An original design drawing for the Concorde aircraft will be among the lots on offer when Bonhams returns to the RAF Museum in Hendon for its annual sale on Monday 29 April.
The 135cm x 76cm graphite on design paper technical sketch Definition Of Compartment Boundaries, Ventilation & Drainage, No D73.5050, dated 10 September 1968 and signed by test pilot Brian Trubshaw, is estimated to realise between £1,000 and £1,500.
When the Concorde prototype 001 first took to the skies in Toulouse on 2 March 1969, it represented the achievement of the best part of a decade of collaboration between the British and French aircraft industries. The thousands of design drawings generated from that partnership were the last such to be produced entirely by human hand, without computerisation, for a leading aircraft project.
This year marks the tenth anniversary of Concorde’s final flight, on 24 October 2003. Among related lots on offer at the auction is the very front point of a Concorde nosecone, which is estimated to realise between £2,000 and £3,000.
The Bonhams auction of Collectors’ Motor Cars and Automobilia will feature some 61 lots of aviation art and aeronautica, including more than twenty original aviation paintings – the majority of which are offered at no reserve – a number of signed and limited-edition prints, and an aviation library.
Particular highlights include the oil-on-canvas ‘Over Beachy Head’ by Michael Turner PFGAvA, which depicts two Hurricanes from 605 Squadron engaging a Junkers 88 over Beachy Head on 28 September 1940 during the Battle of Britain.
Other lots of aeronautica on offer at the sale include an RAF sector clock and a silver presentation plaque ‘The London Aerodrome Trophy’, presented to Cheridah de Beavoir Stocks as a souvenir of her flight on Ladies Day, 6 July 1912. Mrs de Beavoir Stocks (1887-1971) was only the second British woman to gain a Royal Aero Club aviator’s licence, passing her test at Hendon in 1911 using a Farman biplane.