Dart Aircraft Limited was a British aircraft manufacturer during the 1930s. Its facilities were located at 29 High Street North, Dunstable

Dunstable

Dunstable is a market town and civil parish located in Bedfordshire, England. It lies on the eastward tail spurs of the Chiltern Hills, 30 miles north of London. These geographical features form several steep chalk escarpments most noticeable when approaching Dunstable from the north.-Etymology:In...

, Bedfordshire.

History

The company was founded by Alfred R.Weyl and Erich P.Zander, as Zander and Weyl Limited at Dunstable. In March 1936 the company name was changed to Dart Aircraft Limited. The company began by constructing gliders

Glider aircraft

Glider aircraft are heavier-than-air craft that are supported in flight by the dynamic reaction of the air against their lifting surfaces, and whose free flight does not depend on an engine. Mostly these types of aircraft are intended for routine operation without engines, though engine failure can...

, and also constructed replicas of several historic aircraft including in 1937 a replica of the Blériot

Louis Blériot

Louis Charles Joseph Blériot was a French aviator, inventor and engineer. In 1909 he completed the first flight across a large body of water in a heavier-than-air craft, when he crossed the English Channel. For this achievement, he received a prize of £1,000...

 cross-channel

English Channel

The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...

 aircraft.

Alfred Richard Oscar Weyl, A.F.RAe.S., A.F.I.A.S., F.B.I.S., died on 23 February 1959. Born in Berlin 1898, he came to the UK in 1935 and acquired British nationality. In Germany he had held a number of responsible technical posts following active service in the Royal Prussian Air Corps in the First World War. He was a senior staff officer in the D.V.L. (Research Institute for Aeronautics) and was subsequently principal assistant to the professor of the aeronautical engineering department at Berlin university. At other periods he was in charge of special projects and did a considerable amount of test flying of prototypes.
After the war he turned to design work and was responsible for a light sporting monoplane built by Udet-Flugzeugbau at Munich (later the Messerschmitt works). Soon after coming to England he founded the firm of Zander & Weyl in partnership with E. P. Zander. Later, as Dart Aircraft Ltd., the company produced the ultra-light Dart Kitten.
Alfred Weyl was also an authority on armament (on which subject he contributed some important articles to Flight) and self-sealing fuel tanks, and his researches included tailless aircraft development, guided-missile design and aircraft plastics technology.(FLIGHT, 6 March 1959)

Post war

In 1946 E P Zander and H E Bolton founded the Hawkridge Aircraft Company, as a two-man business with a workshop for glider manufacture and maintenance in the main street of Dunstable, UK (northwest of London) to develop the Venture Glider prototype.
Bolton, who had a lifelong interest in gliding, was referred to at the time as “one of the best engineers of his field”. Venture BGA-640 (later BGA-688), registered G-ALMF, flew at Dunstable the following year (1947). The Venture was Hawkridge’s only design, but they also produced five Dagling primary gliders, two Grunau Babies, and a converted Slingsby Gull 3 which they called the Hawkridge Kittiwake. The Dunstable factory closed in 1950, and work carried on at Denham (London) for two years before the company dissolved and its founders went their separate ways.

Aircraft

• The first aircraft produced by Zander & Weyl was a nacelled Zögling primary glider
  Primary glider
  Primary gliders are a category of aircraft that enjoyed worldwide popularity during the 1920s and 1930s as people strove for simple and inexpensive ways to learn to fly....
  
  , built for the Cambridge University Gliding Club in February 1935. This was followed by a Grunau Baby.
• The Zander & Weyl Cambridge
  Dart Cambridge
  -External links:*...
  
  , a single-seat sailplane similar to the German Grunau Baby
• The Dart Totternhoe
  Dart Totternhoe
  -External links:*...
  
   was a secondary glider designed by Mr J Keeble and similar to the Slingsby Kirby Kadet
  Slingsby T.7 Kirby Cadet
  -External links:*...
  
  .
• A replica Cayley
  George Cayley
  Sir George Cayley, 6th Baronet was a prolific English engineer and one of the most important people in the history of aeronautics. Many consider him the first true scientific aerial investigator and the first person to understand the underlying principles and forces of flight...
  
   glider, Lilienthal
  Otto Lilienthal
  Otto Lilienthal was a German pioneer of human aviation who became known as the Glider King. He was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful gliding flights. He followed an experimental approach established earlier by Sir George Cayley...
  
   monoplane and biplane types, and a Wright
  Wright brothers
  The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur , were two Americans credited with inventing and building the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on December 17, 1903...
  
   1902 glider, were built in 1935 for the Alexander Korda
  Alexander Korda
  Sir Alexander Korda was a Hungarian-born British producer and film director. He was a leading figure in the British film industry, the founder of London Films and the owner of British Lion Films, a film distributing company.-Life and career:The elder brother of filmmakers Zoltán Korda and Vincent...
  
   film "Conquest of the Air
  Conquest of the Air
  Conquest of the Air was a 1936 documentary film on the evolution of aviation, up until the early stages of World War Two. It features historical footage of the developments of commercial and military aviation; including the early stages of technology developments in design, propulsion, and air...
  
  ".

By 1936 the company had begun designing and constructing light single-engine aircraft:

• The Dunstable Dart (renamed Dart Pup when the company name was changed). The Dart was a light aircraft built in 1936; only one example was built. The aircraft was destroyed in a 1938 crash.
• Dart Flittermouse
  Dart Flittermouse
  The Dart Flittermouse is a British single-seat ultralight designed by A R Weyl and built by Dart Aircraft Limited at Dunstable, England.-Design and development:...
  
   (1936), a single-seat ultralight monoplane
  Monoplane
  A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with one main set of wing surfaces, in contrast to a biplane or triplane. Since the late 1930s it has been the most common form for a fixed wing aircraft.-Types of monoplane:...
  
  
• The Dart Kitten, another single-seat ultralight, a low-wing single-seater intended for the private owner and for the solo training of pupils with a few hours to their credit. . The Kitten I first flew in 1937. An Ava engine of 25 h.p. was specified, giving an estimated top speed of 87 m.p.h. The span, length and wing area are 31 ft. 9 in., 21 ft. and 130 sq. ft. At an all-up weight of 682 lb., the wing loading is 5.25 Ib./sq.ft.
• The Kitten II (G-AEXT)was also first flown in 1937.
• The Kitten III was built in 1951
• A fourth Kitten was home-built
  Homebuilt aircraft
  Also known as amateur-built aircraft or kit planes, homebuilt aircraft are constructed by persons for whom this is not a professional activity. These aircraft may be constructed from "scratch," from plans, or from assembly kits.-Overview:...
  
   in Australia in the 1960s.
• The Dart Weasel was a trainer designed for an RAF
  Royal Air Force
  The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
  
  competition but evidently not built http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1938/1938%20-%202969.html