John Owen Isaacs (1920–2001) was an English

aeronautical engineer Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is si ...

, aircraft designer and builder. Isaacs was born in Southampton, Hampshire on 10 May 1920. In August 1937 he became an apprentice aircraft engineer at the Supermarine Aviation Works,

Woolston, Southampton Woolston is a suburb of Southampton, Hampshire, located on the eastern bank of the River Itchen. It is bounded by the River Itchen, Sholing, Peartree Green, Itchen and Weston. The area has a strong maritime and aviation history. The former ...

. He left Supermarine in 1958 and became a further education lecturer at the Southampton Technical College until 1978. He obtained a pilot's licence in 1946 and then used his engineering experience to build a

Currie Wot The Currie Wot (pronounced as ''"what"'') was a 1930s British single-seat aerobatic biplane aircraft. Plans were sold for home building of the aircraft. Design and development The Wot was designed by J R (Joe) Currie, and two examples were ...

biplane for the Hampshire Aero Club. In the early 1960s Isaacs went on to design a scaled down aircraft based on the

Hawker Fury The Hawker Fury is a British biplane fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force in the 1930s. It was a fast, agile aircraft, and the first interceptor in RAF service capable of speed higher than 200 mph (321 kmh). It was the fighter cou ...

, this was followed by a scaled down design based on the

Supermarine Spitfire The Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force and other Allied countries before, during, and after World War II. Many variants of the Spitfire were built, from the Mk 1 to the Rolls-Royce Grif ...

. He made plans available for the two designs to enable them to be built at home by amateurs. He inspired and helped many amateur builders.History of Dudley Pattison
/ref> In 1988, he wrote his autobiography ''An Aeroplane Affair'' and he died in 2001.

Aircraft designs

Isaacs Fury The Isaacs Fury is a British homebuilt sporting biplane designed by John Isaacs as a seven-tenths scale replica of the Hawker Fury fighter. Development Using the Currie Wot construction methods as a basis, John Isaacs designed a single-seat wo ...

Isaacs Spitfire __NOTOC__ The Isaacs Spitfire is a single seat homebuilt sporting aircraft design created by John O. Isaacs, a former Supermarine employee and retired schoolmaster and designer of the Isaacs Fury, as a 6/10th scale replica of a Supermarine S ...

References

1920 births 2001 deaths English aviators English aerospace engineers Defunct aircraft manufacturers of England Homebuilt aircraft Engineers from Southampton {{England-engineer-stub