Reginald Foster Dagnall (11 April 1888 – 16 November 1942) was a British engineer and aircraft designer.

Early life

Dagnall was born in Fulham, London in 1888 the son of Walter and Frances Dagnall, he was educated at

Tiffin School Tiffin School is a boys' grammar school in Kingston upon Thames, England. It has specialist status in both the performing arts and languages. The school moved from voluntary aided status to become an Academy School on 1 July 2011. Founded in 1 ...

Kingston upon Thames Kingston upon Thames (hyphenated until 1965, colloquially known as Kingston) is a town in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, southwest London, England. It is situated on the River Thames and southwest of Charing Cross. It is notable ...

. Dagnall started his career in the drawing office of the

Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company The Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company, Limited was a shipyard and iron works straddling the mouth of Bow Creek at its confluence with the River Thames, at Leamouth Wharf (often referred to as Blackwall) on the west side and at Cann ...

. He then joined

Ernest Willows Ernest Thompson Willows (1886–1926) was a pioneer Welsh aviator and airship builder. He became the first person in the United Kingdom to hold a pilots certificate for an airship when the Royal Aero Club awarded him ''Airship Pilots Certificate ...

in developing

Willows airships The Willows airships were a series of pioneering non-rigid airships designed and built in Wales by Ernest Thompson Willows in the first decade of the 20th century. The first airship Willows No. 1 flew in 1905, and the last, the Willows No. 5 in ...

and during the 1914-18 war he was first works manager and then general manager of Airships Limited., a firm which made

kite balloon A kite balloon is a tethered balloon which is shaped to help make it stable in low and moderate winds and to increase its lift. It typically comprises a streamlined envelope with stabilising features and a harness or yoke connecting it to the mai ...

s and

blimp A blimp, or non-rigid airship, is an airship (dirigible) without an internal structural framework or a keel. Unlike semi-rigid and rigid airships (e.g. Zeppelins), blimps rely on the pressure of the lifting gas (usually helium, rather than hy ...

s. Following the war Dagnall founded his own company, which has since become famous for pneumatic dinghies and barrage balloons. The RFD name is now synonymous with "Rapid Flotation Device" and the supply of marine and aviation safety equipment. He had researched flotation gear of various sorts, and in 1918 he built some of the earliest rubber dinghies. RFD moved to Guildford in 1926 and expanded to Catteshall Lane, Godalming, in 1936 the Godalming factory burnt down and was rebuilt in 1954. In 1959 RFD merged with Perseverance Mill. In 1963 it took over Elliot Equipment and acquired GQ Parachute Company Ltd. It purchased Mills Equipment Company in 1968. In 1970 the three companies merged to form RFD-GQ In 1975 RFD-GQ divided into: - RFD Inflatables Ltd - GQ Parachutes Ltd - RFD Systems Engineering Ltd - RFD Mills Equipment Ltd. Dagnall was also a director of G.Q. Parachute Co., Ltd., (now part of

IRVIN-GQ IrvinGQ, formerly known as ''Airborne Systems'', is an aerospace manufacturing company based in Llangeinor, Wales, United Kingdom. It specialises in the design, manufacture and supply of a range of parachutes and emergency, rescue and survival ...

) which leased space in the RFD works in Guildford. The GQ company operated for many years as a separate organisation until it was absorbed into the RFD Group. In 1942 Dagnall died, aged 54, of heart failure.

Sailplanes and gliding

After World War I, in a small factory at 17 Stoke Road, Guildford, Surrey Dagnall began the manufacture of equipment and gliders. In 1930 he improved on the German Zogling primary glider and marketed it under the name of Dagling. The Dagling was continued in production by the Slingsby glider company as the

Slingsby Primary The Slingsby T.3 Primary (a.k.a. Dagling) was a single-seat training glider produced in the 1930s by Fred Slingsby in Kirbymoorside, Yorkshire. Design and development During the 1920s Alexander Lippisch designed a training glider with very low ...

. Dagnall was a keen glider pilot and chairman of the Surrey Gliding Club and its later incarnation the Southern Counties Soaring Club

Airships

The non-rigid airship AD1 (registration G-FAAX) was designed by RFD and built by the Airship Development Company at the Stoke Road works in Guildford. It was taken to the old Cramlington Airship Station near Newcastle and erected in the 1918

airship hangar Airship hangars (also known as airship sheds) are large specialized buildings that are used for sheltering airships during construction, maintenance and storage. Rigid airships always needed to be based in airship hangars because weathering was a ...

, with its first flight on 18 September 1929. In May 1930 it performed a number of aerial advertising flights with banners laced to the envelope sides. The original ABC Hornet engine was replaced by a 75 hp Rolls-Royce Hawk in July 1930 for work in Belgium. By mid-1931 it was dismantled and parts sold off by auction on 18 June 1931.Cramlington Airship station
www.neaviationresearch.org.uk

References

Godalming MuseumPatent for aircraft flotation gear
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dagnall, Reginald Foster 1888 births 1942 deaths English aerospace engineers People from Fulham People educated at Tiffin School 20th-century British engineers 20th-century English businesspeople