Herbert Smith was born on 1 May 1889 in Bradley, North Yorkshire, the son of John Alfred Smith and Susannah Smith (née Thornton). He attended the village school in Bradley and later went on to the Keighley Grammar School. On leaving school he enrolled at the Bradford Technical College, graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1907.

Smith started his career with the Yorkshire machine-tool manufacturers Dean, Smith and Grace and then became a draughtsman with Northampton lift manufacturers Smith, Major and Stephens.

Following this, Smith secured a position with the British and Colonial Aeroplane Co. in 1913, working under Frank Barnwell and Henri Coanda, until 1914, when he moved to Sopwith Aviation at Kingston-upon-Thames as leading draughtsman. Smith was soon appointed chief designer and R. J. Ashfield, who had been with Sopwith as his first draughtsman since October 1912, was given the role of project engineer.

Smith got on well with the company’s chief engineer, Fred Sigrist, and quickly assimilated Sigrist’s forcibly expressed ideas on the type of detail design which suited the company’s skills and production facilities. His first major task was to modify the design of an early company aircraft, the 'Sigrist Bus', to give the aircraft equal span wings with the lower one moved slightly rearwards to improve the position of the centre of gravity. This aircraft resulted in the first of many 1½ Strutters made by Sopwith and a number of contractors in this country for the RFC.

In 1916 Sopwiths decided to improve on the design of a comparatively large prototype triplane known as the Long Range Tractor Triplane. It was considered that a scaled-down version of this design using a 150-h.p. Hispano-Suiza engine would make an excellent fighter. Accordingly Herbert Smith took as a basis a fuselage from the 1½ Strutter's production line but because of difficulties with the supply of the engine shortly afterwards decided that an aircraft based on a Pup fuselage with a rotary engine would be preferable. Drawings were issued of the Sopwith Triplane Single Seat Fighter powered by a 110-h.p. Clerget engine and in May the Experimental Department passed the machine for flight tests which were most satisfactory.

In 1916 Smith had begun work on the design of a larger single-engined bomber requested, it is thought, by the French and intended as a replacement for the bomber version of the1½ Strutter. The first Hispano-Suiza engined aircraft, known as the B.1, completed its test flights in April 1917. It was reported to have performed well under test and was sent to 5 Squadron RNAS at Petite Synthe, in France, for operational trials on 16 May 1917.

In October 1916, Thomas Sopwith had received an enquiry from Commodore Murray Sueter requesting a Torpedo carrying aeroplane with 4 hrs fuel and pilot. This was obviously going to be a large aircraft compared with Sopwith’s current range of fighters and Herbert Smith was faced with the need for original thinking. Herbert Smith and his team commenced work on this project, which would require the greater horsepower produced by a water-cooled engine and lift generated by the use of larger wing areas than Sopwith’s fighters employed. It would also be necessary to design an undercarriage system which would permit the torpedo to be loaded and launched without the obstruction of the traditional one piece axle on which wheels or floats were mounted at that time. The resulting aircraft, the T.1 Cuckoo, was temporarily abandoned when Sueter was relieved of his post in early 1917, but later revived by his successor, Arthur Longmore.

Longmore used his knowledge and authority to instruct Sopwith to complete the T.1 prototype as quickly as possible and to pass it on to the RNAS for proving tests. The aircraft was cleared by Sopwith’s Experimental department for flight testing on 6 June 1917, and was immediately transferred to the RNAS experimental station on the Isle of Grain. Tests were completed successfully and an order for 100 aircraft was confirmed on 16 August 1917.

1917 saw the introduction to service of the F.1 Camel fighter, to whose design Smith had contributed but which was primarily Ashford's. The RNAS now requested a modified version of the Camel for shipboard use and there is little doubt that this is where Herbert Smith made his greater contribution to Camel design. The Camel 2F.1 was redesigned to incorporate a slightly reduced wing span and the facility to remove the rear fuselage just behind the pilot's cockpit, to assist with onboard storage. Some 250 Ships’ Camels were built and used as combat aircraft and also for experimentation in deck landing trials.

The next design attributed to Herbert Smith was the 5F.1 Dolphin, a single seat fighter which introduced significant changes from the traditional Sopwith design concepts and it constituted a completely new design using past experience but owing little in basic conception to its predecessors. Designed in 1917 and powered by a 200-h.p. Hispano-Suiza engine, the Dolphin had a pronounced rearward stagger to the wings and was armed with two Vickers guns ahead of the pilot (as in the Camel). In addition, two Lewis guns were mounted on the forward cross tube of the centre-section cabane, the four guns giving greater fire power than any Allied or enemy fighter.

