William Rowland Ding
(1885 - 1917)
William Rowland Ding was born on 19 August 1885 at the rectory in Alsager, Cheshire, the son of clergyman William Ding and Elizabeth Isabella Ding (neé Lowe). He was educated at St. Edmund’s Clergy School, Canterbury, followed by followed in 1903 by Finsbury Technical College where he studied electrical engineering under Professor Silvanus Thompson. While Ding was a student and a newly qualified Electrical Engineer he lived in East and then North East London. At the age of 19 he found himself running a large electricity generating station on behalf of London County Council.
By 1905 Ding had moved to Newcastle where it is believed he managed an Electricity Generating station for a period of around two years. It is said that he first spent some time as a Colliery Engineer in Wales before taking that role but the exact dates he was there are unknown.
Returning to South East London, on 20 June 1907 he married Victoria Constance Mason at Balham Hill ascension church, and the couple made their home together in Mitcham, Surrey.
By 1911 his interests had turned toward aeronautical engineering, and, together with William H. Sayers, formed Ding, Sayers and Co. of Elm Gardens, Mitcham, Surrey, marketing accessories to the fledgling model aircraft industry, along with their own model designs. In 1911 they won first prize of £4 4s for the Ding-Sayers model biplane No. 49 at the Olympia Aero Show. The same year the partners built the Ding Sayers monoplane. In 1912 Sayers joined A.V. Roe, and with Ding in sole control, the business was renamed The W. R. Ding Company. It seems likely that he sold the business, as the W. R. Ding Company was located at 24-32 Villa Road, Handsworth, Birmingham, but there is no indication that Ding himself lived in that vicinity, and by now he was busy in Hendon.
It’s not known how Claude Grahame-White and Rowland Ding first became acquainted but by April 1912 Ding was working on designing an aircraft for the Grahame-White company, the result being the Grahame-White Type IX.
In January of 1913 when Bentfield Charles Hucks advertised for a manager for his travelling flying show, and by February of 1913 Ding was managing the tour of another pilot, the Australian, Sidney Pickles. Ding appears to have taken a short break before managing another tour in June with Ronald Whitehouse.
Fredrick Handley Page, a colleague of Ding’s from Finsbury Technical College, had been working on a new biplane design, the Type G, in his workshop at Hendon which was test flown in early November of 1913. By late November Rowland Ding and his friend Thomas Lindsay Bainbridge took another series of test flights as passengers over a week with a view to buying it in connection with a business venture they were working on, The Northern Aircraft Company.
In February the Northern Aircraft Company was officially formed. The new company needed a pilot for their Handley Page biplane, so Rowland Ding signed up with the Beatty flying school, based at Hendon, for a £75 course of lessons, and on 16 April 1914 he gained his Royal aero Club Aviator’s Certificate (No 774) flying a Wright Biplane. Two days after he qualified as a pilot Rowland Ding took delivery of the Handley Page biplane.
Handley Page had lined up a job for Ding – a cross-channel passenger flight from Hendon to take Princess Ludwig von Lowenstein-Wertheim, the former Lady Anne Savile and a famous society sportswoman, to France for a social engagement. This appears to have benefited Handley Page financially and provided excellent publicity for Ding. Apparently, she was so taken with the experience, she booked a course of flying lessons.
In November of 1914 the Northern Aircraft Company officially took over the Lakes Flying School in Windermere, the next part of their business plan. Along with the school they get several planes of different designs in various states of repair. By December Ding was teaching every day at the flying school which was gaining popularity.
Early in 1915 Ding performed several test flights with a biplane made by Mann and Grimmer – two model makers turned aircraft designers, and in June Ding first test flew a Blackburn built B.E.2c. He also flew for the Phoenix Dynamo Manufacturing Co at Thornbury, Bradford. Apart from all his Government test work, during April 1915 he took delivery of his own private Blackburn two-seater monoplane ‘The White Falcon’.
By August 1916 Ding found himself officially in the role of chief test pilot for the Blackburn Aircraft company. Much of the test flying he was doing involved the B.E.2c aircraft that Blackburn were turning out in quantity for the war effort.
On Saturday 12 of May 1917 Rowland Ding set out to test a B.E.2c, serial 9952. What is known as fact is that Ding set off from the Soldiers field shortly after 6 p.m. and flew away from the park telling those present he was going to have a quick test before taking the inspector up for the official acceptance flight. When he was clear of most of the houses by the park he executed a loop and appeared to try and enter a second loop when the wings of the plane suddenly collapsed. The plane began to fall from the sky as Rowland desperately fought for control (later the control cables and the tubes they sat in would be found to be distorted as they had been pulled so hard in an effort to gain control) As the plane fell towards the ground it’s been suggested that a fire had already started but certainly by the time it crashed at the gates of a house just off Oakwood Lane it was ablaze and it was only due to the swift actions of Major Secker-Walker, a Doctor, that Rowland’s body was pulled free from the wreckage before the 20 feet high flames engulfed it. The air speed indicator was jammed at 120 knots.