Baden-Powell

History

Baden Fletcher Smyth Baden-Powell was born on 22 May 1860 in Hyde Park Gardens, London. He was the brother of Robert Baden-Powell (founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement) and the youngest son of the Reverend Professor Baden Powell and Henrietta Grace Powell (neé Smith). The Rev. Powell died in 1860 and Mrs. Henrietta Powell decided to change the family name to honour her dead husband, and most likely to improve her own, along with her children's, status in society. A double-barrelled name would help, especially one with a Germanic ring to it, like that of her sovereign, Queen Victoria. So, with the change of the family name on September 21st, 1869, to Baden-Powell the youngest son took on the unlikely name of Baden Baden-Powell.

Educated at Charterhouse School from 1873 to 1877, Baden-Powell was commissioned a Lieutenant in the Scots Guards on 29 July 1882, and served with the Guards Camel Regiment in the Nile Expedition (1884-85) in Egypt and Sudan. Promotion to Captain followed on 5 February 1896, and to Major on 24 June 1899. In 1888 he served as Aide-de-Camp to Sir Anthony Musgrave, Governor of Queensland, Australia, and the next year served as Private Secretary to Musgraves successor, General Sir Henry Wylie Norman. He served with the 1st battalion of his regiment in South Africa during the Second Boer War, and was present at the battles of Belmont (23 November 1899), Modder River (28 November 1899), and Magersfontein (11 Dec 1899). He was in the Relief Column that in May 1900 relieved the siege of Mafeking, where his elder brother was in command. A month after the end of the war in late May 1902, Baden-Powell returned home with his regiment in the SS Tagus.

In 1880 Baden Baden-Powell witnessed his first balloon ascent. He made a point of getting to know some of the Balloonists and joined the Aeronautical Society. In 1886, with only six active members left in the dwindling society, Baden was elected a member of the Council of the Aeronautical Society, a role he was to fill for over 50 years. He became President of the Aeronautical Society (1902 – 1909) and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He was one of the first to see the use of aviation in a military context. He built his first balloons and planes together with his sister Agnes.

In 1894 he carried out the successful trial trip of the Army war balloon, the “Duchess of Connaught," from Aldershot, and then seriously turned his attention to the kite problem. In the early 1890s, (then) Captain B.F.S Baden-Powell had designed the "Levitor" kite, a hexagonal-shaped kite intended to be used by the army in order to lift a man for aerial observation or for lifting large loads such as a wireless antenna, and the first well-documented record of a man lifted by kite was on 27 January 1894 when Baden-Powell conducted some experiments at Pirbright Camp with a huge kite 36 feet high and a lifting surface of some 500 sq. ft, lifting a man 50 feet off the ground. By the end of that year he was regularly using the kite to lift men above 100 ft. Baden-Powell's kites were sent to South Africa for use in the Boer War, but by the time they arrived the fighting was over, so they were never put into use.

In 1897 he made a small ornithopter glider which was not successful. In 1904 he experimented with gliders from a chute over water at the Crystal Palace, assisted by J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon but his enthusiasm for all matters aeronautical included powered flight and in 1908 and he went to France, just before the first powered flight in England, to fly with Wilbur Wright. The powered Quadruplane was designed and built during 1909, appearing at the Dagenham flying-ground in the same year, but did not fly.

A single-seat pusher monoplane, also known as The Midge, was designed by Baden-Powell and built by Handley Page at Barking in 1909. It was exhibited at the Olympia Aero Show of 1909 and again at the Stanley Show of 1910, but there is no record that the aircraft flew. Also at the Olympia Air Show the same year, he successfully demonstrated his own semi-rigid air ship and a clockwork aeronautical camera and between 1910 and 1911 developed another variant of his quadruplane.

Having retired from the army on 12 March 1904, following the outbreak of WWI Baden-Powell rejoined Scots Guards and fought in France. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society in 1919, a position he retained until his death.

Baden Fletcher Smyth Baden-Powell, FS, FRAS, FRMetS died on 3 October 1937 in Sevenoaks, Kent.

Company References

1. http://www.pinetreeweb.com/bp-brother-baden.htm, available on the wayback machine at https://web.archive.org/web/20081204063111/http://www.pinetreeweb.com/bp-brother-baden.htm
2. https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Baden_Fletcher_Smyth_Baden-Powell
3. RAeS Aeronautical Journal, Volume 8 - Issue 31 (July 1904)
4. RAeS Aeronautical Journal, Volume 60 - Issue 541 (January 1956)