Concorde, A Designer's Life E-Book

Ted Talbot

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 514

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Do you remember the time we used to do New York in three hours? Even twenty years after its final flight, Concorde remains the pinnacle of aviation design. The aircraft is still unmatched, which has led to a vast swathe of material being written about the aeroplane itself. However, relatively little has been said about the people who designed it. Concorde, A Designer's Life is an autobiography peppered with anecdotes from the team, humorous life stories and several 'technibits', all covering the design period of Concorde. Ted Talbot, who began his career at BAC as an aerodynamicist and later became chief design engineer, has combined the technical narrative with personal and family reminiscences to remind the reader that engineers have lives too. The path to Mach 2 was bumpy, with threats of cancellation and opposition from the Americans and the Russians, but this generally indicated to the Concorde team that they were on the right path! This informative, witty and thoroughly enjoyable peek into an unusual life is a valuable addition to any bookshelf.

Leseprobe

Cover illustrations. Front, top: Schematics of Concorde (courtesy of Julien Scavini/Wikimedia); drawing board (iStockphoto); bottom: Concorde supersonic aircraft commissioned in the 1970s, and withdrawn in 2004. (© LatitudeStock/Alamy) Back: Terry Brown and Ted Talbot at Hotel El Minzah, Tangier. (John Allan)

First published 2013

This paperback edition published 2023

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Ted Talbot, 2013, 2023

The right of Ted Talbot to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 75249 632 0

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Author’s Note

Prologue

  1   Propositions

  2   Early Warnings

  3   Help from External Sources

  4   Early Pastoral Scenes

  5   Enter the Power Plant

  6   Grammar in Several Languages

  7   Two Wrongs Eventually Righted

  8   Connoisseurship under Test

  9   Arrival of the Vulcans

10   Search for a Permanent Base

11   Comrades v. Narrowboats

12   The North African Campaign – Part 1

13   Excursion in a Foreign Land

14   Success (or Nearly So)

15   Exit from Tangier

16   The North African Campaign – Part 2

17   Patently Obvious – To Us

18   Small Talk in Simulators

19   Encounters in Transit

20   Electricians Then and Now

21   Little ’Uns with Big Backgrounds

22   Agony Incorporated by Design

23   Relaxation

24   A Very Bumpy Road

25   One-Upmanship in Design

26   Two-Upmanship, or Game, Set and Match

Epilogue

Postscript

Valediction

Appendix: Principal Power Plant Variations

Author’s Note

In the balmy autumn 1956, when Britain had an aircraft industry which designed and built whole aeroplanes, we attended a meeting called by the Ministry of Supply to discuss the design of a Supersonic Transport Aircraft (SST). There were at least seven aircraft manufacturers and four engine manufacturers in attendance looking for contracts,i and many Ministry people looking for someone who might take them out to lunch.

This meeting resulted, some years later, in a beautiful aircraft and spawned a series of humorous, if scattered, episodes connected by a rather irregular path towards passenger flight at supersonic speeds. The action here is centred on Concorde, as the SST became known, its power plants and some of those who took part in this particular aspect of the adventure. The incidents involve colleagues – Brits and non-Brits – who formed part of a small team working within a very large one on the design, build and test processes.

One of the technical problems, of which there were many, could be expressed in non-technical terms as follows: at the height at which Concorde flies the possibility of encountering so-called air pockets, or any other type of upset, is extremely remote. However, should this ‘remote happening’ come to pass and the aircraft drops rapidly towards terra firma, then Granny, who had been relaxing in her comfortable seat in the cabin as she covered every mile in less than three seconds, now finds the world approaching rapidly from 11 miles below.

It was decided (at high level) that, as Granny floats gracefully up towards the overhead lockers, concentrating on not spoiling her new dress by pushing her (‘I’m going to be a bit naughty!’) gin, tonic, ice and lemon back down into its glass, she should not be distracted in this task by a succession of loud, shuddering bangs from the engines.

There were hosts of more technical requirements, but one of the same nature as the above caused many problems in the most technically difficult part of a technically difficult aircraft.

In order to avoid the many company mergers and name changes that have occurred over the development of this story, the firms given the British sections of the design and development contract are referred to as BAe (British Aerospace), of which Bristol Aircraft and Bristol Siddeley Engines (now merged into Rolls-Royce) became a part.

This book was commenced over thirty years ago as relaxation and escape from pressures. Perhaps the memory over these years is a bit misty, and for ease of telling some incidents have been coalesced, but be assured that all which is related here has a complete foundation in fact.

My thanks go to my ex-secretaries Jane Eves and Jackie Hewlett in the early stages for coping with some terrible writing (neat, but illegible), and to my granddaughter Aleisha, for helping me in the many times that the computer apparently did what I told it to do, but not what was intended. Also, on a more technical level, Duncan Greenman and John Lumley for digging me out of computer crevices.

I’m not sure how I feel about being dragooned into this exercise after twenty years of retirement by my colleague Colin Cruddas,ii who quite frequently writes books about aeroplanes as a hobby. But here we are.

Above all my thanks and love have always gone to Ann for support in everything, and especially when the PC goes off along an unintended tangent and I am waxing eloquent at its infamy.

____________________

i    Lest we forget:

Aircraft: A.V. Roe, Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft, Bristol Aircraft, de Havilland Aircraft, Handley Page, Short Brothers and Vickers-Armstrongs. (Fairey Aircraft and English Electric joined later).

Engines: Armstrong Siddeley Motors, Bristol Aero-Engines, de Havilland Engine Company and Rolls-Royce.

ii   A View from the Wings, Colin Cruddas (The History Press, 2012)

Prologue

At the head of the long table that stretched down the briefing room sat the Chief Test Pilot, his Deputy and the other members of the Flight Test crew. They wore the ‘heads are going to roll’ expressions that they had picked up from their French opposite numbers. On the pilots’ right sat the Flight Test Observers with their records of the day’s flight – the ‘ObsLogs’ – waiting to correct the pilots’ impressions of the sequence of events as diplomatically as possible without making it seem as if the pilots were wrong. On their left sat the Chief Inspector, the Ground Crew Chief and their assistants, waiting to find out what had stopped working, had broken or had fallen off. They were wondering if they had overlooked something, or whether they could pass the buck to the design office.

