de Havilland Propellers was established in 1935, as a division of the de Havilland Aircraft company when that company acquired a license from the Hamilton Standard company of America for the manufacture of variable pitch propellers at a cost of about £20,000. Licence negotiations were completed in June 1934. de Havilland Propellers, Ltd., was incorporated on April 27, 1946, with the main headquarters at Hatfield as the centre of design,development and flight-testing, and with the main production plant at Lostock in Lancashire. The factory had been built in only nine months as part of the government's emergency pre-war shadow-factory programme. Work on missiles began in the late 1940s, early 1950s at the Hatfield plant in facilities which had been used during the war for development and tes