Not Much of an Engineer

by Stanley Hooker

  I was facing the great man, for so many years my close friend and mentor, whose word was law in Rolls-Royce. A smile from me and a soft word would have turned his wrath, but I couldn’t do it. With studied insolence I replied ‘I am glad that you find it important now. Tell me what you want me to do and I will do it’. The first remark implied that he had only just recognised the importance of gas turbines, which was not true, and the second was a parody of what he had often said to me since I joined the firm: ‘Tell us what we have to do and we will do it ....’.

  His face went grim, and I knew that the moment of crisis — a moment of great drama for me — was upon us. He said ‘I am not satisfied with that answer. Furthermore, I won’t have you interfering with my plans with a chip on your shoulder’. Feeling physically sick, I plunged headlong to destruction: ‘It’s the only answer you are going to get from me, so why don’t you sack me?’ He exploded in a rage I had never seen before: ‘I won’t put up with you. Go home now. Wait until I decide what to do with you. There is nothing for you to do here’.

  With a bravado I was far from feeling, I spat at him, ‘That is a fine return for 11 years of hard and successful work for you. Send me home now and it will be the last time I will ever enter a factory controlled by you’. He, too, was visibly shaken, and shouted, ‘I don’t care about that. You go home, and leave the address where I can get in touch with you’. I replied, ‘You can’t get in touch with me. If you want to say anything more to me, write to my bank’. Barely keeping back the tears, I pushed past him and left him standing in my office, silent and alone. The whole scene and the words that passed are etched on my mind. We had never had a cross word and I had worshipped him.

  Full of grief and depression I left Bankfield shed, never to return. I returned to my digs in Ilkley to consider the black-looking future. I was still under contract to Rolls-Royce, so there was no immediate financial worry, but I wallowed in self-pity. Then, on the Friday morning, I received a letter in Hs’ own hand; ‘Dear SGH, I am very upset about our meeting on Monday. Please telephone me so that so we can arrange another talk together’. I called him at once. He said ‘Where are you? I will come up to see you on Sunday morning’. I replied ‘No, Hs, I will come to Derby to see you’. Thus on the Sunday we shook hands in his office.

  Hs said ‘No recriminations! I have been thinking. How would you like to be in charge of all our research work? There are a lot of new problems in turbine engines, and I intend to set Derby up with the latest and most powerful equipment to tackle them’.

  It was, perhaps, ungrateful of me not to be thrilled. ‘You know, Hs, research in Rolls-Royce has been called ‘very slow development’. It has always come a very poor second to main engine development.’

  He replied, ‘I am going to change all that, and I promise you that you will get a fair crack of the whip’.

  So I settled for the offer. I moved in to share an office with Rubbra at Derby, and simply stuck (Research) after my title of Assistant Chief Engineer.

  But I knew it wasn’t going to work out, because, deep inside, I had no intention of trying to climb back up the ladder at Derby.

  Instead I telephoned my friend from Oxford days, Reginald Verdon Smith.

  Thus, on my 41st birthday, 30 September 1948, I made an appointment with Hs and told him that I wished to leave. He was as upset as I was. ‘I don’t know what’s gone wrong, Stanley. I have always treated you as my son, and you have never come into this office and asked for anything without its being granted’. He asked me what I intended to do: I am sure he was not a bit surprised when I said I was joining Bristol and he told me I must serve out my three months’ contract doing penance. Without another word, I turned and left his office and walked out of the Derby works for ever — as I then thought.

  I walked sadly down Nightingale Road to the Midland railway station. I should have been ashamed of myself, for I had bitten the hand that fed me, but at the time I could not see it that way.

  I went back to my rooms in Ilkley. Fortunately for my sanity I had already met the lady who was to become my wife, Kate Maria Garth. Starting with nothing but the clothes we stood in, she built up a calm and happy home which has continued to this day. Her love and understanding helped me through this most difficult period, yet without resentment she always allowed my work to come first, and subjugated her life and her artistic talents to my well-being.

  However, the three months in limbo was far from wasted. I have always had the gift of being able to work alone, and with time to reflect on the future of gas turbines I did many calculations on possible future engines for fighters and for bombers or transports. In 1948 the concept of aircraft flying at high jet speeds over non-stop distances of 5,000 miles (8000 km) or more was a pipe-dream, but one capable of realization.

