John William Fozard, (16 January 1928 – 17 July 1996) was a British aeronautical engineer who helped to design the

Hawker Siddeley Harrier The Hawker Siddeley Harrier is a British military aircraft. It was the first of the Harrier series of aircraft and was developed in the 1960s as the first operational ground attack and reconnaissance aircraft with vertical/short takeoff and ...

Early life

John Fozard was born on 16 January 1928 at 21 Home Street, Millbridge Liversege, (Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire) the son of John Fozard and Eleanor Paulkitt. He was brought up on the Firthcliffe estate at Liversedge, Kirklees, west of Heckmondwike. He grew up in austerity because his father was unemployed due to spinal injuries and only his maternal grandmother was in full-time employment. He passed the selection for

Heckmondwike Grammar School Heckmondwike Grammar School (HGS) is an 11–18 mixed, grammar school and sixth form with academy status in Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire, England. History The school was built by Thomas Redfearn and Samuel Wood, who lived on Eldon Street, ...

in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where he excelled academically.Spenborough Guardian
/ref> In 1942 (aged 14) he joined the Air Training Corps and with them visited RAF stations, where he flew in Lancaster and Halifax bombers. Fozard's headmaster arranged for interviews with

Avro AVRO, short for Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep ("General Association of Radio Broadcasting"), was a Dutch public broadcasting association operating within the framework of the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep system. It was the first public broad ...

in Yeadon and

Blackburn Aircraft Blackburn () is an industrial town and the administrative centre of the Blackburn with Darwen borough in Lancashire, England. The town is north of the West Pennine Moors on the southern edge of the Ribble Valley, east of Preston and north- ...

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...

. Blackburn offered him an apprenticeship that allowed him to study for an engineering degree. In June 1946 he was awarded a London University Intermediate degree. At this time Blackburn transferred Fozard to their Brough site, which allowed to continue his studies full-time at Hull municipal technical college, funded by a West Riding Council scholarship. In July 1948 he was awarded a B.Sc with first class honours in aeronautical engineering. An extension of his scholarship allowed him to undertake two years postgraduate studies at College of Aeronautics, Cranfield under Prof Sir Robert Lickley where he gained a DCAe (Diploma in Aeronautics) in 1950. Fozard would later tell American visitors at the Hawker plant on Lower Ham Road next to the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the The Isis, River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, se ...

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 as ...

that Yorkshire was the Texas of the UK.

Career

He worked for Hawker Siddeley from 1950, working under

Sydney Camm Sir Sydney Camm, CBE, FRAeS (5 August 189312 March 1966) was an English aeronautical engineer who contributed to many Hawker aircraft designs, from the biplanes of the 1920s to jet fighters. One particularly notable aircraft he designed was th ...

. In the late 1950s he was working on the supersonic successor to the company's

Hawker Hunter The Hawker Hunter is a transonic British jet-powered fighter aircraft that was developed by Hawker Aircraft for the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It was designed to take advantage of the newly developed Rolls-R ...

, the P.1121, and the twin-seat P.1129. Although advanced designs for their time, these projects were cancelled by the infamous

1957 Defence White Paper The 1957 White Paper on Defence (Cmnd. 124) was a British white paper issued in March 1957 setting forth the perceived future of the British military. It had profound effects on all aspects of the defence industry but probably the most affected wa ...

, and Hawker concentrated all work on the P.1127, which had been considered less important up to that point. From October 1963 he was Chief Designer of the P.1154, which was cancelled in February 1965 (with the BAC TSR-2). He was Chief Designer of the Harrier from 1965 to 1978, taking over from

Ralph Hooper Ralph Spenser Hooper, OBE, FREng, FRAeS (30 January 1926 – 12 December 2022) was an English aeronautical engineer, recognised mostly for his work on the Hawker Siddeley Harrier, specifically in relation to the marriage between the Pegasus en ...

. The Harrier entered service with the RAF (at

RAF Wittering Royal Air Force Wittering or more simply RAF Wittering is a Royal Air Force station within the unitary authority area of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and the unitary authority area of North Northamptonshire. Although Stamford, Lincolnshire, Sta ...

) in August 1969. The first Sea Harrier (XZ451 – FRS.1) was handed to the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

Fleet Air Arm The Fleet Air Arm (FAA) is one of the five fighting arms of the Royal Navy and is responsible for the delivery of naval air power both from land and at sea. The Fleet Air Arm operates the F-35 Lightning II for maritime strike, the AW159 Wil ...

on 18 June 1979, at a ceremony at

BAe Dunsfold Dunsfold Aerodrome (former ICAO code EGTD) is an unlicensed airfield in Surrey, England, near the village of Cranleigh. It extends across land in the villages of Dunsfold and Alfold. It was built by the Canadian Army and civilian contractors ...

(the site had been owned by Hawker Siddeley from 1950), later to be based at RNAS Yeovilton. This version of the Harrier had been given the definitive go-ahead (funding) on 15 May 1975 by Roy Mason, the Barnsley-born Defence Secretary, after being met with government indifference previously. The Pegasus engine, which was integral to the aircraft design, was designed by Gordon Lewis and Sir Stanley Hooker. From 1984–7 he was Divisional Director of Special Projects at the Military Aircraft Division of

British Aerospace British Aerospace plc (BAe) was a British aircraft, munitions and defence-systems manufacturer. Its head office was at Warwick House in the Farnborough Aerospace Centre in Farnborough, Hampshire. Formed in 1977, in 1999 it purchased Marconi ...

, Weybridge. In February 1989 he retired from BAe. He later became the Director of the

National Air and Space Museum The National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, also called the Air and Space Museum, is a museum in Washington, D.C., in the United States. Established in 1946 as the National Air Museum, it opened its main building on the Nat ...

, and held the

Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History The Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History, also known as the Lindbergh Chair, is a one-year senior fellowship hosted by the U.S. National Air and Space Museum (NASM), to assist a scholar in the research and composition of a book about aer ...

, from 1988–9. He was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

(FRAeS) in 1963. From 1986 to 1987, he was the President of the Royal Aeronautical Society. He was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

(FRS) in 1987.

Personal life

Fozard married Mary Ward in 1951, but they divorced in 1985. They had two sons. He later married Gloria Roberts in 1985, and they lived in

Alexandria, Virginia Alexandria is an independent city (United States), independent city in the northern region of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia, United States. It lies on the western bank of the Potomac River approximately south of Downto ...

. He was awarded the OBE in 1981. He died from liver failure, aged 68.

Quotations

References

External links

''Telegraph'' obituary

* ''Guardian'' obituary, 20 July 1996, page 32 * ''Times'' obituary, 24 July 1996, page 19 {{DEFAULTSORT:Fozard, John Alumni of Cranfield University English aerospace engineers Fellows of the Royal Aeronautical Society Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Harrier Jump Jet Hawker Siddeley Officers of the Order of the British Empire People from Heckmondwike 1928 births 1996 deaths People educated at Heckmondwike Grammar School