At the foot of the long briefing room table sat the representatives of the design team trying to look nonchalant, but inwardly itching to know how the tests had worked out. Post-flight rumours based on information from the man listening in on the VHF radio were not very promising. Could it be that there was something even more fundamentally wrong than the functioning of the pilots’ seats and the location of their coffee cup holders?

The atmosphere, thick with cigarette smoke from those who had to smoke and of peppermint from those who were trying not to, was forgotten as the Chief Test Pilot delivered his brief: ‘Then there was a bloody great row. Smoke on the flight deck. It sounded like World War Three had started!’

The Deputy Chief Test Pilot later added his sixpennyworth: ‘Just like being in a train smash – and when all four engines surge it’s like being in four train smashes.’

It was quite evident to the representatives of the design team present that the test pilots had been impressed when their first experiences of engine surge on the prototype aircraft at high supersonic speed crept up on them unexpectedly. The aircraft inspectors’ eyebrows were raised in unison and they turned, as was their custom, to look accusingly at the design engineers. Few of the Flight Department had taken note of the warnings given to them about the effects of supersonic surges and were now wishing that they had done so. However, it was not the inspectors’ fault, the designers had designed the thing and something had gone wrong, so it was obviously all due to ‘them’.

Had ‘they’ got it wrong yet again?

‘They’ now realised that achieving Mach 2 – twice the speed of sound, or a mile in less than three seconds – had not been easy, even if relatively straightforward(!). It was the little bit extra, needed for performance combined with safety, that was going to be difficult.

For some years previously this design team had been suffering from a creeping awareness that there was no way in which a huge stampede of horsepower, in hiccups, could escape from the wrong end of the Olympus engines without some bright beggar commenting on the fact.

Even in the massive engine test cells at Pyestock, the National Gas Turbine Engine Test Centre (NGTE) near Farnborough, the surges from a single engine had shaken the very foundations of the cathedral-like cells and left an uneasy impression of brute power on the rampage.

Happily, in the current phase of test flying no pieces of engine or bits of aircraft structure had become detached and headed for outer space. I suppose, they thought, we had better tell the pilots of that possibility too, before they find it out for themselves.

The nucleus of this group of engineers who had conceived the power plant had moved over the previous years from positions in various aerospace departments round an inevitable spiral to their respective places in the new Power Plant Group by secondment or adoption. In the Aerodynamics Office I had moved from project studies on wing shapes and the workings of the power plants and was put in this group with strict orders to defend them from the aerodynamicists and their demands for even thinner, stronger structures: the poacher had been turned gamekeeper. Within a short time Jim Wallin, with his comprehensive power plant experience of civil and military aircraft such as Viscount, Valiant, Vanguard and VC 10, arrived from Weybridge to become the Chief Power Plant Engineer as the workload grew quickly. As a man from Weybridge he professed to be pleasantly surprised at the warmth of his welcome in Filton. However, manning the increasing workload still remained a problem.

Like myself, David Moakes had been roped in from aerodynamics to pursue the practical development of the intake and its geometry, and inevitably this grew to include a heavy involvement in the development and in-service support of the rest of the nacelle, including the engine, nozzle and thrust reverser and associated systems.

Back in the Aerodynamics Office, the genius that was Terry Brown had blossomed in any field that he took an interest in. With his friend John Legg they became the principals in the diagnosis and definition of the brilliant solutions to the demands of flexibility, performance and compatibility between the engines and their intakes as demanded by a civil aircraft.

On a completely different, but equally essential, discipline, the wide experience of Tom Madgwick on Fire Precautions was also imported from Weybridge, due to the lack of background at Filton in the current civil field. Others, although not formally in the group, became ‘absorbed’ and were regarded by all disciplines as full members for the duration.

To complement the Technical Office there was a large Design Drawing, Systems and Stress Office coping with the new technology and the differences between the two prototypes and the individual differences of the two pre-production aircraft (see Appendix).

This was the team, which now specified, assessed, modified and integrated the efforts of the British and French aircraft and engine companies whilst designing an intake and its control system to cope with every normal and abnormal happening in flight.

Each member of the technical nucleus was a superb individual in his particular discipline who had earned, by dint of his efforts, the quiet respect of his fellows. This respect was derived from the fact that, without exception, each one had not only a profound understanding of their own particular subject, but could also give as much as they received in discussions with experts in other fields.

Within a few years they had become an entity second to none, as they later proved when American and Russian engineers failed to achieve overall success in the same area of expertise. Both Russian and American engineers were generous enough to express admiration for the feat, but, of course, their respective politicians did not. Neither did ours, unless prompted.

Almost everything was new and in advance of most things military.

‘Supercruise’ (long duration supersonic cruise without reheat) is not a recent invention. Concorde had to be doing it from the start. The early Tupolev Tu-144 didn’t incorporate it.

Fly-by-wire has only recently been adopted for civil airliners. Concorde had it from the start and it was carried on to its subsonic successors – versions of the Airbus series.

Electronic control systems for most engines are now the bee’s knees. The Bristol Siddeley Olympus introduced the first one into civil power plants fifty years ago. (The Bristol Britannia had simple electric controls from pilot to engines seventy years ago!)

Disc brakes on aircraft were first introduced by Dunlop on Concorde, firstly with metal pads and then with composite units. The list goes on.

The aircraft accumulated more hours at Mach 2 than the rest of the world’s air forces and will probably be unique for many years to come. Above all, Concorde is a thing of beauty, matched only by that gem of the thirties, the Spitfire.