  In such aircraft the weight of fuel at take-off is bound to be four, five or six times the total weight of the engines. But in a fighter the weights of the engine and the fuel are much closer, and as the engine has to be carried all the time (while the fuel is progressively burned off) its weight is of much greater importance.

  In Britain and all the other jet-producing countries the main production engines were of the Whittle-derived centrifugal type, but it was inevitable that this would be replaced by the problem-ridden axial. I believed that the heady days of producing new engines in six months were over, and that future development timescales would last as many years (today ten years is commonplace). One of the basic advantages of the axial was its potential for high pressure-ratio, today as high as 30:1. The greater the compression, the lower the specific fuel consumption (fuel consumption per unit of thrust). Even in 1948 I could see no reason why a single axial compressor should not reach 12:1 pressure-ratio. Dr D. M. Smith at Metrovick had run a 9-stage spool which showed that a temperature rise of 20°C per stage was achieveable at an efficiency of 87%. Thus with the AJ.65 Avon we settled on a 12-stage spool designed to reach 20°C per stage, giving a pressure-ratio of 6.5:1 at 85% efficiency. To obtain 12:1 I calculated 17 stages would be required, and I then calculated the extra weight of this engine and compared it with the saving in fuel for different aircraft ranges.

  We had often bettered Whittle’s baseline consumption of 1.05 (lb per lb-thrust per hour) at Barnoldswick, and with the 6.5:1 axial had reached 0.84. I calculated that the 12:1 compression engine should achieve 0.74. But A. R. Howell at the new NGTE (the National Gas Turbine Establishment formed near Farnborough by merging the nationalized remnants of Whittle’s Power Jets with the Engine Department of the RAE) had shown that a temperature rise per stage of 30°C was possible. This would cut the necessary number of stages by one-third, thus the Avon could get away with eight and the 12:1 engine with only 12. This opened up new and exciting prospects for reduced engine weight.

  Taking the centrifugal Nene as weighing 1,800 lb at 5,000 lb thrust, I calculated that a 5,000 lb Avon ought to weigh only 1,600 lb. If the number of stages were reduced to eight, it would weigh only 1,200 lb. In fact, the Avon began life at far greater weights, but six years later my team at Bristol built the simple Orpheus which gave 5,000 lb for weights well under 1,000 lb. The 12:1 pressure-ratio engine would weigh 2,000 lb but this would come down to 1,600 lb if we could manage with only 12 stages.

  Armed with these figures it was easy to work out that for a typical fighter range of 600 miles (say, 1000 km) the weight of engine plus fuel would be around 5,000 lb for 6.5 pressure ratio (the Avon standard), and only 100 lb lighter with an engine of 12:1 ratio. On the other hand, if the range were doubled, the difference came out to nearly 2,000 lb because of the difference in fuel burn. This comparison of engine(s)-plus-fuel weights was not the whole story, because, while the fuel weight decreases during each flight, the engine has to be carried throughout. But the first conclusion was that for fighters the simple engine of about eight stages paid off, whereas for bombers and transport aircraft with a range greater than 3,000 miles the high pressure-ratio engine was worthwhile, and the greater the pr
essure-ratio the better.

  This type of work was right up my street, and not only did the three months pass quickly but I even earned a couple of hundred pounds by writing articles for the technical press. We had no car, so Kate and I spent hours walking over Ilkley Moor, which we both loved. Previously I had enjoyed the enormous privilege of a new Rolls-Royce, but when I left I returned the car. Ordinary new cars were for export, and anyway at that time I could not have afforded to buy one. Yet my enforced exile was a happy time. I cast off the blues at leaving Rolls-Royce, though I was still full of resentment, and prepared to start a new life in Bristol.

  The related families of the Whites and Verdon Smiths, of the City and County of Bristol, made history in transportation by land, sea and air. Sir George White, the first baronet, provided the world’s first electric tramway systems for Bristol, Coventry, London and then Dundee. In 1909 he took a winter holiday at Pau, in southern France, and was excited to see flying machines. He brought to England from Paris a young Romanian designer, Henri Coanda, who was years ahead of his time with a ply-skinned aircraft with ducted-fan jet propulsion. Coanda advised Sir George in forming the British & Colonial Aeroplane Company, a pioneer aviation factory, and designed some of its first products in the form of very advanced monoplanes. The headquarters was at ivy-encrusted Filton House, north of the city near the terminus of the tramways. Coanda finally left there in 1914, and more than half a century later I was to bring him back on a nostalgic visit to his original office!

