Did you know…
Which American aircraft may have inspired the retractable undercarriage of the Airspeed Courier?
Short answer
The Lockheed Orion, an aircraft of similar size whose undercarriage was hand-operated. This is reported by the aviation historian H. A. Taylor, who warns that the attribution may be apocryphal; Nevil Shute, a co-founder of Airspeed, repeats the idea in his autobiography Slide Rule.
The Orion lead
When Airspeed decided to give the Courier a hydraulically operated retractable undercarriage, the possible inspiration came from the United States. According to the aviation historian H. A. Taylor, the idea would have come from the Lockheed Orion, an aircraft of similar size whose undercarriage was moved manually. Taylor himself qualifies this lineage as possibly apocryphal, so it is best taken as tradition rather than documented fact. Nevil Shute, a co-founder of Airspeed and later a novelist, repeats it in his autobiography Slide Rule, where he also regarded the Courier's as the first use of a hydraulically operated retractable undercarriage.
How Airspeed's system worked
Unlike the Orion's, the Courier's undercarriage was hydraulic: the pilot raised and lowered it with a hand-operated pump. Almost all of its components had to be designed and built in-house, because no parts were available from suppliers. Airspeed patented the mechanism and later earned income when it was adopted on other aircraft, such as the Oxford. It was estimated to add about 30 lb of weight in exchange for about 20 mph more cruising speed.
A controversial choice
In British aeronautical circles some doubted that the gain justified the complexity, and on Airspeed's board Lord Grimthorpe was pessimistic. Hessell Tiltman defended the solution and stood firm. According to Taylor, the undercarriage drew considerable attention from the aeronautical press from the start, and the Courier went down in history as the first British aircraft with a retractable undercarriage built in series.
