I went to see the Proteus on test and was horrified. Even at half-power of 1,500 hp the outside combustion-chamber casings were glowing red in places, and they were obviously much too small in diameter for their job. There were difficulties in every part of the engine, and it was clearly miles away from the reliable 3,000 hp promised for the giant Brabazon and Princess transports. I went to see Swinchatt, who exclaimed ‘What did I tell you — the bloody thing is a hopeless mess!’ I asked why we did not get Clarke of Lucas to help us redesign the combustion chambers, and I must say Swinchatt immediately got Clarke on the telephone. Lucas quickly started work on a new combustion chamber, and when in due course these were forthcoming the combustion problem was fixed. It was a great pleasure for me to see my old friends Drs Watson and Clarke poring over our problems, and to know that John Morley would be sending us good combustion chambers in the numbers we needed.
It was very soon evident to me that far too few of the company’s engineers were working on turbine engines. Almost all were still developing the Centaurus, for the Ambassador, Sea Fury, Brabazon 1, Brigand, Beverley and sundry other types, all of them short-term programmes. While I began gentle missionary work to get engineers at least interested in turbine engines, I spent much time analysing test results. At Barnoldswick I had soon discovered that trivial differences in clearance between fixed and rotating parts could allow compressed air or hot gas to escape from its pre-ordained path and not only reduce performance but even damage or distort the engine. Thus, I laid down the rule that every test-bed measurement should be analysed as completely as possible, to determine all the component efficiencies, mass flow, pressure-ratio, flame temperature and similar parameters. Thus every variation from engine to engine, and from test to test, could be noted, and in most cases the reasons diagnosed. But in the testing of the Proteus any kind of analysis of the figures was to say the least haphazard, not because the engineers were slap-happy but they were young and had no experience or guidance. The Proteus was a turboprop with one set of turbine wheels driving the compressor — which was a complex mixture of axial followed by centrifugal — and a second mechanically independent turbine driving the reduction gearbox and propeller. It was more difficult to analyse than a turbojet because its output was partly jet thrust but mainly shaft power to drive the propeller; but I produced a series of formulae suitable for the analysis of the Proteus, and these soon became known as ‘Hooker’s cookers’.
One day my peregrinations around the offices led me to a tiny den in which three men were working. This proved to be the complete gas turbine project office, less than one-tenth the size of that at Derby. But I was immediately impressed by the drawings of one of the three, Charles Marchant. An ex-apprentice, he had risen by sheer ability to become Chief Project Designer — albeit at that time of a very small team! He had imagination, the eye of a natural born designer for good mechanical construction, and quiet determination. He was to prove a Godsend to me and to Bristol. Even younger was Gordon Lewis, doing calculations on gas dynamics. Like me he had attended the Engineering School at Oxford. Considering the little opportunity he had had at Bristol, I was astonished at his knowledge of aero- and thermodynamics as applied to gas turbines, and he also had an impish sense of humour. I spent many happy hours with him and Charles discussing turbojets of the future, and I was convinced that in that little office I had struck gold.
Time passed quickly and I soon became influential. I tried to be a loyal colleague to Frank Owner, and he in turn treated me with great consideration. He was a man of great intelligence, well-read, a brilliant pianist, possessed of a good sense of humour and a great command of English, both written and spoken. Yet he was capable of acting like an ostrich and putting his head in the sand, though he must have known the day of reckoning would come when the giant Brabazon and Princess would need their Proteus engines. Meanwhile, this abysmal engine sank ever deeper in the morass, failing its compressor blades, turbine blades, bearings and many other parts, even at totally inadequate powers well below 2,000 hp. One day we were walking across for lunch and he said ‘You know, Stanley, when we designed the Proteus I decided we should make the engine with the lowest fuel consumption in the world, regardless of its weight and bulk. So far we have achieved the weight and bulk!’