  Sir George died in 1916, just as the company was growing rapidly, and making a great contribution to the war effort with the Bristol Fighter and about to be renamed the Bristol Aeroplane Company. His son, Sir Stanley White, became managing director, and Sir William Verdon Smith financial director and later chairman. It was against this background of prestige and family-controlled industrial power that Sir William’s son Reginald came from Repton to BNC in 1931 to read law. Knowing nothing of his background I remember Verdon as a tall, immaculate young man, somewhat shy and reserved but with a reputation for having a great brain. After getting first class honours in the final law exams, he went on to be awarded one of Oxford’s most famous prizes, the Vinerian Prize for Law. Through our mutual liking for golf and bridge, we became good friends.

  When I left Oxford in 1935 I heard no more of him until, one day in 1944, he telephoned me at Barnoldswick. I was disconcerted that he should even have heard of the place, because it was highly secret. He asked if he might come and see the work I was doing, and I replied that that would be very difficult, because it was shown only to those who had a need to know. I was completely bowled over when he said ‘That’s OK, as a director of the Bristol Aeroplane Company, I’ve already cleared the visit!’

  Thus it was that, when in September 1948 I felt in my bones I ought not to try to climb back at Derby, I telephoned Verdon at Bristol 3831. We met for dinner at the United Universities Club in London, and the deal was struck for me to join the Engine Division at Bristol in January 1949. To my surprise I found that he had kept right up-to-date on what I was doing. Later he introduced me to his father and Sir Stanley as ‘the man who put the power into the Merlin’.

  For the first year at Bristol I saw little of Verdon, because I did not want to trade on our friendship, but in mid-1950 he made me Chief Engineer of the Engine Division, and with this gave me back my self-respect. Had it not been for his unstinted support I do not know what might have become of me, even after I joined Bristol. I was near despair when the Proteus turboprop came within an ace of breaking the whole company — because the Aircraft Division relied on it also — but we just crawled through and weathered the storm. Thereafter, I hope that the Orpheus, Olympus and Pegasus jets repaid my debt to him, though here too these great programmes needed many courageous decisions on his part. Lesser men would have wilted under the responsibility he bore during the Britannia crisis, for his father was dead, and his cousin George White was a happy-go-lucky chap who indulged in his favourite hobby with the Motor Car Division, and left the main business to the ‘Headmaster’ as he called Verdon.

  When the cash-flow crisis caused by delayed Britannia deliveries was at its highest, in 1958, the chief designer of what by then had become Bristol Aircraft Ltd, Archibald Russell, asked me — as his opposite number in the lately formed Bristol Aero-Engines — to go with him to present to Verdon the splendid Bristol 200, first of all the modern aft-engined trijet passenger liners and intended for BEA. We gave a good presentation, after which Verdon surveyed us in silence. Then Russell, with his impish humour, said ‘Give me a million and we won’t do it!’ Verdon laughed, but the relief on his face showed. By this time he was Sir Reginald Verdon Smith, an absolutely masterful public speaker, and dedicated to the welfare of Bristol.

  Around 1963 he was chairman of the board of Bristol Siddeley Engines Ltd, whose formation he had masterminded, and chairman-elect of Lloyds Bank, following in the steps of his father. Sir Arnold Hall was BSEL managing director, I was technical director and Brian Davidson commercial director. One day Brian brought to our attention the fact that the company was making excessive profits overhauling Sapphire turbojets for the RAF, under a contract we had inherited from Armstrong Siddeley. In those days it was the rule that the costs of early overhauls of a new type of engine were estimated normally on the high side. After sufficient experience had been gained, the actual costs were carefully examined by the Ministry and a price for subsequent overhauls mutually agreed, based on these real costs. But in the case of the Sapphire the Ministry and Armstrong Siddeley had failed to carry out the detailed review of actual costs, and so the original high-price contract was still running years after the engine had been in service.

