Manufacturing

Scotland has a rich history in Aviation manufacturing - continued to this day.

Hillington aero-engine factory, Renfrewshire this factory manufactured Rolls Royce engines for Spitfire fighters, among other types, and was vital to the British war effort. The German Luftwaffe took aerial photographs of parts of Scotland throughout World War II. The photographs were used for intelligence work, such as selecting targets, assessing bombing accuracy and finding equipment and defensive positions. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

The Spirit AeroSystems facility in Prestwick will make components for spoilers on Airbus A320 wings.
It will be using new, lightweight composite material technology on a commercial aircraft for the first time in the UK.

William Beardmore, originally a ship and train-building company, first became involved in aviation in 1913, when it acquired British manufacturing rights for Austro-Daimler aero-engines and later those for D.F.W. aircraft. It later built Sopwith Pup aircraft at Dalmuir under licence. Later, a shipborne version of the Pup, the Beardmore W.B.III, was designed by the company. A hundred of these aircraft were produced and delivered to the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). Beardmore also built 50 of the Nieuport 12 under licence, incorporating many of their own refinements however production was delayed sufficiently that by the time they entered service the aircraft were obsolete and were primarily relegated to training duties or placed into storage and never used.

The company built and ran the Inchinnan Airship Constructional Station at Inchinnan in Renfrewshire. It produced the airships R27, R32, R34 and R36.

In 1924, the company acquired a licence for stressed skin construction using the Rohrbach principles. An order for two flying boats using this construction idea was placed with Beardmore. It had the first aircraft built for it by the Rohrbach Metal Aeroplane Company in Copenhagen, building the second itself and they were delivered to the RAF as the Beardmore Inverness. In addition, a large, experimental, all-metal trimotor transport aircraft was designed and built at Dalmuir and delivered to the Royal Air Force as the Beardmore Inflexible. Beardmore produced a line of aircraft engines, including the Cyclone, Meteor, Simoon, Tornado (used in the R101 airship), Typhoon and Whirlwind.