In those days I used to say that the biggest obstacle to Bristol’s progress was a Bristol lunch! In each factory the top man had his own little private dining room. Maître d’Hotel of Frank’s was Harry Powell, who was aided and abetted by Swinchatt who made sure that the standard did not drop an inch. We would start with hot canapés, while we partook of sherry (Swin and Harry preferred Guinness). Then we would sit down to a multi-course lunch, ending with cheese, fruit and coffee — and on occasions brandy. The whole lot would last from 12.30 until at least 2.30, about twice the time we took at Derby.
One Thursday afternoon in mid-1950 Frank and I were summoned to Rowbotham’s office. I had hardly seen him since I joined the Division, and to cap it all Verdon was there also. Verdon made it clear that things had reached such a pass with the Proteus that something drastic had to be done. Accordingly I was being appointed Chief Engineer, and Frank was to retire to a small office and dream about the future. I was thunderstruck. Of course I had hoped one day I would be given more executive authority, but suddenly to be landed with the whole lot was beyond belief. Frank argued with all his eloquence about the iniquity of the proposal, but to no avail.
We retired to discuss between ourselves the next move. Could an acceptable compromise be worked out? I was willing to give in most directions, but insisted on untrammelled authority over engineering. I felt that the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute was upon us, and that vast changes in personnel, organization, speed of reaction and integration of engineering effort must be made immediately. Frank was inhibited by his long-standing loyalties, but I was not thus constrained. In the event, Frank was no more able to accept the new order than I had been at Rolls-Royce, and soon left to join de Havilland Engines. I much regretted the circumstances, and we parted without animosity.
During this period, and on many other occasions, I was much sustained by my friend Air Commodore F. R. Banks. At the time, he was Director General of Engine Research and Development at the Ministry, and had known me since my beginnings at Derby, where we often discussed supercharger development in Germany and the USA.
I made immediate changes. I called on Swinchatt and told him he had to take full responsibility for piston engines; furthermore, they had to move out of Experimental and into Production, where there was plenty of room. Henceforth Production were to be responsible for their own modifications, though we would retain Design Control. Swin was pleased with this arrangement, because it relieved him of responsibility for the hated turbine engine. Stanley Mansell I stood on one side to act as consultant on design matters, and immediately appointed Charles Marchant Chief Engineer, Turbine Engines. Harvey Mansell was also moved, and Neville Quinn appointed Chief of Research and Engine Performance.
The Technical Office had always seemed a complete shambles. Although the departmental heads had their own little offices around the main office, the latter was just a big space where their staffs were all mixed up together with the designers at their drawing boards. I ordered that the whole place be partitioned off into large offices each dealing with one topic. Thus, all the stress engineers were assembled in one office with their chief in a private annexe; and the same went for performance and for mechanical development. At first stunned, the entire engineering department reacted favourably, and morale began at once to improve.
I began immediately to hold Hs-style weekly progress meetings. To impress on everyone the seriousness of the situation I held them on Monday evenings from 5 to 8 pm, and anyone who was absent without good reason placed his job in jeopardy. I gave them an offer they could not refuse: ‘Work until it hurts, or get out’. (Today such high-handed tactics would be impossible; our trade unions have seen to that.)
The
research equipment for turbine engines was woefully inadequate and badly utilised. There was just one enormous piece of plant consisting of a set of 26,000 hp variable-speed electric motors fed from the mains through rectifiers. These were housed in a great new building called The Gin Palace. The rectifiers and gearboxes were most unreliable, and caused endless hold-ups to the very infrequent tests made in this plant. Fortunately we had a super man in charge of all electrical equipment, Bill Irens, later Chairman of the South West Electricity Board. He had long urged that the rectifiers be replaced by a more modern system, but nobody had listened. I told him to go ahead, and soon we had that basic requirement for turbine component testing; reliable electrical power. David Brown redesigned the gearboxes, but the whole plant was too big and unwieldy for the scale of work required. Moreover, there was also a 3,000 hp plant which was doing virtually nothing, and I had this converted for compressor testing and it is busy on this work even today.
