The name Sydney Camm may not have the immediate resonance of an R J Mitchell or a Roy Chadwick, but there's no doubt that he was at very least the equal to both of them. One of the last great individual designers, his intuitive feel for design spanned the decades. Camm became the most prolific and successful British aircraft designer ever, with 52 separate designs coming from his drafting table, resulting in the production of 26,000 aircraft. At one time in the 1930s, 84 of the RAF's aircraft were Camm designs. His genius was not that of the revolutionary Mitchell, but rather an ability to build on what existed, taking it to the next logical step. Engineer Robert Lickey, who worked for him, later recalled: "Camm had a one-tracked mind - his aircraft were right, and everybody had to work on them to get them right. If they did not, then there was hell.
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