Herbert Smith’s comments regarding the Dolphin were quite revealing. Whilst the design was his, he was obviously designing an aircraft to someone else’s specifications. He said that he did not like the Dolphin and that it was a messy job. The pilot had to be placed in the centre section as it was the only way to give him good all round visibility because of the depth of the nose and Smith did not like this. He also expressed reservations regarding water cooled engines and radiators, which he now considered to be vulnerable.

Smith's next design was the 7F.1 Snipe, conceived as a replacement for the Camel. The Snipe continued to serve in the RAF until the late 1920's, when it became one of the last operational aircraft to be powered by a rotary engine. The last of Smith's wartime designs was the TF.2 Salamander, based on the Snipe but designed for low level strafing of the enemy trench systems. The design had been requested by the British Expeditionary Force in January 1918 and a prototype was produced for test flying on 27 April.

Early in 1918 R. J. Ashfield left the company and joined the newly formed Gosport Aircraft Company and Herbert Smith assumed overall control of the design department, which soon afterwards produced, among other projects, the Snail with an interesting monocoque fuselage. Its A.B.C. Wasp engine proved unreliable and the aircraft did not go into production.

In September 1920 the Sopwith Company went into voluntary liquidation but two months later the H. G. Hawker Engineering Company was created and so the craftsmen of Kingston-upon-Thames continued building aircraft under the leadership of Tom Sopwith. It has been written that Herbert Smith, believing that aviation had come to a standstill in England, had written to several companies in Japan where opportunities for progress at that time seemed to be greater. However, Robin Platt [1], gives another story.

Jack Hyland, a member of the Sopwith production management team, was aware that the Japanese were interested in negotiating an order with Sopwiths for a number of aircraft. Hyland was, somehow, able to suggest to the Japanese the possibility of taking a team out to design and build aircraft for them in Japan. Herbert Smith was offered the opportunity to join Hyland in the venture and they set about selecting their teams. Smith invited John Bewsher and Ernest Comfort to accompany him. It is doubtful that Thomas Sopwith would have objected to Hyland’s offer to manufacture in Japan, as the company was by now involved in motor cycle and toy manufacturing and the Japanese orders were not potentially large enough to recommence aircraft building. The seven man team set out to work for the Mitsubishi Internal Combustion Engineering Co in Japan in February 1921.

In 1921 new and extensive aircraft works were established by Mitsubishi at the airfield at Nagoya where Hispano-Suiza engines were built under licence from France. Whilst the production facility was being set up, Smith and his team began their preliminary design work, keeping to more or less the same fuselage and wing structures employed in his Sopwith aircraft, he estimated that design time for new aircraft was about three months.

The Navy Type 10 (1MF1-5) series biplane carrier fighter was the first project for Herbert Smith. It was a single seat, single-bay fighter, powered by a Mitsubishi built 300-h.p. Hispano-Suiza engine. The armament consisted of two Vickers machine guns and the aircraft’s maximum speed was 145 mph. It first flew in October 1921. Smith's next design was the Type 10 (2MR1) carrier borne reconnaissance aircraft, similar to the 1MF1-5 but with two seats and an increased (two-bay) wing span.

The Type 10 (1MT1N) was Smith’s third project, a single-seat Triplane powered by a 450-h.p. Napier Lion engine. This aircraft had a divided undercarriage for torpedo-carrying and was completed on 9 August 1922. This was followed by the Type 13 (B1M1) carrier attack bomber, completed in 1923.

In 1924 Herbert Smith returned to England at the end of his contract with Mitsubishi and retired from the aircraft industry. It appears that he made applications but was rejected, but Smith stated in an interview later in his life that he didn't think he wanted to continue in the aircraft industry. It has been inferred that he may have undertaken consultancy work on behalf of Mitsubishi or the Imperial Japanese Navy after his return, but he made no mention of this. However, Mikesh [3] indicates that three different design studies were awarded by Mitsubishi for the Navy Type 89 carrier attack aircraft in 1928, one of which, the 3MR3, was engineered by Smith. The other studies were by Handley Page and Blackburn, the eventual successful submission.

Herbert Smith lived for some time near St Albans and ‘concentrated on improving his golf’! He retained his interest in engineering matters and is said to have invented an ice cream making machine, a ball valve device for water cisterns and also developed an interest in the subject of metal fatigue.

In 1932, he married Nora Roylance and for some 20 years or so they ran the Heathfield Hotel in Oxford Road, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire. In 1967, they moved to Skipton.

Herbert Smith died in December 1977.

Biography References

1. Cross and Cockade Vol 43/2
2. Air Pictorial June 1975
3. Japanese Aircraft 1910-1941, Robert C Mikesh and Shorzoe Abe (Putnam, 1990
4. ancestry.co.uk