Major Sydney Vincent Sippe DSO OBE FRAeS (pronounced SIP-ee) (24 April 1889 – 17 November 1968) was a British pioneer aviator.

[2] Between late 1909 and early 1910, just a year after Wilbur Wright first demonstrated powered flight in Europe, Sippe (aged 20), his brother Arthur, and their friend James Jensen (or Jenson) designed and built a monoplane from steel tubing.

Its attempted maiden flight on 24 April 1910 at Addington, Croydon, failed due to insufficient power:[4] Sydney Sippe was thrown forward with some violence and his nose came into collision with one of the steel tubes.

A well-meaning friend rushed up with a flask of whisky, which he thrust into the pilot's mouth, and so Sydney Sippe arrived home to his mother with a broken nose, a bleeding thigh—and slightly intoxicated.

Three weeks after his flying test he survived a crash near Finchampstead caused by a frozen carburettor; the aircraft was wrecked, but Sippe escaped unhurt.

[10] Later that year he supervised the construction of aircraft in Milan for the Bristol Aeroplane Company, and took part in an Italian long-distance flying competition.

In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Sippe immediately joined up and was made a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Navy Air Service.

Sippe and two other pilots flew 125 miles (201 km) from Belfort, France, over mountainous terrain and in difficult weather—a risky flight near the limit of the aircraft's range.

[16] One historian concluded: "The pilots deserve all praise for their admirable navigation... this flight of 250 miles, into gunfire, across enemy country, in the frail little Avro with its humble horse-power, can compare as an achievement with the best of them".

[18] Sippe and the other returning pilot received the French Legion of Honour (rarely given to foreigners) immediately after the Friedrichshafen raid, at the request of General Joffre himself.

In 1925, after £100,000 (£5.2 million in 2012 prices) had been spent on the salvage attempt, he concluded that though the cargo had been in the ship, the difficulty of accessing it made it too dangerous for divers to recover, and so the project was abandoned.

[21] Sippe was a sales manager for ten years with Short Brothers (now a large aerospace business), then with Crossley Motors, followed by the Fairey Aviation Company from 1946 to 1955.