Howard Boys

Howard Boys 1906 - 1984.

Many aeromodellers remember Howard Boys as a pioneer and innovator from the early nineteen-thirties until he died in 1984 but, as will be shown, this was not the only field in which he excelled.. Born in 1906, Howard was the eldest of eight children. His grandfather was a tailor in the Northamptonshire village of Weedon Bec where he specialised in making riding and hunting clothes for officers from the local army ordnance depot or “Barracks” where since 1922 the army equitation school had been based. Howard’s father was apprenticed into his father’s business but trade had declined after World War I and he left to become a clerk in the Ordnance Depot until retirement in 1948.

The Boys family lived in a small semi-detached house but the four eldest boys slept in a room above a bakery on the opposite side of the street. In about 1928 the house next door became vacant, an inner door was knocked through and the family were together once more. Howard’s mother played a number of musical instruments including the organ and continued playing in the local church into her eighties; she also gave music lessons and Howard learned to play the violin. Howard must have inherited his manual dexterity from both parents.

In 1922 Howard started using a sketch book which had sporadic use as a diary as well as for his sketches until 1946. The sketches were originally done in pencil and later most of them were inked over. Nearly all of them would have been made as he cycled around the countryside and, remembering that Howard was only 16 when he started, they show a simplicity of line which foreshadowed his later work in aero modelling and as a draughtsman.

Showing an early interest in radio technology, during the late 1920’s Howard built a whole series of radio sets from crystal to 3 valve and, as one did in those days, he also made the loudspeakers. There was a 3-Ply exponential horn made from an old tea chest but the main sitting-room speaker consisted of Japanese silk, glued to a wood framework, pulled out into a cone and doped – a technique he was later to use in aero-modelling. Again in the late 1920’s Howard was to show another side of his inventive and inquisitive nature, in the construction of a camera. Not just a pinhole in a black box either! The camera still exists although not now in full working order. The idea was to use a Leica 35mm film cassette but not a Leica style focal-plane shutter, a Compur shutter being used instead and the lens is by Taylor-Hobson Cooke. It is a cinema lens 2 ¼ inch Series 1 f3.1, formerly a projector lens but in Howard’s hands it still performed excellently. The various components were all housed in a brass case which was soldered and screwed together, the interior being painted a matt black.

Howard worked at the well known Northampton model makers Bassett Lowke for a while and in 1953 recognised some of his own work on a model on view at the exhibition in Brussels. He then moved to Twining Models where he made part of a working model of Bournemouth which stood on Waterloo station for many years. In 1932 Howard started the Northampton Model Aero Club, it had required a degree of tenacity and inventiveness, qualities he was certainly not short of. Messrs Bassett-Lowke, Twining and Toseland added their support and on 5th June 1932 at Sywell NMAC was born. Unfortunately, because of the depression, Mr. Twining had to sack Howard, this he did in a very apologetic letter but out of work is out of work. Out of work did not mean nothing to do for Howard and aero-modelling became not just a passion but almost a full-time occupation. For a workshop he was able to make use of the loft above the coach house at his grandfather’s house, which was little more than round the corner. Winter heating was taken care of by a Valor stove and his soldering iron was heated on a primus stove. Howard had two primus stoves, one very small one which packed into an extremely small tin and a larger “family” version which still exists!

With aero-modelling in full-flight, so to speak, a bicycle was proving rather restrictive as a means of transport and so Howard decided to build a car. Just like that! He started by taking a 1 ½ hp two stroke Francis Barnett and [...] it in half. The engine and rear driving wheel were installed in the back of an aerodynamic, fuselage, body made of hardwood and covered with dark blue canvas. The front wheels were ordinary bicycle wheels. The resulting vehicle was licensed as a “Boys Special”, registration no. NV 1847. On Christmas Eve 1931 the car came to a sad end when a Standerwick motor coach from Blackpool ran over it, Howard was not in it, fortunately. The car was rebuilt, there is some confusion surrounding this and further information will be posted elsewhere. A second, or rather third, car, NV 6016 was subsequently built, more of which elsewhere. In 1934 Howard organised a rally of home-made vehicles in Northampton; there was only one other motorised vehicle, the rest being variations of pedal-power but good fun was had by all. Around this time too, Howard attended a technical college in Leicester and the “Leicester Mercury” printed a report on his £4 car. This report, with several others in local and national newspapers aroused interest in places as diverse as India and Illinois, Nigeria and Spain.

