By Bill Zuk
John Carver Meadows Frost ("Jack" to close friends) was an enigma in the story of the Avro V.T.O.L. projects. Both friends and enemies recognized the genius and visionary aspect of the man yet he had many detractors including those he most respected, his fellow engineers.

When he had come to Canada, he had already been acknowledged as a gifted aircraft designer in England. His introduction to aviation had come early in 1930 when his school Latin teacher had taken him up in a Bristol Fighter. John Frost had been born in Walton-on-Thames near London in 1915 and had showed an early interest in the sciences at St. Edward's School, Oxford where he graduated with honours in mathematics, chemistry and physics. Frost did also go to the top of his class in Latin, partially as an acknowledgment of his debt to his Latin teacher.

Early Work
His aeronautical career had begun in the 1930's as an apprentice for Airspeeds Limited before he moved on to the Miles, Westland, Blackburn and Slingsby companies. In 1937, Frost had designed the fuselage of the new Westland Whirlwind fighter. At Blackburn, he had been involved with the design and construction of their pre-war wind tunnel. While working for Slingsby Sailplanes from 1939- 1942, he met his future wife, Joan, who had worked in the Slingsby Design Office as a technical artist. Frost designed the Slingsby Hengist, built in small numbers as one of the R.A.F.'s wartime troop-carrying gliders used at the Normandy landings. One of its ingenious innovations was the use of a rubber bag as a landing device. However, Frost's work began to be noticed when he joined the de Havilland Aircraft Company (U.K.), builders of the famed Mosquito bomber and fighter.

The de Havilland Company was an exciting, innovative concern during the war years and the ideal place for a young aviation engineer to mature. During his tenure, Frost began to put forward a number of unique ideas in regards to a tip jet-driven rotor helicopter. He continued his research privately and with a group of friends, including fellow engineer, T. Desmond Earl, built a scale model to test his theories.

After joining the de Havilland firm in 1942, Frost had become one of the senior members of the design team working on the Hornet fighter, the design of the follow-up to the Mosquito, for which he designed a unique flap design. Later, as one of the team of designers on the D.H.100 Vampire, he was responsible for the design of the original flaps, dive brakes and ailerons for this fighter. The Vampire had been one of the first Allied jet fighters in World War Two but other than its plywood construction patterned on the Mosquito, the diminutive fighter was mainly conventional in design.

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