Throughout the formative years of the project, and beyond, the designers were sustained by two common factors – a dry, Goon-like sense of the ridiculous, and a complete dedication to the project. The humour was worn as armour against incessant attacks on the British side from politicians, the press and trial by television ‘experts’. Most of these ‘experts’ in reality knew very little about the problems, but were actively trying to further their own or their questioners’ careers on the basis that the programme producers knew even less. I suggested to one producer who came to see me that she also talked to two more senior designers and the suggestion was summarily dismissed as they had already been interviewed ‘but talked like engineers!’

The team’s total dedication produced technical feats beyond even the normal expectations of intensive work projects when knocking on the doors of the frontiers of knowledge, but required no external pressures from any source to do so. The feat was still unmatched over forty years later in the civil or military fields.

It is unfortunate that in a project of this complexity it is difficult to pay tribute to everyone involved and my apologies go to that majority who are not mentioned.

The degree of dedication to the project was evident in the home life of those concerned, who, when with their families, found that their work was never very far from their thoughts. Honeymoons, holidays, weekends and evenings were planned or unplanned by it. Strange to relate, however, almost without exception their wives remained with their husbands, and the families appeared to be quite normal.

It is to these remarkable women, and to one in particular, that these stories are dedicated. This dedication is in the hope that, if they are still confused, it may bring some insight into the peculiar workings of their husbands’ minds. Real engineers and real women – an unbeatable combination.

If, in the narrative, life is expressed in engineering terms, or vice-versa, just relax and accept the fact that this is how it should be. Don’t fight it – in ‘Engineering Speak’ there really are male and female fittings which mate together.

All real engineers are creative artists.

Few, if any, so-called artists are fundamentally creative …

… and even fewer are engineers.

(Anon)

1

Propositions

In my bachelor days, college, work and women had sometimes been difficult to combine and good chances had been missed. Whilst comparing tales of misery with fellow lodger Trevor Buxton, a hydraulics engineer, we had been gloomily discussing the situation. Our landlady, a rather delicate old dear, joined us. After her admonition ‘never to get married too quickly’ she abruptly changed course and advised us how to go about it – but suggested that possibly we should not ‘go all the way’.

‘The local vicar’s wife has just started a club for people like you,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you go down there on Tuesday and see what it is like?’

Go down there we did, but it did not look too promising.

Trevor was immediately commandeered by the vicar’s wife and taken to one side of the hall. I was directed to the other. My group looked and sounded less promising than those opposite, so after a short session I excused myself and wandered across to the other side.

The vicar’s good lady had by now latched onto Trevor and had been explaining that ‘This was a Church of England organisation’, and then enquired about his religion.

‘I’m a Methodist,’ said Trevor.

‘And what are you?’ she asked me as I arrived on the scene.

Not being party to the previous conversation I gave the obvious answer:

‘I’m an aerodynamicist.’

It was not received with the awe and wonder normally expressed by the female sex.

But since that time things had changed beyond my wildest dreams when, at a blind date, a slim, golden-haired vision in a black dress had appeared at the top of a set of stairs in a midwives’ digs. Things progressed well – very well! Soon it was time to venture forth to meet the new relatives-to-be.

The Morris Minor Tourer had been steered carefully along the route outlined by the Welsh railway porter at Fishguard Station. The first section past the ticket office and down the length of platform 2 to the level crossing between the two platforms was fairly easy. Platform 3 was a different kettle of fish as there was a difficult right-hand turn behind the waiting room, made worse by a carefully sited trolley at the apex of the turn. By swinging out towards the track, thereby frightening Ann and – I had to admit – myself, we completed the turn without losing face or paint. The car now rested in slings high up above the dockside, whilst the foreman in charge of loading the ferryboat sorted out his loading problems in a game akin to chess, but played with cars and cranes on the boards of a ship’s hold. Roll-on-roll-off ferries had not yet arrived in the Principality.

The sight of 100 per cent of our capital swinging by on a single rope 40ft above the oily surface of the Irish Sea made me concentrate upon Ann’s legs as they climbed the gangway steps onto the deck. They were a lovely shape, firm, soft and sensational – the legs, not the steps.

Stepping up the slope aggravated the sore feeling around the area where my appendix used to be. A recent operation to remove some stitches left by the first surgical procedure, done five years previously, had been only partially successful. At odd intervals the nether regions were still giving birth to hard black nylon stitches, put there contrary to hospital laid-down procedures one late night by ‘one of the world’s experts’ practising the new keyhole surgery.

The Morris Minor, swinging gently to and fro high above the open hatch giving access to the second lower deck, was then lowered through the hole and turned to face the required direction before coming to a standstill on the baulks of timber now covering the lower hatch. It was then driven out of sight.

Having breathed a short prayer of thanks to the God of Crane Drivers we both retired to our respective cabins (although this was the late fifties we had been born well before the war, when things were done differently in some areas of life) to get ready for dinner.

Rising refreshed, we breakfasted in the early hours of a beautiful Irish morning in the safety of Rosslare Harbour. The ship had docked against the mole whilst the passengers were asleep and the car was already standing amongst the others on the quayside. The plan was that owners were to sit in their own cars and drive them onto a row of rail flatcars. These were then pushed by a small steam-driven shunting engine for their journey along the length of the mole to the landing stage.

There is always a first time for everything and this was the first time we had driven along a row of railway flatcars to the end of the train, to be followed in single file by a mainly rundown selection of Coventry’s output. Once all cars had been loaded, the train set off on the short journey along the mole. Being first, there was nothing in front except a pair of buffers, the engine being at the other end. Sitting in a car on top of rolling stock, whilst being pushed by a steam locomotive was a new experience enjoyed by most of the drivers, judging by the way they hooted when starting and joyfully indicated right using hand signals at the junction of the tracks. When the train came to a gentle stop against the buffers of the unloading ramp, I for one realised that my right foot was pressed hard on the brake pedal. So, most likely, were the right feet of those behind us. The short ramp in front of the car was lowered and after starting the engine we drove slowly onto solid ground.

