In Britain, Dr. James Allan Jamieson Bennett, Chief Engineer of the Cierva Autogiro Company, in 1936 conceived an intermediate type of rotorcraft, which he named "gyrodyne" and which was tendered to the British Government in response to an Air Ministry specification.
Despite being a small museum, several of the exhibits are unique survivors, these include a Miles Martinet, World War 2 target tug, the only Miles Student two seat side-by-side jet trainer ever built and a Fairey Jet Gyrodyne — a composite helicopter and autogyro, or gyrodyne.
Gyrodyne Company of America | gyrodyne | Fairey Jet Gyrodyne |
Although scheduled for scrapping in 1961, the Jet Gyrodyne (serial number XD759 later XJ389) survived and today is displayed at the Museum of Berkshire Aviation, on loan from the RAF Museum collection.
The manned Gyrodyne Rotorcycle program of the mid-1950s provided prototype work for the DASH, and ultimately the Rotorcycle was modified to produce the initial drone version, the DSN-1/QH-50A The DSN-1 was powered by a Porsche YO-95-6 72 hp piston engine and carried one Mark 43 homing torpedo.