Jeffrey Roger Munk 1947 – 2010

Jeffrey Roger Munk was the founder and honorary chairman of Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV)

He died of a major heart attack on Sunday morning 21st February 2010. He was only 62. He will be sadly missed by all at Hybrid Air Vehicles, his family and the worldwide airship community.

Jeffrey Roger Munk was born on 2nd May 1947 in Harrow, Middlesex. He was educated at Woking Grammar School, Brooklands Technical College and Southampton College of Technology and studied as a Naval Architect specialising in shipyard management during his early working years at John I Thornycroft and at Ship Division (High Speed Group) of the National Physical Laboratory.

In 1969 he joined J Bannenberg Ltd., the international motor yacht designers, and within six months was appointed Chief Naval Architect. In 1971 he left to become joint founder, Technical Director and Chief Designer of Aerospace Developments Ltd, a predecessor company to Airship Industries Ltd. During the formative years he led the design of a giant rigid monocoque airship for transporting natural gas in gaseous form for Shell International Gas Limited.

In 1979 he led the design team for a pressure cabin for Julian Nott's successful World Altitude Record for Hot Air Balloons, and made his first lighter-than-air flight to an altitude of 35,000 ft over India, being one of the first to fly a hot air balloon in a high speed jet stream. 3 February 1979 saw the flight of his first airship, the non-rigid AD 500 prototype.

This was the world's first modern technology airship which included a number of revolutionary features including the use of composites for all primary structures, vectored thrust, high technology engines and the latest plastics technology single-ply fabric envelope. With the formation of Airship Industries Ltd in 1979, Jeffrey Roger Munk became Technical Director and Chief Designer, being responsible for the development and civil passenger certification of the modern technology, vectored thrust Skyship 500 and 600 series. He then concentrated on a far larger non-rigid design, the Sentinel 5000, and headed up the joint venture Westinghouse/Airship Industries team, Westinghouse Airships Inc., which in June 1987 won the major $170 million US Navy Airship contract.

The half linear flying scale model in the US Navy programme, the Sentinel 1000, first flew in June 1991. It was the largest airship in the world at that time. Initial trials proved successful, but the US Navy programme came to an end when a hangar fire at Weeksville, North Carolina, destroyed the airship and nearly all the company's assets.

Westinghouse Airships Inc. was forced to close down. Roger and his team returned to England and created a new company, Airship Technology Services which in turn became the Airship Technologies Group (ATG) in 1996. Significantly however, in 1993 Roger began developing concepts for lifting body hull forms for remote piloted potential programmes being studied by Westinghouse.

With ATG, Roger developed his ideas for three new types of airship. Firstly a stratospheric StratSat, which was designed to operate at 60,000 ft for up to five years at a time powered by a unique combined diesel and solar powered/electric propulsion system, was built and flown in 2002. The AT-10, a 5-seat, diesel-engined, non-rigid airship to a design requested by Virgin Lightships, also in 1997, was built, flown, and eventually exported to Asia.

AT-08 designs evolved into the SkyCat hybrid lifting-body airship, with it's hovercraft cushion system. Shortly after he filed a patent application for the concept. In addition ATG also successfully completed a DTI Civil Aeronautics Research and Development programme on Aero Diesel Engines and the Phoenix Unmanned Air Vehicle re-engine demonstration programme for BAE Systems.

Roger then accepted the invitation to join the SkyCat Group Ltd as President and Technical Director.The entity was replaced by Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) in August 2007.