Dowty

What became the Dowty Group began in June 1931 when George Dowty, a Gloster Aircraft Company draughtsman, left to form Aircraft Components Ltd at 10 Lansdown Terrace Lane, Cheltenham. An order for oleo struts for the Gloster Gauntlet in 1934 made the business, and in 1935 he founded Dowty Aviation to make it, leasing a factory and buying Arle Court, Cheltenham; the company went public in 1936. During the Second World War Dowty undercarriages and hydraulics went into most British aircraft, and by 1945 the firm had made 87,786 landing gears and 984,388 hydraulic units. Dowty Group Limited was incorporated on 18 March 1954 with its headquarters at Arle Court.

After the war Dowty applied its hydraulics to motorcycle forks, pit props, industrial pumps and control systems, and in 1950 created Dowty Hydraulic Units. At Ashchurch, in the parish of Northway near Tewkesbury, the Dowty Equipment Co. had taken over the former railway provender store in 1941 for aircraft-component repair, the Air Ministry adding a large hangar in 1945; in 1956 a new factory and administrative block beside the hangar was opened for Dowty Hydraulic Units Ltd, which had been occupying part of the works, followed by blocks for Dowty Mining Equipment in 1958 and Dowty Seals in 1961. From Ashchurch, telephone Tewkesbury 2271, Dowty Hydraulic Units issued the Land Rover approved-equipment leaflet 'Hydraulic Equipment by Dowty' (received by the AA library in December 1958): a GP.2/65 gear pump driven by the centre power take-off shaft, a cab-mounted control valve with relief valve, and a Dowty hydraulic motor that could be mounted at the front or rear of the chassis, giving remote actuation of implements without a mechanical linkage. The same Dowty pump supplied the Land Rover Mk1 and Mk2 hydraulic drum winches and the hydraulic output of the Aeroparts bottom power take-off.

The group bought Rotol Airscrews in 1960 and Boulton Paul Aircraft in 1961, supplied fuel controls for the Harrier and power controls for Concorde, and collaborated for decades with the French Messier group on landing gear. In 1992 Dowty Group was acquired by TI Group; 1,500 of the workforce went within a year, and in 1993 seven electronics companies were sold in a management buy-out that formed Ultra Electronics, taking the hydraulics business with them as Ultra Hydraulics (formerly Dowty Hydraulics). In 1994 TI put the landing-gear business into a joint venture with SNECMA, Messier-Dowty, which became wholly owned by Safran in late 1998.