. To shorten the landing distance, the wings had automatic Handley Page slats connected to Fowler Flaps, and the radiator grilles were linked to the flap control, which was a new feature at the time. The prototype first flew in September 1938 and was one of the fastest and most heavily armed fighters of its era, even faster than the Spitfire Mk 1. However, development was slow and difficult due to engine overheating, imprecise hydraulic controls, slats that opened too quickly, and delays in production.

Petter was frustrated by the Whirlwind’s lack of readiness for the RAF. In November 1940, he wrote a memo to Sholto Douglas stating, "The Whirlwind is probably the most radically new airplane ever to go into service… New ideas always cause some problems… I don’t think these issues were worse than those faced by the Spitfire." Douglas replied, "It seems your firm is focusing on producing Lysanders, which nobody wants, instead of Whirlwinds, which are needed." Shortly after, 263 Squadron became operational, but Petter regret

Personal life and retirement

Throughout his time at Marborough and Cambridge, Petter lived a quiet and private life. At Cambridge, he had one close friend, John McCowan, who shared his interest in motor cars. Petter met his future wife, Claude, while staying at the McCowan family farm. Claude was the daughter of Louis Munier, a Swiss official who worked for the League of Nations in Geneva. Teddy and Claude married in August 1933 in her hometown near Geneva, with McCowan as their best man. The Petters had three daughters: Camile, born in 1936; Francoise, born in 1938; and Jenni, born in 1945. While living in Dorset during the 1930s, Petter designed his own home, a modern wooden chalet with oil heating, double-pane windows, and a self-opening garage door.

After leaving Folland, Petter planned to work as a consultant engineer with limited involvement in the Gnat project. However, in January 1960, he left the aircraft industry entirely, saying, "I have finished with aviation completely. I have strong religious interests to which I am now going to give a lot of my time."

Five years earlier, Claude had met a man named "Father Forget," a former minister of the Reformed Church of France who claimed to cure Parkinson’s disease through prayer. In 1960, Teddy Petter, Claude, and their daughter Jenni joined Father Forget’s religious community and moved to Switzerland. There, Petter lived a simple life as a religious leader until he died in May 1968 at the age of 59 from bleeding caused by a long-term stomach ulcer. He was buried in Beruges, Poitou-Charentes, France. Claude died in 1975.

To honor Petter, a road named Petter Court was created in BAE Systems’ Enterprise Zone at the site of the old Samlesbury Aerodrome in Lancashire.

Patents

• U.S. patent number 2841346, William Edward Willoughby Petter, "Jet-propelled aircraft," published on June 1, 1958, assigned to Folland Aircraft Ltd.