Cierva

The Cierva Autogiro Company was a British firm established in 1926 to develop the autogyro. The company was set up to further the designs of Juan de la Cierva, a Spanish engineer and pilot, with the financial backing of James George Weir, a Scottish industrialist and aviator.
Cierva's first British-built autogyro was the C.8 design. It and some other designs were built in conjunction with the British aircraft manufacturer Avro. The pre-war Cierva C.30 proved popular. Nearly 150 were built under licence in the United Kingdom (by Avro), in Germany (by Focke-Wulf), and in France (by Lioré-et-Olivier).
In 1936, Cierva was killed in the Croydon KLM airliner accident in South London when the aircraft in which he was a passenger crashed after taking off in fog. From 1936 to 1939 James Allan Jamieson Bennett was Chief Technical Officer of the company.
In 1943 the Aircraft Department of G & J Weir Ltd was reconstituted as the Cierva Autogiro Company to develop helicopter designs for the Air Ministry. The post-war Cierva W.11 Air Horse was at the time (1948) the world's largest helicopter. The first prototype of the Air Horse crashed on 13 June 1950 killing Alan Marsh (Cierva's manager and chief test pilot), John "Jeep" Cable (Ministry of Supply Chief Helicopter Test Pilot) and J. K. Unsworth (Flight Engineer). This led Weir to cease further investment in the company and its development contracts were transferred to Saunders-Roe.

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Cierva C.30

The Cierva C.30 was an autogyro designed by Juan de la Cierva and built under licence from the Cierva Autogiro Company by A V Roe & Co Ltd (Avro), Lioré-et-Olivier and Focke-Wulf.

Cierva C-30A, registration PH-HHH (ex SE-AFI), built 1934, serial number 735
Aviodrome, Lelystad, Netherlands, 30 November 2018
(originally SE-AFI, repainted as PH-HHH, built 1934, serial number 712)

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