During this period Howard was living very frugally, walking or cycling to Daventry to collect his dole money which was principally spent on the car and aero-models. Little or nothing was spent on clothes, his only footwear being a pair of canvas tennis shoes and, although the owner of a pair of flannels, most of the time he wore a pair of khaki shorts, a sartorial touch that stayed with him most of his life. At one time other members of the family suggested Howard should try busking! In 1935 Howard landed a job with Armstrong Whitworth in Coventry and in 1936 he married Edith Deborah and moved into a house not far from the factory. On the first wedding anniversary little Jim arrived, to be followed almost two years later by Michael. After the Coventry blitz the family moved back to Weedon, Howard continuing to work at AW’s. The arrival of Michael necessitated interesting changes to NV 6016. Even with the introduction of a front cockpit to hold Jim the car was not really big enough and along came a four-wheeler! CNV 285 which, although not being used, was still around at Howard’s death. The family rose to three sons but unfortunately the middle one, Michael, died from Poliomyelitis in the outbreak of 1950, aged 11. Howard and H J Towner wrote “Scale Model Aircraft that Fly” which was published in 1940. This included one of Howard’s most endearing designs, The Westland_Aircraft Lysander.

With the outbreak of war in 1939 there had been a greater interest in military aircraft and Howard designed more scale models, the Hurricane amongst others. During World War II Howard worked for Armstrong Whitworth as a draughtsman and so was excused military service. Towards the end of the war Howard was becoming very interested in the concept of flying wings N.B. flying wings as opposed to tailless aircraft and combined with rocketry here was another outlet for his capabilities. After the war Howard moved from Armstrong Whitworth to what was then the British Thompson Houston Company in Rugby, with a short detour to Auster Aircraft. The Auster was one of the prettiest high-wing monoplanes ever and Howard constructed an electric powered, round the pole model which was all housed in a transportable box, the pole slotting into a hole on the lid and the whole thing controlled by a potentiometer situated outside the flying circle.

The family moved to Rugby from where Howard visited Lyon in 1946, a meeting that saw a great deal of interest in Howard’s rocket powered flying wing. Although not a “flying wing” as such the DH 108 was a natural choice for rocket power and Howard’s design skill. During the time in Rugby Howard made great use of a treadle lathe, one can understand why when looking at his hobbies. Eventually and with much eagerness Howard was able to look forward to the arrival of a “better” lathe complete with gearing for automatic screw [...]. The newer lathe was a disappointment since Howard found he was able to cut a more accurate screw, by hand, on the older lathe.

Modelling activities now spread into radio control, a field in which he was a pioneer in the aircraft field and in which he became a regular contributor to Aeromodeller Magazine. Another book was written for the Bernards Radio Manuals series where, incidentally the General Editor was Clive Sinclair. A man who did not impress Howard, sorry, Sir Clive, maybe you should have put Howard’s name on the cover. Despite that, an early reviewer of Howard’s work credited him with “the ability to explain simple things simply. Interestingly, however, Howard’s correspondence regarding the patenting of his “galloping ghost” system, of proportional control seems to have less than readily understood in 1949.

In about 1966 Howard and Edith were able to buy Howard’s grandfather’s house in Weedon Bec. Edith died tragically young, 50, in March 1967 and then in 1969 Howard was declared redundant, giving rise to a story in the local press headed “Howard, the redundant genius”. For the next fifteen years Howard lived in a state of organised untidiness, some of the six bedrooms, the dining room, sitting room, conservatory and workshops being given over to one or another aspect of his hobbies. In spite of, or perhaps because of, his earlier privations Howard always remained bright and cheerful with a great sense of fun. He called one of his early designs “Boysterous” and this fairly sums up his personality.

During these last fifteen years Howard became almost as well known in Germany and Czechoslovakia as in Britain, with frequent trips to the continent on his motor bicycle, carrying models in a box on the back. Oh yes, the motor bike was home built too! Following Howard’s death, quite quickly, in March 1984 one of his aero modelling friends was heard to remark, “We should have known there was something wrong with Howard at Christmas when he failed to climb a tree to recover a stuck model”.