Sir Sydney Camm, CBE, FRAeS (5 August 1893 – 12 March 1966) was an English aeronautical engineer who contributed to many Hawker aircraft designs, from the biplanes of the 1920s to jet fighters.

Camm and his brothers began building model aircraft which they supplied to Herbert's Eton High Street shop.

After finding that they could obtain a higher price they began making direct sales to boys at Eton College, which were delivered in secret to avoid attracting the attention of Herbert and the school authorities.

[4] Shortly before the start of World War I Camm obtained a position as a shop-floor carpenter at the Martinsyde aircraft company which was located at the Brooklands racing circuit in Weybridge, Surrey.

In 1925, in association with Fred Sigrist, Hawker's managing director, Camm developed a form of metal construction that used jointed tubes as a cheaper and simpler alternative to welded structures.

The result was that fighters flew faster, and with the improved engine technology of the time, higher, and could be made more deadly than ever.

The Hawker engineer Frank Murdoch was responsible for getting the Hurricane into production in sufficient numbers before the outbreak of the war, after an eye-opening visit to the MAN diesel plant in Augsburg in 1936.

When the Typhoon's design first emerged and entered squadron service, pilots became aware that there was elevator flutter and buffeting at high speeds, due to the positioning of the heavy Napier Sabre engine intake very close to the wing root.

The engineering of the aircraft to travel at higher speeds and handle compressibility effects was one of the challenges of the day, but with his small design team of one hundred members at Hawker, Camm managed to solve these problems and make the Typhoon an effective combat weapon even at these speeds.

As operational requirements changed, the Typhoon was used more as a fighter-bomber, in which role its low level performance, weapon-carrying capabilities and ability to absorb damage made it very effective.

This was a higher performance development of the Tempest with a reduced wing area, a Centaurus engine, and a considerably improved view for the pilot.

The Harrier is a well-known vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft designed at Hawker Siddeley, which would later merge into British Aerospace, now known as BAE Systems.

Since 1971 the RAeS has held the biennial Sir Sydney Camm Lecture in June, given by the current commander-in-chief of RAF Air Command.