There were some rudimentary combustion-chamber rigs, but I decided to hand all that work to my old friends Watson, Clarke and Morley in Burnley. Lucas was being pushed out into the cold by the decision of Hs that Rolls-Royce should do its own combustion work, and they were delighted to join with us at Bristol on the same terms that had existed at Barnoldswick. I gave them responsibility not only for chambers but for fuel systems also, and within a very short time we were level with Derby in these vital areas. Morever, it enabled us at Bristol to concentrate our efforts on compressors and turbines and the main structure of the engine.
We began taking on more engineers, and there was a drift of experienced people from Derby. First to come was the present vice-chairman and chief executive of Westland, Basil (now Sir Basil) Blackwell. A former Cambridge Wrangler in Mathematics, he was clearly destined for high office. I gave him a job of testing turbines, using compressed air flow from The Gin Palace, and analysing the results. With Basil’s energy, our turbine rigs were soon as good as any in the world. I put Gordon Lewis in charge of compressor design and performance. A third young engineer, Pierre Young, was put in charge of overall engine performance. A Cambridge maths man who had come from Armstrong Siddeley, Pierre had been working in a small shed, and I would probably never have met him had he not been brought to my notice by Neville Quinn. These three brilliant workers were installed in the same office, that they might spark one another off, and with Quinn’s guidance our aerodynamics and thermodynamics were soon in excellent shape.
I was overjoyed when Bob Plumb wrote from Derby asking if he could join us. Quiet, yet a marvellous tutor to young engineers, he was one of the finest mechanical engineers in the world and had worked with me all his professional life. I at once appointed him Chief Development Engineer, Proteus and Olympus, which predictably put a few older noses out of joint. Plumb’s impact was immediate. One of the great problems with the Proteus was that, all the time the engine was running, oil was being blown out of the reduction gear casing. All our attempts to cure this had failed. On the evening he arrived I outlined the problem to Plumb, while he studied the drawings. Soon he suggested a cause and described the modifications necessary for a cure, and these worked perfectly. He was a tower of strength, without whom it is possible we should never have got the Proteus into production in time, with results for Bristol beyond contemplation.
One day even Adrian Lombard asked if he could join me! We met in Gloucester and agreed terms and conditions. But I told him ‘You will have to face Hs; it won’t be easy for you’. At this Hs saw a very big red light indeed, and immediately made Lom Chief Engineer, a job he held with enormous distinction for over 15 years until his tragic early death from heart failure. Had he lived I am confident the RB211 would never have been so gigantic a failure, and the bankruptcy of Rolls-Royce would have been avoided.
I do not wish to suggest that the old engineering team at Bristol, which had achieved tremendous success under Sir Roy Fedden on piston engines, was devoid of talent or resources. In such matters as the design of castings, mountings for the engine or its auxiliaries, and other mechanical matters the standard was excellent. It was in the new and specialized knowledge of turbine engines that they were lacking. One area where Bristol was outstanding was in its tradition of producing complete fully cowled powerplants. The powerplant design office was ruled by Bob Hunter, and I was able to leave the entire installation side of the Britannia engine in his capable hands, and to the Rodney Works which specialized in sheet-metal construction. Another excellent team worked in the stress department, which I placed under young Keith Chamberlain; they lacked only experience in advanced turbine alloys.
Back in the early 1920s Fedden had recognised — ahead of anyone else in the industry — the vital importance of metallurgy in aero engines. The Division’s metallurgical lab, under James Gadd, was one of the best in the world. Gadd had always been responsible to the Chief Production Engineer, but he asked if he might join my staff. This was readily agreed by Rowbotham, with the proviso that Gadd’s team should continue to check materials for production.