‘I’ll just give the car a rest,’ I said. ‘It’s not used to this kind of thing.’

This was Ireland and time meant little. We parked and took stock of the activity surrounding us. Cars were manoeuvring, being loaded and departing. Some, like ours, were just sitting there.

Also just sitting, but this time on a bollard on the quayside and dressed in a long fur coat, was one of those travellers who had come on the first shuttle for foot passengers. She, too, was viewing the scene, but with an air of impatience. A young man who turned out to be her son came out of the nearby telephone box shrugging his shoulders whilst holding his hands, palms outwards.

‘My son,’ said her ladyship aggressively, turning towards the open window of the Morris Minor, ‘has been trying to ascertain the whereabouts of a hire car reserved by us a month ago.’

‘Oh – what is the problem?’ I asked, feigning interest.

‘There appears to be some sporting activity in Dublin and the car has been taken there! How do they expect to do business?’

It appeared that our new acquaintances had expected to be met by a hire car, but had chosen the wrong firm and the wrong week. Today, as they had discovered, was the day of the All Ireland Hurling Final in Dublin, and everything on two or four wheels had been mobilised to take the sporting populace to the stadium. Hurling, as played by the Gaelic male, is probably the fastest game played on grass. It is similar to hockey, but played with greater passion, to very few rules, the players being armed with semi-fragile war-clubs. Waterloo is reputed to have been won on the playing fields of Eton, but the whole campaign would have been over much more quickly if it had started at a hurling match in Ireland and carried on, using the same weapons, in Belgium.

The telephone conversation had indicated that anyone with any sense would have hired the car for the day before, and then kept it until the morrow – or better still, would have started their journey from somewhere else.

So we, of the Morris Minor, did the only decent thing. Once the car had got over its experiences on railway platforms, in slings, ships and on railway trucks, we loaded lady bountiful and the heir apparent into the back seats. As the boot was full of our own luggage, the new passengers’ luggage was placed on top of the passengers themselves – no mean feat considering that the tourer was the two-door version. With the rear tyres flattened by the load, they were then driven to the hotel in the main square and off-loaded with all haste, before anyone could find out if there were any rooms free. Our car made all haste out of the town and into the welcoming countryside.

Compared to England the roads were a delight, practically empty except for the occasional wandering animal. It must be a helluva match, this All Ireland, we thought! It was the summer of ’59, one of the driest on record, and the sun had turned the Emerald Isle into delicate shades of dusky browns, pale greens and yellows, but had not detracted from its appeal to the traveller. However, there was one drawback which had the effect of slowing down progress until one got used to the scheme of things: the road signs.

Each sign was in two languages, Gaelic and English, with the former uppermost. It was necessary, therefore, to concentrate on the signposts as soon as they came within reading distance and to skim through the names, rejecting the top one and every other one to save time. There was only one consolation – the first part of the journey through Wales to Fishguard had been infinitely more difficult. There were places where it had been necessary to stop in order to compare every letter on the signpost with every letter of the name on the map, in order to pick the correct vowel-less glottal-stopper.

Nevertheless, the 40-mile journey to Kilkenny passed quickly with only a few brushes with the local fauna. Few of these animals appeared to have any regard for self-preservation, and certainly had no knowledge of the rules of the road. Only later did we discover that the human inhabitants shared the same scant respect for the Highway Code.

Beyond Kilkenny, the Marble City, the road narrowed and twisted through hedgerows and farm entrances. A creeping suspicion began to form in my mind that the locals either had prior warning of the probable line of our approach, or that they had always, as part of history, stood gossiping by the roadside gates. Perhaps, giving them the benefit of the doubt, they were whiling away the time between morning Mass and the midday meal, whilst awaiting the start of the hurling match. Nevertheless there was a good proportion of smiling faces breaking off from intense conversations to bend forwards, peering towards the car windows, the owners smiling and waving their hands in greeting.

At last, about 4 miles beyond the town, we came to a gate leading to a whitewashed, stone-built farm. After passing through the open gate and entering the field, we crossed on the farm path to the white pillars marking the entrance to the yard. On the right stood the farmhouse shouldering a large stone barn. On the opposite side was a gated entrance to the orchard and between the two, on the remaining sides of the square, stood the low-roofed storerooms and pens.

We had arrived.

The arrival interrupted a work process being carried out by three players. The principal, in an advisory role, having a large sturdy figure supported by braces and a wide leather belt, and being protected from the elements by a flattish trilby hat, appeared to be directing work by jabbing in the direction of various items with the stem of a short briar pipe, the contents of which were held intact by a steel ventilated cover. The other two were obviously taking the part of the workers by the token of the tools they leaned on and the advice to which they paid lip service. One was Ann’s brother, Donal; the other was their ‘man’, Willie.

As the car entered the portals and drove to the centre of the yard, the three pairs of eyes followed it until it stopped. The pipe was then returned to its proper place so as to enable him to see more clearly, and the users of the shovels leant upon these more firmly.

They took stock of one another, the owner of the pipe, John Wall, and the owner of the car. They both knew that they were to be faced with severe problems. The owner of the pipe’s problem was that in the next few days he was going to be asked whether his daughter should be allowed to marry not only a Protestant, but an Englishman to boot. The problem for the owner of the Morris Minor was that he was going to be the one to do the asking.

Any likely tension was circumvented by a wisp of feminine perfection stepping across the yard from the direction of the house. Eileen, the eldest of four, had been despatched to Bristol on a fact-finding mission as soon as the news of the impending nuptials had broken. On her return her verdict had apparently settled any doubts.

‘I’ll marry him myself if she doesn’t!’ was her conclusion.

She now came towards us with a welcoming smile. There were four sisters in the family, all in the classical mould. Mary was a theatre nurse in America, and Ann became a midwife in England, as did Margaret initially. Mother, sadly, was not now with them.

