This brief historical note on British rotorcraft may be likened to the small visible part of a large iceberg and the reasons for it are these.

When I was asked to write this note for the Society's Journal I agreed to undertake the task with certain reservations. In the first instance there was very little time in which to do it. While it was relatively easy to collect the early history from well-established records this did not apply to the more recent developments and here the material needed to be collected from primary sources and to be collated.