  This was most embarrassing news, especially as it was something BSEL had inherited and had known nothing about until Davidson did his own careful checks. Verdon ruled that the Ministry must be informed and that BSEL must repay several million pounds, an offer which was accepted by the Ministry. Since the latter and BSEL were equally to blame, no one anticipated that the Public Accounts Committee would create a supposed great scandal and criticize Verdon personally. He was the personification of rectitude in all his dealings, but Wedgwood Benn, who was the current Minister of Technology insisted that Verdon must resign from all his public affairs.

  The splendid career of a great man, who had unstintingly given his great gifts for the welfare of others, particularly to the education of young people, was thus ignominiously curtailed in an atmosphere of spite and injustice.

  Chapter 7

  The Proteus

  I joined the Bristol Engine Division on 3 January 1949, full of optimism. The company was still producing large numbers of the excellent Hercules and Centaurus sleeve-valve aircooled radial engines designed by the great team under Sir Roy Fedden, who had left the company in 1942 in exactly the way I had left Rolls-Royce. Partly for this reason it had lagged behind in the development of turbine engines. It had started with the Theseus, a complex and heavy turboprop, from which it was painfully moving on to a later turboprop, the Proteus. On the drawing boards was a promising turbojet, the Olympus, but the company had yet to sell a single gas turbine. I considered there was a 10-year lag behind Rolls-Royce, a daunting prospect when one considered the power and speed of reaction of Rolls-Royce.

  I was determined to provide Rolls-Royce with some serious competition, but in retrospect I think that this would have been very difficult to do had not the Korean war shaken the British government out of its complacency. Recognizing that the RAF was desperately short of new equipment, while the aircraft industry had years of leeway to make up through lack of orders, the Ministry of Supply ordered the Rolls-Royce Avon axial jet to be put into production by the Bristol company as well as by Napier and Standard Motors. Thus, by force majeure, the Bristol shops were equipped with the machine tools and techniques for mass-producing modern axial engines. Moreover Bristol established the links with the specialist suppliers of turbine materials, parts
for fuel systems, combustion chambers and others parts that were new to their experience. Thus, just as did General Electric and Pratt & Whitney learn to compete with Britain by making British jet engines, so did producing a Rolls-Royce engine set Bristol on the road which, by 1960, saw them providing neck-and-neck competition with the giant at Derby.

  My new colleagues, however, were an unknown quantity. Frank Owner, Chief Engineer, had set up what he considered the logical organization of his department. He had four senior engineers reporting directly to him. Stanley Mansell was the Design Engineer, responsible for drawings and instructions to the shops. Brother Harvey Mansell was Research Engineer. Roche Swinchatt was Development Engineer, responsible for all piston and turbine engines. Jimmie Fell was Procurement Engineer, responsible for progressing the shops and getting engines built and modified as specified by Design. My own job was still unspecified, but that did not bother me as I wanted to get to know the Proteus and as-yet unbuilt Olympus, as well as the engineers lower down the ladder.

  The four senior engineers and I used to meet each morning at 10 o’clock for coffee in Frank’s office for a discussion for which there was no agenda and no minutes. After Frank, Swinchatt was by far the most powerful personality. The Mansells were retiring, and Harvey seldom uttered a word. A typical statement by Swinchatt would be, ‘We failed the con-rod on the Hercules on test yesterday. What are you design gentlemen going to do about it?’ Therein lay the big difference between the two companies, because at Derby Lovesey would have spent a long time examining the failure and diagnosing its cause, and would approach Rubbra on Design only when he had positive and logical recommendations to make. In fact, at Bristol the Design Office was dominant and could act unilaterally, whereas at Derby it was part of the team and never acted except in cooperation with Development.

  I felt no inferiority at joining this team, and internationally was better known than any of them, but decided that I must first, as Hs would have put it, ‘crawl on my belly’ to Swinchatt. He took the remarkable view that ‘the turbine job’ would never be any good, and that the future lay with the big Centaurus piston engine. In this he was supported by managing director Norman Rowbotham, and also Johnnie Attwood, general manager in charge of production. These three presented a gigantic ‘headwind’ to Frank Owner, who completely failed to get any enthusiasm for gas turbines. Frank used to say at meetings of the Divisional Board when completely frustrated, ‘Gentlemen, you can be dead three years and the corpse will not smell’.