With a shy kiss on the cheek the women were ushered into the stone flagged kitchen for tea and gossip. The men followed, the talk being turned to the forthcoming match wherein the local team, Kilkenny, were up against their near neighbours Waterford. Arguments were passionate and somewhat one sided, as they all supported the local side.

After the midday meal silence fell as the radio was switched on and the match commentator lit up the airways with the pungent brilliance of descriptive verbiage that few outside Eirin can match. At the farm a simultaneous translation and unsolicited comment service was at hand for the visitor who had not the slightest idea of the game, or the rules.

This lamentable omission was to be rectified the next weekend with an introduction to the incredibly fast game of hurling. From this visit it was possible to gain two lasting impressions – the first being the picture of two men walking up and down opposite touchlines with a bundle of clubs under their arms, handing them out to any team member who had broken theirs on the clubs, shins or heads of the opposing team. The second was of the volunteer ambulance men who walked around the outside of the spectators, not, as it may have been assumed, for their own protection, but in fact to attend to the higher casualty rate in the outer ring of spectators, who were disadvantaged by having the sight of the oncoming missile obscured until too late, when the row of heads belonging to those standing in front of them ducked aside. Or so I was told.

However, in the more structured arrangements at the arena in Dublin, events were coming to an end and Kilkenny had won. It was time to go into the city to meet the crowds and celebrate. In the main street we found a fair crowd lining the main Dublin-to-Waterford road waiting to celebrate victory with the returning supporters of the victorious team and to exchange good natured catcalls and banter with the supporters of the vanquished as they passed through on their way to celebrate defeat.

‘Are the pubs open at this time?’ I asked, as Sundays in those days had different licensing laws.

‘Do you think that they would miss an opportunity to celebrate?’ said someone. ‘You can tell the pubs that are open by the men standing at the front doors telling people to go round the back! We’ll go in this one.’

Inside there was an air of celebration, and the smell of cigarettes and stout. After an interminable round of introductions the serious business continued. As in any such company the volume of talk rose in proportion to the volume of stout consumed, until it was brought to a sudden end by an insistent shushing. Looking around, expecting to see someone being propped up to make a speech or give a song, no cause for the call for silence was visible to the untrained eye.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘Shhhh!’ came the reply.

A whispered explanation said that the barman had given the signal that the Gardai (Police) had just gone into the kitchen to check that the law was being upheld in terms of no signs of unlawful assembly and, presumably, no lowering of the specific gravity of the beer.

‘Why the silence?’ I enquired again.

The informant’s face showed that only an Englishman would ask such a daft question.

‘When they get back to the station they will be asked if they checked the pubs and heard any sounds of drinking on their rounds – and they can say no without having to go to confessions in the morning!’

Throughout the holiday it was possible to gradually get used to the subtleties of the Irish sense of humour, but yet almost impossible to sort out fact from fiction. I started to believe in fairies.

The week following our arrival passed very quickly. The cowsheds were wired for light, the family Ford Popular was inspected and tuned, and a new lintel was cast in place over the main door of the drystone barn. The wooden lintel over the door of the drystone barn had nearly given up in its fight with the elements and was allowing gravity to triumph. There was an urgent need to renew it before the rest of the facade followed.

‘There’s material in plenty for the concrete, but nothing for reinforcement,’ said Donal. ‘What we need is a substantial length of strong metal. What about using that rusty old horse plough lying in the hole in the hedge? It looks about the right length.’

‘That keeps the pigs out of the yard,’ said Father in a tone that brooked no argument.

A quiet discussion over a cup of tea and more of Eileen’s cakes suggested a solution. Father had by then left to see his friends at the pub. The plough was removed from the hedgerow and replaced by hastily cut stakes. As the shuttering for the lintel had been erected previously, one side had to be removed in order to admit the plough. Once the boards had been replaced the plough was hidden from sight. Concrete was mixed by hand and ladled in over the top of the shuttering before being tamped down into the corners and crannies around the plough.

By the time that the world had been set to rights at the pub and the debaters had returned to their respective homes, the gap in the hedge had been camouflaged and the job was done. It was just a little unfortunate that during the tamping process the plough must have toppled slightly and leant against the inside of the shuttering.

It was also an embarrassment that the heavy exercise had caused the end of another suture to start to emerge from deep in my internals and poke itself out into the confines of my underpants, making me feel as if I had a thorn in my side. The original problem had manifested itself as a year’s worth of multitudes of boils and injections, followed by a series of abdominal lumps diagnosed by three doctors as hernias. So I was sent to the hospital where the resident surgeon, a small Asian, diagnosed internal abscesses resulting from the initial operation. I pointed out that it was now three-to-one against this judgement, but he ignored the comment and said that he would get his colleague to form an opinion ‘before they opened me up’. (The NHS was different in those days!) Away he went and a short time later in walked his colleague.

The unease of the immediacy of being ‘opened up’ when I was only expecting a consultation turned into sheer panic when in walked ‘his colleague’, the trainee doctor who had been Ann’s previous boyfriend. We shook hands in an atmosphere of cold formality. As he prodded around he muttered ‘hernia’. The thoughts of him and his boss armed with scalpels digging around in my nether regions whilst I was hors-de-combat made me think fast. In order to avoid an ‘accidental slip’ of the knife I corrected his opinion by telling him what the surgeon had said, right or wrong, thus probably enabling him to gain brownie points in his chosen career.

The first check on coming round from the operation was to feel under the sheet to ensure that all the essentials were present. They were. Several abscesses surrounding still-knotted sutures had been removed, leaving a bit of a trench. I was told that not all of the sutures had been accounted for, but the remainder would surface fairly soon, and was also told that my lifespan would have been quite short if there had been no operation.

Back at the farm I walked around the side of the barn to have a quiet look at the damage. Sure enough another of the little beggars was showing a small length of black suture.

Ann, there’s another stitch appearing,’ I whispered, taking her aside.

