THIS week's Eye on Millig, by Leslie Maxwell, remembers the man behind a little bit of aviation history near Cardross - Percy Sinclair Pincher, who was responsible for the first controlled glider flight in Britain more than a century ago.

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ONE of the most important moments in the history of aviation took place just outside Cardross 125 years ago this month.

On September 12, 1895, Percy Sinclair Pincher managed to keep a glider called the Bat off the ground at a height of twelve feet for 20 seconds, the first controlled glider flight in Britain.

The glider was home-made, weighed 45lbs and had a wing surface area of 150 square feet.

Percy used the fields of the thriving Wallacetown and Auchensail Farms near the village for his experiments with three different gliders between 1893 and 1896.

He could well have become the first person to achieve controlled, powered, heavier-than-air flight well before the Wright brothers, had he not been tragically killed in a glider accident.

Percy was the first Briton to lose his life in the service of aviation and by his death the Royal Aeronautical Society, which was founded in 1866, lost a member who had begun to demonstrate that flight was very near.

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Born in Bath on January 16, 1866 he was the youngest in the family of three sons and two daughters of Thomas Webb Pilcher (1799–1874), former curator of the British Museum picture gallery in Rome, and his second wife, Sophia Robinson.

In 1874, when he was seven, his father died, leaving less than £600. Sophia took her four surviving children - one son had died in childhood - to Celle, near Hanover in Germany, where she died in 1877.

Percy was 10-years-old when Thomas David Pilcher, the head of the family at 19, brought his sisters and brother back to England and sent them to school.

He joined the Royal Navy in 1880 as a cadet aged 13, rising to be a Sub-Lieutenant, but resigned in 1887 to become an apprentice with shipbuilders, Randolph, Elder and Co. of Glasgow.

He worked in the engine drawing department in the Southampton Naval Works from 1889-92, then returned to Glasgow as an assistant to Glasgow University’s recently appointed John Elder Professor of Naval Architecture, John Harvard Biles.

In 1894 he was appointed a private assistant to Professor Biles, to lecture on marine engineering to the naval architecture students. He left the university in 1896 to work for the Maxim Nordenfeld Guns and Ammunition Co., and two years later he formed a business partnership named Wilson & Pilcher.

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He had a growing interest in aviation, and built and tested model gliders in the lodgings in Byres Road that he shared with his sister Ella.

Objections from his landlady led to a move to Kersland Street, and he was given the use of a large room at the university when the university was closed.

Next he began building the Bat, with Elsa sewing the wing fabric, and it flew for the first time that September day in 1895.

Later that year Percy met Otto Lilienthal, who was the leading expert in gliding in Germany. These discussions led to Pilcher and Ella building two more gliders, the Beetle and the Gull.

Soon he became interested in powered flight as well. Lilienthal was killed on August 10, 1896, while flying one of his gliders in Berlin, and Percy became the favourite to be the first person to build a powered flying machine.

His fourth glider, the Hawk, which had lightweight wheeled landing gear and broad wing, was influenced by Lilienthal’s ideas. Ella and their cousin Dorothy Rose Pilcher both enjoyed brief flights.

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In the late summer of 1896, south of Eynsford in Kent, he regularly flew the Hawk from both sides of the hill known as the ‘knob’, achieving glides of up to 300 yards. On June 20 the following year, he gave his first public demonstration at this site to a large party of scientists and others interested.

A thin 600-yard fishing line was passed through a fall of tackle on the opposite side of the west valley. Towed by three boys, the man and machine rose to a height of about 70 ft, when the line broke.

He descended gracefully into the valley, having achieved a glide of nearly 250 yards.

That day Dorothy Rose made a short towed glide in the Hawk. She flew down the hill and collided with a man operating a cinematograph camera, but fortunately both camera and operator escaped serious damage.

Later that year Percy broke the world record for flight when his glider covered 820 feet.

Next, in collaboration with French-American aeronautical designer Octave Chanute, who gave him the idea of using multiple wings, and with British engineer Sir Hiram Maxim, who had designed a suitable propeller, he developed a new triplane with a 4 horse-power engine that drove two propellers.

Its construction put him heavily into debt, and he needed sponsorship to complete his work.

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On September 30, 1899 he planned to make his first test flight of the triplane at Stanford Park, Market Harborough, in Leicestershire.

The weather was bad and Percy was forced to postpone his attempt to become the first man to make a powered flight. In order to appease the large crowd that had turned up, he decided to take up his glider, the Hawk.

He reached a height of nearly 30 feet when the wire in the tail snapped. He crashed to the ground, sustained severe concussion, never regained consciousness, and died two days later at the age of 33.

He is buried in Brompton Cemetery in London. A stone monument to him stands in the field near Stanford Hall at the point where he crashed, and a full-sized replica of the Hawk is displayed at Stanford Hall.

An 1899 obituary stated: “Mr Pilcher, in all he undertook, manifested indefatigable energy, with indomitable courage and perseverance. To his knowledge and high character was added great charm of manner.”

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As there was no-one to carry on his work, his new powered triplane was never flown.

The actual Hawk glider has been on show at the Museum of Flight at East Fortune in East Lothian since 1993.

A model of the Bat, built by members of the Prestwick branch of the Royal Aeronautical Society after studying drawings and period photographs for a decade, is displayed in Glasgow’s Riverside Museum, and there is a model of the Gull glider in the city’s Kelvingrove Museum.

In 2003, a research effort carried out at the School of Aeronautics at Cranfield University, commissioned by the BBC2 television series ‘Horizon’, showed that Percy’s design was more or less workable, and had he been able to develop his engine, it is likely he would have succeeded in being the first person to fly a heavier-than-air, powered aircraft under control.

A replica of his aircraft was built, and, after some problems, achieved a sustained controlled flight of one minute and 26 seconds, significantly longer than the first flight of the Wright Brothers.

This was achieved under dead calm conditions, whereas the Wrights needed a steady 25 knot wind to achieve enough airspeed on their early attempts.

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Percy was one of the two original vice-presidents of the Glasgow University Engineering Society. The Pilcher Memorial Lecture was founded in his memory, and the first lecture was given in 1996.

On December 17, 2003 Elizabeth Cameron, the then Lord Provost of Glasgow, unveiled a plaque dedicated to Percy at Glasgow Airport to celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight. The ceremony took place in the airport VIP lounge which was renamed The Pilcher Suite.

A book entitled ‘From Pilcher to the Planets’, written by Dugald Cameron, Roderick Galbraith and Douglas Thomson, was launched at the event and members of Glasgow University Air Squadron flew over the fields in Cardross where Pilcher made his first glider test flights.

On June 17 2006, a monument to celebrate Percy’s life was unveiled at his flying site at Upper Austin Lodge - now a golf course - near Eynsford by David Forrester, Percy’s nearest living relative.

The ceremony was interrupted while 100 Squadron Royal Air Force provided a flypast of an aptly named Hawk T1. Aviation historian Philip Jarrett then gave a talk about Percy and his association with the site at Eynsford in 1896 and 1897.

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* Email your suggestions for historical Helensburgh and Lomond topics that could be covered in future Eye on Millig articles to milligeye@btinternet.com.