Vigilante Society

Noel Pemberton Billing (sometimes hyphenated as Noel Pemberton-Billing) (31 January 1881 – 11 November 1948) was an English aviator, inventor, publisher, and Member of Parliament. He founded the firm that became Supermarine and promoted air power, but he held a strong antipathy towards the Royal Aircraft Factory and its products. He was noted during the First World War for his extreme right-wing views and his homophobic conspiracy theories, which eventually led to a sensational libel trial.

Born in Hampstead, a residential suburb in north London, Billing ran away from home at the age of 13 and travelled to South Africa. After trying a number of occupations, he joined the mounted police and became a boxer. He fought in the Second Boer War, but was invalided out.

Billing then returned to England in 1903 and used his savings to open a garage in Kingston upon Thames. This was successful, but he became more interested in aviation, which was then in its infancy. An attempt to open an aerodrome in Essex failed, so he started a short-lived career in property, while studying to become a lawyer. He passed his exams, but instead moved into selling steam yachts. Convinced of the potential of powered aviation, he founded a flying field with extensive facilities on reclaimed marshland at Fambridge in Essex in 1909, but this ambitious venture did not prosper, British aviation activity becoming centred at Brooklands. In 1913 he bet Frederick Handley Page that he could earn his pilot's licence within 24 hours of first sitting in an aircraft. He won his bet, gaining licence number 683 and £500, equivalent to more than £28,000 in 2010, which he used to found an aircraft business, Pemberton-Billing Ltd, with Hubert Scott-Paine as works manager, in 1913. Billing registered the telegraphic address Supermarine, Southampton for the company, which soon acquired premises at Oakbank Wharf in Woolston, Southampton and started construction of his flying boat designs. Financial difficulties soon set in, but the onset of World War I revived the fortunes of the business.

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