‘Come upstairs,’ she said. ‘I borrowed a pair of suture forceps from the hospital before we set out, just in case.’

This type of foresight was to become the standard for years to come. I could never match it. The confidential whispering and the sneaking off upstairs must have sprung a few erroneous thoughts in the minds of the family, as that type of thing was not done so blatantly in the parental home in those days. Explanations must have followed later as the still-knotted suture became a prize exhibit for some time.

The next day was the day of ‘the t’rashin’’.

Early in the morning a magnificent steam traction engine arrived, towing a thrashing machine. It was set up in the rickyard with just about everyone issuing directions:

‘Back a bit!’

‘OK.’

‘More!’

‘Mind that girder!’

‘Jaysus!’

The traction-engine driver, who had been there and done that many times before, took little notice of them, and managed to put the whole contraption exactly where it was wanted with far less fuss. Whilst this was happening more neighbourly help was arriving. I was introduced to the newcomer each time, and each, in turn, explained what was to happen and were somewhat surprised that I caught on to the process so quickly. It would have been ungracious for me to have explained that during the war, throughout the long summer holidays, I had worked on several farms in the Midlands, which had provided an apprenticeship. Anyway it earned me a few more brownie points.

Four days later, before a family audience, the shuttering on the lintel on the barn was removed. The new beam appeared flawless, except for an imperfection near one end, which looked suspiciously like a plough handle. Father took the pipe out of his waistcoat pocket and put it in his mouth in order to get a better look. He turned his head to inspect the hedge and then looked back at the lintel.

‘The plough!’ he said in disgust as he turned on his heel. ‘I could have used that again.’

All too soon the time came for us to leave. With the baggage on board, together with another sample of Eileen’s cakes and soda bread, and another apology for using the old plough as reinforcement in the concrete lintel of the barn – ‘He’ll never miss it,’ said Donal – we left. It was only on the ship on the way back to resume our respective daily tasks concerned with midwifery and supersonic research that Ann said, ‘Did you ask him?’

We had to do all the wedding preparations ourselves and the day passed stressfully as they always do. As it was February we decided to have the honeymoon learning to ski in Switzerland and so, following a journey by taxi, train, coach, plane and train, we arrived at Leysin. Here the sight of the first three passengers descending with difficulty from the funicular up to the hotel, due to the plaster casts on their broken legs, cooled our enthusiasm for learning to ski. We agreed to try it after a few days and were then saved from taking the risk by the snow rapidly thawing from the nursery slopes. We deliberately returned to the flat two days earlier than announced, but to no avail.

Our early return – to get used to being married – was interrupted by the Chief Aerodynamicist, Hugh Goldsmith, apologising and saying that George Edwards (GE), the ‘God’ at Weybridge, had told Mick Wilde, Hugh’s boss, that he wanted an answer as to why we had got the design of the boundary layer diverter between the wing and the intakes wrong. GE’s review was on Monday and it was now Thursday. I asked why Mick had not told me himself and Hugh just shrugged. Arguments about honeymoons began to simmer, but eventually I gave in with the proviso that future requests for days off – ‘No! Not a day off!’ – would be agreed promptly. Ann was beginning to realise just what this project meant to those involved in it.

Hugh and I travelled up the congested A4 to Weybridge the next day; the congested motorways had not yet arrived. I must admit that I was pissed off when we met the group that had mentioned our ‘error’ to GE and found that they had not gone into our background of work and had appeared to consider only the sizes of the Concorde and their TSR-2. When it was pointed out that our intakes were only 22in (outboard) and 10ft (inboard) from the wing leading edge and their aircraft fuselage in front of their intakes was much longer, plus the fact that our model testing showed that we needed to divert only two-thirds of the wing boundary layer to maintain intake efficiency, there was little more to say. Hugh asked if that answered their worries and would they please carry our answer to GE. He put it much more politely than I would have done.

Thereafter, whenever I walked under Concorde’s wing I would look at the diverter and mutter ‘you owe us a day of our honeymoon’.

2

Early Warnings

After two years as an engine fitter in the Royal Air Force and five years in college at Loughborough and Cranfield, job hunting had seemed easy as there were many firms with many projects. Unfortunately most of these were covered by the Official Secrets Act, so I was met with a statement that the particular firm had a very interesting project, but they were not at liberty to tell me what it was. So, being impressed by the interviewer Bill Strang, and offered two shillings and sixpence (over a gallon of petrol) more than any other firm, The Bristol Aeroplane Company etc. provided me with employment for nearly forty years.

At the beginning of the fifties the Bristol Aeroplane Company had been given the task of designing a stainless steel supersonic research aircraft, initially aimed at Mach 2 but eventually, with new power plants, to reach Mach numbers near 3. The engines for operating above Mach 2, the Gyron Junior type, had been specified by the Ministry for another, now discontinued, project and were made by the de Havilland Engine Company. At the same time, away ‘up North’ the English Electric Company were designing a fighter aircraft to fly at Mach 2, later to become the formidable Lightning. Both aircraft owed their provenance to a single Royal Aircraft Establishment report outlining possible engine layouts.

The Lightning had two reheated Rolls-Royce engines, developed from well-tried subsonic units, mounted one above the other in the fuselage, and equipped with reheat to enable it to get to optimum speeds quickly. It did, speedily and frequently. The Bristol Type 188 had its two engines mounted in the wings. Although designed for very high speeds there was a requirement to get there, but even with reheat it failed. The aircraft was to have aerodynamic refinements to help it along, rather than the brute force of the Lightning and its competitors. The main body of the aircraft was to have a coke-bottle shape to reduce the drag; the air intakes to the engines were to have limited variable geometry to optimise the performance still further.

On the other side of the Atlantic they were publishing reports on power plants that showed similarities to those of the 188, but from their shape it could be seen that they were aimed at Mach 3 plus from the start. There was no accompanying indication of the configuration of the aircraft. The American aircraft eventually became the renowned spyplane, the SR-71 Blackbird. The Type 188 was destined to join the ranks of the popular Ministry group under the heading Project Cancelled.

