AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 163 / 274

Plate 163 of 274 · Early jet age · Single-seat sailplane

EoN Olympia 2B

Olympia 2B, BGA 1029 ‘127’, painted as BGA 1029, competition number ‘127’ and known as ‘Brimstone’, an EoN Olympia 2B built by Elliotts of Newbury in 1959 (c/n EoN/O/134), flown by the RAE Farnborough Gliding Club until 1977 and now kept flying by the Gliding Heritage Centre, Lasham: the British licence-built version of the DFS Olympia Meise, the 15-metre wooden sailplane Hans Jacobs’s team designed for the gliding contest of the cancelled 1940 Olympic Games, with a plywood-skinned fuselage, a one-piece blown canopy, a shoulder-mounted two-spar wooden wing on a faired pylon with airbrakes and ailerons, a tailplane on the rear fuselage ahead of the fin and rudder, a landing skid under the nose and a fixed main wheel, shown resting tail-down on its wheel and tail skid with the port wing tip on the ground: a dark blue fuselage with yellow decking from the nose back to the canopy, a yellow canopy frame and wing-root fairing, yellow wings, tailplane, fin and rudder, and black ‘127’ on the fin and rudder, as photographed after its 2010 restoration and at Lasham in 2023 (shape from the Olympia 2B three-view published in R/C Soaring Digest in 2009, scaled to the 15.0 m span; no BGA number is painted, since no photograph shows one); it stands for the Olympias and the other Elliotts gliders in the gazetteer’s museums, from the Olympia 403, 460 and 463 to the EoN Baby, the Eton and the Elliotts Primary at the Shuttleworth Collection.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as BGA 1029, competition number ‘127’ and known as ‘Brimstone’, an EoN Olympia 2B built by Elliotts of Newbury in 1959 (c/n EoN/O/134), flown by the RAE Farnborough Gliding Club until 1977 and now kept flying by the Gliding Heritage Centre, Lasham: the British licence-built version of the DFS Olympia Meise, the 15-metre wooden sailplane Hans Jacobs’s team designed for the gliding contest of the cancelled 1940 Olympic Games, with a plywood-skinned fuselage, a one-piece blown canopy, a shoulder-mounted two-spar wooden wing on a faired pylon with airbrakes and ailerons, a tailplane on the rear fuselage ahead of the fin and rudder, a landing skid under the nose and a fixed main wheel, shown resting tail-down on its wheel and tail skid with the port wing tip on the ground: a dark blue fuselage with yellow decking from the nose back to the canopy, a yellow canopy frame and wing-root fairing, yellow wings, tailplane, fin and rudder, and black ‘127’ on the fin and rudder, as photographed after its 2010 restoration and at Lasham in 2023 (shape from the Olympia 2B three-view published in R/C Soaring Digest in 2009, scaled to the 15.0 m span; no BGA number is painted, since no photograph shows one); it stands for the Olympias and the other Elliotts gliders in the gazetteer’s museums, from the Olympia 403, 460 and 463 to the EoN Baby, the Eton and the Elliotts Primary at the Shuttleworth Collection. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (458 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (Olympia 2B, 403, 460, 463, Baby, Eton, Primary); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Olympia 2B, BGA 1029 ‘127’ modelled here.

History

The Olympia

The Olympia began as the Meise, a 15-metre wooden sailplane drawn by Hans Jacobs’s team at the DFS, Germany’s gliding research institute, for a competition to choose a single design for the gliding event planned for the 1940 Olympic Games in Helsinki. It won the trials in 1939 and became the Olympia Meise, and the DFS sent its plans abroad so that other nations could build their own. The war cancelled the Games, but the Meise was built in several European countries during it, with a plywood-skinned fuselage and a wing stiffened against twist by a second spar behind the main one.

After the war Chilton Aircraft redrew the plans for British production and built one, and the rights passed to Elliotts of Newbury, a Berkshire furniture firm that had made parts for Tiger Moths, Mosquitos and Horsa and Hamilcar gliders during the war and was not allowed by the Board of Trade to go back to furniture. The first EoN Olympia flew early in 1947. Elliotts replaced the Meise’s framed canopy with a one-piece blown hood, and built the Olympia in versions with a landing skid, a jettisonable dolly and, on the 2B, a fixed main wheel.

About 150 were built, and for more than a decade the Olympia was the sailplane British private owners and clubs aspired to after their training gliders; many were exported. Elliotts went on to build the Eton primary trainer for the Air Training Corps, a licence-built Grunau Baby as the EoN Baby, and the all-new Olympia 400 series, up to the Olympia 463 of the 1960s, before leaving glider building. The gazetteer’s museums hold three Olympia 2Bs, at the Midland Air Museum and the Gliding Heritage Centre at Lasham, where Olympias 403, 460 and 463, an EoN Baby and an Eton keep them company, and an Elliotts Primary at the Shuttleworth Collection.

This airframe

Olympia 2B BGA 1029 ‘127’

BGA 1029The airframe modelled

BGA 1029, Elliotts constructor’s number EoN/O/134, was built in 1959 and flew with the RAE Farnborough Gliding Club until 1977. In July 1963 J. E. Torode flew it 170 miles from Lasham to Fowey in Cornwall, and it took part in National Gliding Week at Dunstable in 1960 and 1961 and in the Farnborough Air Show of 1962. Still known as ‘Brimstone’, it was restored to its original colour scheme in 2010 and is kept flying by the Gliding Heritage Centre at Lasham; at the end of 2022 it had logged 2,419 hours from 9,307 launches. The model shows it as photographed at Lasham and Tibenham in 2010 and at Lasham in 2023, resting tail-down on its main wheel and tail skid with the port wing tip on the ground: a dark blue fuselage with yellow decking from the nose back to the canopy, a yellow canopy frame and wing-root fairing, yellow wings, tailplane, fin and rudder, and black ‘127’ on the fin and rudder. The shape follows the Olympia 2B three-view published in R/C Soaring Digest in 2009, scaled to the 15.0 m span. The model stands for the Olympias and the other Elliotts gliders in the gazetteer’s museums.

See it at The Gliding Heritage Centre

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Olympia in 3 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 274 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.