Consolidation and Expansion

Abstract

In January 1910 Rolls surprised the board by asking them to relieve him of duties which he found ‘irksome’. They accepted his resignation but very soon afterwards, on 2 June, he was killed in a flying accident at Bournemouth while attempting a spot landing in an aircraft which had not been designed to be flown at, or near, the stall. He had ceased to be a director of the company at his own request in April 1910, and his death was as great a loss to aviation as it was to the firm which bore his name, but during the last few years he seems to have had little influence on policy, which was now being directed almost entirely by Claude Johnson.