Sexy Shapes

The coke-bottle design for the fuselage, or to give it its more formal name Whitcomb’s Area Rule, was, as was everything else, in its infancy and the theory for it to be known as Slender Body Theory was in an even more embryonic shape.

A TECHNIBIT

The draughtsman was asked to draw cross-sections through the body and wings at angles corresponding to each supersonic Mach number interval and plot the various areas onto the centreline of the body.

This gave a series of graphs with the appearance of a one-humped brontosaurus with bumps. These lines were to be laid on top of each other and smoothed and averaged out by changing the nacelle and body profiles. This series of graphs he presented to the Aerodynamics Office after drawing what he thought was a mean smoothed line through the lot. He would then be expected to add or subtract the differences from the areas of the current fuselage to achieve a result as near as possible to this ‘scientifically’ smoothed line.

In rising seniority three aerodynamicists – myself, John Flower and Mick Wilde – each drew what they were sure a better (‘scientific’) mean line should be. These were presented to the then Chief Aerodynamicist Bill Strang, who drew his own (and final!) version, saying that there must be a mathematical theory to avoid all this work, so find it!

This ‘final version’ was very similar to that drawn by the draughtsman, who left the office with a very smug look on his face.

He was back in a very short time.

‘What accuracy do you want?’ the draughtsman asked.

Remembering that he had witnessed the highly technical manner in which the final lines had been defined, it was deemed politic not to be too severe.

‘About 5 per cent,’ he was told.

He then disappeared for at least half an hour, it being the mid-morning tea break. He then returned, holding up the spaghetti of graphs as he leant over the top of the desk. He had found that, without any changes to the fuselage, he could pack all of the different Mach number graphs within the required 5 per cent of Bill’s version. This would have produced a parallel fuselage, something with which no modern supersonic aircraft could expect to wear if it was to be considered sophisticated.

‘We will have a better specification of accuracy when we have developed the theory,’ he was told. ‘Call you back!’

‘Don’t be too long because I will have to book my hours to Waiting Time!’ was the response.

His was a veiled threat, as there was the usual purge on non-productive ‘Waiting Time’.

The theory of slender body drag was in its infancy (and we were unaware that it would not develop satisfactorily for the next decade) so we had to think of something plausible, but satisfactory at the same time. The next day the draughtsman was told to make it 1 per cent with a maximum skin waviness of 1 degree. Well, why not?

Two years later, as I walked past the open door of the large hangars, which these days are now variously referred to as the Brabazon, Britannia, Concorde Hangars, or Assembly Hall, depending upon who was talking and when they joined the firm, I could see a very complex assembly jig under construction.

‘What’s that for?’ I asked.

‘It’s the final stage jig so that we can get the correct profile that you required for the fuselage skin,’ I was told. ‘When we spot-weld this stainless steel it goes “twang” as we take it off the first stage jigging so we have to be very careful!’

The production people were beginning to learn that they should have challenged the design rather than accepted the challenge.

Steam Technology

As the design progressed, more designers were drafted in to cope with the increasingly complex technology in all areas. One such addition, put in a very responsible position, started a review of several critical areas. It was rumoured that his sole significant contribution to his last design was the seat of the toilets. He now wanted to relieve the new 4,000psi hydraulic system of the large load imposed on it as the undercarriage was raised. His eventual proposal involved a flash steam boiler wrapped around the turbine casings of the engines to supply steam to raise the landing gear, thereby putting no measurable load on the engine.

On certain aspects of drawing office activity, some things could move faster than others. The next morning there was a small gathering around one of the pillars in the drawing office, and these people were guffawing at a large, well-drawn cartoon hanging from it. As the day progressed word got around and engineers, secretaries, their bosses and others could be seen wandering in on some pretext or other to have a look.

The cartoon showed a drawing of the aircraft diving down, cockpit hood drawn back and Godfrey Auty, the Chief Test Pilot, with his hair flowing back in the slipstream behind a soot-streaked face. His shoulder flash showed his new title – Chief Stoker.

The new man, now referred to as Stevenson’s Apprentice, did not last long.

Enter the Surges

The engines for the Type 188 were the de Havilland Gyron Juniors. The supersonic version of this engine had been specified for the Saunders Roe SR 177 rocket-plus-gas turbine interceptor which had been cancelled around 1957 in a White Paper declaring the passing of manned interceptor aircraft. The Gyron Junior had been specified in the cloistered surrounds of the MoD Procurement corridors and was to be designed to operate at Mach 2 plus. The results from the Number Two test cell at the National Gas Turbine Establishment at Pyestock showed that the Gyron Junior could operate at this condition, but only if the turbine stayed on the engine. One test was terminated abruptly when the turbine left the engine and tried to cut its way out of the test cell.

A TECHNIBIT

The Gloster Javelin was a twin-engine delta wing, all-weather fighter. It later blotted its copy-book by not appearing at the Farnborough Air Show due to the inevitable bad weather whilst the delicate Type 188 research aircraft appeared through the murk, happily hiccupping its way past the crowd. One of the breed was used as a test bed. However, there were indications that achieving this stage in the engine’s development would not be without its trouble. Even though the Javelin’s engine air intake was a smooth, round tube, the engine surged during ground running (surges are to engines what hacking coughs are to the asthmatic – only worse). When the engine does not like the quality of the air being thrust down its throat it releases all high pressure stored in the compressor in a series of high intensity bangs. The bangs startled us, as they did the pilot. It did not augur well for the 188, whose intake circular contained a cone held by five supports, between which are ten auxiliary inlets to open inward at low speed, behind which are ten spill valves to open outward at supersonic speeds. There was very little inside surface left to control the airflow. However, future extensive wind-tunnel testing showed how to get over these problems and provide a better air pattern than that of the Javelin. The reheat (called the afterburner by the Americans, who like big words) injected extra fuel into the jetpipe at the rear of the engine to give more thrust, and also gave problems later. The aircraft was ideal for teaching us what not to do.

