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16th April 2010
Hi Derick,
There are a series of photos on the building of the KK Spitfire.
These show the box with all the components. You will see that there are two photos of this. Dad always experimented with the layouts and backgrounds when he took the pictures and you may notice that there is a piece of tape stuck over part of the Keil Kraft name on the lighter picture. This one would have been rejected!
There are details of building the fuselage and wings including how to trim the tissue around the wing tips. The small picture is of his hands trimming a piece of balsa to the plans. The finished build and completed, painted model is shown.
He would have built all of this himself, photographing each step, through to painting the finished plane. Not only that, he actually developed all the pictures himself in the company "dark room" (One of the toilets had a work top alongside a sink.)
Another series of pictures show a scruffy little urchin posing with various boats. Some of these were used in the KK handbook. (Yes, it's me!!)
If you look carefully at the largest of the three boat pictures, turn it over and you may notice a faint sketch on the back. This is an embryo of a design for a plane! The picture must have been on his work bench in his office when he had a brainwave and quickly jotted down the idea.
You can clearly see his idea for the basic fuselage shape, wing and tail shapes as well as the fuselage forms both fore and aft. There is also an idea of scale in the top right hand corner and also wing section. From this he would have been able to tell you the exact weight! (Years of practice).
There are another couple of pictures showing that kid again building a "Playboy". These were taken for the handbook as well.
I am not sure about the two pictures looking into the cockpit of the radio-controlled model, I cannot place what it is! (I identified it as the KK Falcon, Derick)
The picture of the tricycle undercarriage plane (Experimental) is, I think, the very first build of the Super 60. - Not too sure. (It is the Mini Super, Derick) I know he redesigned the Junior 60 to bring it more up to date.
I think the glider is a Dolphin.
The large pictures show a couple of trade shows with which Dad used to get involved.
Two of the pictures are of the same stand and you will notice the 'next flying demonstration' poster. Dad would have been doing the flying!
These are taken in the Royal Horticultural Halls in London where trade events were frequently held.
The third of these pictures shows another stand with able bodied personnel posing professionally (?) awaiting the customers. Second from the left is Dad.
As for the year these were taken, Im guessing late '50's.
I have included a photocopy of the newspaper cutting which is from the Basildon Standard not Southend standard as previously thought.
A bit more history:
When Keil Kraft moved from Hackney Road, in London to Wickford, in Essex, the company had a pair of bungalows built so that we could live in one and another employee in the other. These bungalows were given names (street numbers in the small towns were not invented then!) They decided to call them after their two latest model kits; we lived in Ajax and next door was Achilles!
During the school summer holidays I would quite often go to work with Dad, spending the day either in his office/workroom playing about with bits of whatever he was working on at the time, posing for photos, going out with him (and sometimes Eddie Keil) to test fly various planes, or even wandering up to the dispatch end of the factory and getting a job of tidying up the racks where the kits were stored.
An advertising film was made and myself and a friend of mine went to a film studio in London (somewhere?), set up a mock shop - we had to take up a car load of kits to stage the scene- shot a few scenes entering the 'shop', buying a kit, taking it away, building it and then going outside to a bit of a bomb site and flying the finished plane. Apparently it was screened in the Odeon Leicester Square but I never saw it. I wonder if it still exists?
As the bungalow was only small we later moved to another property (rented from Kiel's) in Runwell Road (as on the newspaper cutting.) We lived there through the 60's, and 70's. I left home in "72.
Having been with the company since 1946, Dad decided he had had enough and in about 1966, left the company and went to teachers training college, full-time, for two years where he graduated at the age of 44 and landed a post in my old school in Wickford teaching Art and English.
After a about 10 years there he got a Head of Art Department post at John O'Gaunt School in Hungerford, Berkshire where he stayed until he took early retirement. From there Mum and Dad moved over to Watched in Somerset.
Missing the grand children they then moved back to Essex to Burnham-on-Crouch, 10 miles from where I live now.
About 8 years ago, my late wife worked in a local hobby shop. A very small shop that specialised in evertyhing 'hobby'. A gentleman called in one day and started a conversation with the owner of the shop who then passed him over to my wife. He was a member of the Marconi model club and wanted information about balsa wood etc. My wife then admitted that she was the daughter-in-law of Ernie Webster. From that Dad was invited to go and meet the members of the club, which he duly obliged.
To his amazement, when he arrived, there were people that had brought up plans of his models for him to autograph !
Dad sadly passed away a few years ago but I'm glad his legacy lives on! With best regards, keep up the good work!
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Dudley.
Additional...
I am glad you appreciate the work that my father did at Keil Kraft.
Ernie was involved in designing, drawing, photographing for the handbook – that`s how I managed to get in the pictures! – representing the company on trade shows, testing new engines, repairs, demonstration flying as well as dealing with many queries from small boys, ( a lot of my mates who used to turn up at the factory) as well as grown up `boys`.
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Click the link below for more history of the Keil family at Canvey Island.