An appeal has been issued for information about pioneering women from Bradford who built the first RAF bombers 80 years ago.

Researcher Erik Blakeley has discovered that during the First World War many of the city's women helped bolt together dozens of Phoenix "Cork" P5 flying boat bombers.

The aircraft were the first planes to be used by the RAF to carry out airborne bombing attacks on German warships and U-boats.

Now he wants to trace relatives of those workers and the men who helped make the planes at Phoenix Dynamo Manufacturing Company Limited's factory in Thornbury.

To help him discover more about Bradford's flying boat industry, Mr Blakeley is using hundreds of original design blueprints for the planes stored at the Bradford Industrial Museum, including a batch of 200 unearthed in the museum's vaults only last week.

Mr Blakeley said: "When the First World War came along women had to start working in what were traditionally male industries like manufacturing and engineering. I think this may have also eventually helped with the move towards the suffragette movement in the 1920s.

"I would particularly like to hear from anybody whose mother or grandmother may have been trained up to build these flying boats. It's almost a case of 'What did you do during the war Grandma?', 'I built flying boats!'"

He also wants to get in touch with the family or friends of chief draughtsman Leonard Brown who was asked by Phoenix, which originally made electrical equipment, to take charge of its aircraft-building project.

He added: "In 1915 Mr Brown, who came from Bradford, was sent to the Isle of Grain by Phoenix to measure up a Short Brothers seaplane.

"When he came back they started building Short Type 184 planes which have floats attached at the bottom. Then they moved on to making the Phoenix 'Cork' P5, which was known as a flying boat because unlike the Short 184 its used the whole of its undercarriage to land on the water."

Ironically after he retired Mr Brown lived barely one mile down the road from the Thornbury factory and Mr Blakeley believes family relatives or friends could still be in the area.

Another important figure involved with getting the flying boats built in the city was Sir PJ Pybus C.B.E. who was head of Phoenix and also went on to work for the company when it was renamed English Electric.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.