Thus we soon had a good organization with which to tackle the troublesome Proteus. This complex turboprop had originally been designed to power the giant Brabazon II and Princess flying boat, in which it was buried in the wings and fed by ducts from the leading edge. This went well with the engine’s reverse-flow layout, the axial compressor being arranged back-to-front with the inlet near the turbines and the air passing forward through the axial spool to a centrifugal compressor at the front, which delivered the air radially outwards to the combustion chambers arranged around the outside of the axial compressor casing. By 1950 the engine had already been redesigned once, and the resulting Proteus 2 was intended to weigh 3,050 lb and give 3,200 shp plus 800 lb jet thrust. In the flesh it weighed 3,800 lb, and was unable to give more than 2,500 shp, apart from which it was riddled with problems including frequent failures of compressor, turbines and bearings. I was not convinced there was a market for the two giant aircraft (there was not), but the new Britannia was the most important new long-range airliner in the country, and apart from its importance to BOAC, it looked like being a bestseller all over the world as the successor to the Lockheed, Douglas and Boeing piston-engined airliners.
When I became Chief Engineer in mid-1950 I had already decided that the Proteus had to be redesigned yet again, to produce a good engine. I gathered my Three Musketeers, Lewis, Blackwell and Young, and told them that, as we had to get 3,200 shp, they should shoot for 4,000 shp. I then told Charles Marchant to aim for a total weight of only 3,000 lb. Thus was born the Proteus 3, later called the 700-series. It had a new 12-stage axial spool plus one integral centrifugal impeller, with a pressure-ratio of 7:1. This was driven by a two-stage HP turbine, the two-stage LP turbine being quite independent and driving only the propeller reduction gear via a long shaft through the centre of the compressor. The engine first ran in May 1952, the month in which the Britannia first flew on Proteus 2 engines, and on its first test fully met all its specification figures. It was nearly 1,000 lb lighter than the Proteus 2, yet was offered to the aircraft designers at 3,475 shp plus 1,000 lb thrust, soon upgraded to 3,780 shp plus 1,180 lb.
When we studied the prospects for redesigning the Proteus it was evident that there was an overwhelming case for throwing out the whole reverse-flow configuration. A straightforward layout would have been much simpler, lighter and more efficient, and would have suited the Britannia admirably. However, the commitment to power the Brabazon and Princess made such a redesign impossible, because it would have required redesign of the engine installations in both aircraft, with their air inlets in the wing leading edges. As it happened both aircraft were soon cancelled, so we could have produced a straight-through Proteus anyway. To add the crowning touch of irony, it was solely because of the reverse-flow configuration that icing troubles were encountered which delayed the entry into service of the Britannia by two years.
Despite this, the Proteus 3 was still a major step forward. It flew in a Brit
annia in August 1953, and was Type-Tested for civil operation in August 1954. But in the meantime we had to battle on with the Proteus 2, more than 100 of which had been ordered for the prototypes of the two giant aircraft, the Brabazon and the Princess. It was a time of great stress and anxiety for me. Not only was the earlier Proteus 2 engine deficient in power by 1,000 hp and 1,000 lb overweight but every day some new serious trouble would rear its ugly head. I never expected to see ten of them running at the same time in a Princess, or even four in the prototype Britannia! By dint of hard work, particularly by Plumb and Marchant, we cobbled them through the flight-clearance tests, and one day I was mightily relieved to learn that the Brabazon programme had at last been abandoned, taking 48 Proteus 2 engines out of the Engine Division programme.
The Princess continued, however, and it was a nightmare to attend Saunders-Roe’s progress meetings at Cowes. They were only too aware of the Proteus 2 troubles, and quite fairly but relentlessly hounded me at every meeting. It was such a strain I used to lie in my darkened hotel room instead of attending the customary dinner on the evening before the meeting. We got through somehow, but until we were able to demonstrate in 1953 that we had a totally different animal in the Proteus 3 I felt stretched to exhaustion. Fortunately for us, but unhappily for Saunders-Roe, the Ministry and BOAC were by this time beginning to realize that to carry the world’s air travellers you need a modernized DC-6B and not a Princess. So the second and the third Princesses never flew, and another 40 Proteus 2s were taken from our programme. I must say what a spectacular sight the giant boat was as it soared across the Farnborough air show with all ten engines running; but, as it passed into the distance, I breathed a prayer of relief and grabbed a stiff double whiskey.
Not Much of an Engineer Page 17