So it looked as though the road to Mach 2 would be bumpy, but even then it was essential that the reheat system worked consistently, which it showed no signs of doing. The de Havilland team called for an urgent meeting at Bristol to talk reheat. They were very worried because the installed reheat would light consistently, but as the throttle was pushed through the maximum dry thrust gate to the maximum reheat stops, the flame either responded, giving full reheated thrust, or went out.

As the de Havilland designer was explaining the problem, the Bristol chairman called for Frank Crowfoot, known as the ‘Bearded Wonder’. Frank came into the meeting and was promptly sent out again with the spare set of control system drawings; no explanation, but a command to ‘look at that and tell us what you think!’

Within half an hour the conference room door opened and the beard was pushed through. Receiving a nod from the chairman, Frank entered.

‘Funny thing,’ he said. ‘Do you find that when reheat is selected and the throttle is pushed forward, then sometimes you get full reheat and sometimes it goes out?’

There was silence until the de Havilland designer asked a questioning, ‘Yes?’

‘Well I’m not surprised, as it’s built into the control linkage!’

It was now too late to modify the linkage already installed in the prototype for the ground runs, which were scheduled for later in the month. However, after studying the diagnosis, the engine men sent along ‘Asbestos Harry’ to supervise the runs. This gentleman appeared to be impervious to heat. With the engine running flat out he would stand many yards behind and to the side of the exhaust. He would then slowly lean over towards the jet and have a glancing look at the reheat flame in the jetpipe, his hair and ears flapping in the blast. Ear defenders were not mandatory in those days, and were therefore not used.

Should there appear to be a problem he would take a screwdriver out of his back pocket, remove a panel on the side of the nacelle, and insert a hand between the hot skin of the nacelle and the hotter skin of the jetpipe to pull the erring lever into its proper position. The aircraft would shudder as it felt the full kick of the reheat thrust. Asbestos Harry would lick his tingling knuckles and then give the thumbs up signal to whoever was in the cockpit.

This had to be classified as an interim fix!

Surge Alley

On the first take-off Godfrey Auty, the Chief Test Pilot, had inadvertently investigated the bottom end of the low speed envelope as the huge acceleration pulled his arm back and the joystick with it. Physical sensations had not been simulated by the chair, table and television setup. He found himself airborne and took over from there.

As the flight-testing entered the supersonic region, an area of surge was encountered at a certain combination of speeds and altitudes. This region became known as ‘Surge Alley’, and was not to be taken lightly. The effects were serious, as in more than one instance the aircraft suffered a simultaneous flame-out of both engines – quite a worry on a twin-engine aircraft with disproportionately large fuselage and nacelles and very small wings. In this condition one of the experts, who knew about these things, described the aircraft’s gliding qualities as similar to ‘those of a brick s***house’.

On the first incident Godfrey could be heard going calmly through the relight drill on engine Number One, but without any success. He then switched to Number Two as he descended rapidly, but with the same negative result. With commendable calm, even though ejection time was approaching, he reverted to Number One again, this time with success. After relighting Number Two he headed for home.

The time came for the Ministry pilot to assess the plane, which he did after a heavy briefing. His assessment was cut short as he ran straight out of Surge Alley. Godfrey immediately took over the flying desk whilst others were trying to turn up the ‘engine out’ drills in the Flight Manual. From memory he guided the pilot through the minefield until both engines were functioning again.

Stop the War

Aircraft being tested for spinning characteristics, or those whose potential characteristics were such that they should avoid getting into spins, were fitted with anti-spin parachutes located near the tail. The theory was that, when deployed, the parachute would straighten out the flight path and could then be released.

On one flight the anti-spin parachute fitted to the 188 deployed itself and could not be released. This left Godfrey with yet another unwanted problem. He was far from home and was having to use up fuel fast to counteract the drag of the ’chute. Prudence suggested an away landing at the nearest airfield with a long runway. Just in the right position was Brize Norton, an airbase manned by the American Air Force.

This base was being used by the Americans for their B-52 bombers in the heat of the Cold War, and at this time, way out over the Atlantic, a cloud of B-52s was approaching Fairford in the midst of a War Game.

Godfrey managed to get the aircraft, parachute and all, onto the long runway that had been specially extended to accommodate the B-52, although he missed the threshold. His braking overheated the brakes and, as the aircraft came to a stop, the heat was transferred to the wheels. In their turn specially designed fuses in the wheels responded to the increase in internal tyre pressure, and blew out. The aircraft stood on the runway with its tyres going flat. The B-52s were getting nearer, as was the rescue team from Bristol.

As the manager of the Bristol team reached the side of the aircraft, the largest African-American airman they had ever seen approached them. A similarly proportioned bulldozer followed him. The Americans’ priority was made clear – the safety of their B-52s.

‘I have instructions to clear the runway, Sir!’ said the huge airman.

Negotiations to halt the ‘war’ until the appropriate tow-bar, wheels and jacking equipment could arrive were to no avail. The B-52s were very close. The worried serviceman was eventually persuaded that, if a rope could be provided, a pull would be better for the wellbeing of the 188 than a push.

In no time a rope was found, the 188 was removed from the runway and the war could proceed peacefully.

More Power

Several of the RAF top brass came to look at the aircraft as it passed through its build and test phases. With them came various adjutants, friends and others. One notable hanger-on, wishing to justify his jolly, asked a lot of questions, even though it became obvious that he could not understand the answers.

The Ministry had specified rather late in the design that fire extinguishers should be fitted to both engine nacelles. There was now no room at all for these inside and, in consequence, they had to accept large external bulges on the circular nacelles at about one o’clock, aft of the intake position. The eagle-eyed hanger-on spotted these bulges.

‘What are they for?’ he asked.