Not Much of an Engineer

by Stanley Hooker

  Thus we had in a matter of weeks transformed the RB211, and could promise not only to restore the missing performance but to go way beyond it. I explained much earlier how the RB211 crisis would never have come about had that great jewel Lombard been at the helm.

  While we were doing this, in the winter 1970-71, the tough chairman of Lockheed, Dan Haughton, was commuting every few days between Los Angeles and Derby. He adamantly refused to modify Rolls-Royce’s contractual obligations. The situation came to a head in February 1971, just before we got the improved engine on test, when Lord Cole declared Rolls-Royce insolvent.

  To describe the whole world as stunned is an understatement. Rolls-Royce was regarded as no more likely to collapse than the Monarchy or the Church of England. But in fact it was a matter of arithmetic. After years of massive outgoings the RB211 was reaching the peak of its cash-flow deficit. If engines, in 1970/71 could have been delivered to Lockheed there would at last have been an inflow of cash, probably enough to stave off disaster.

  But the engines could not be delivered because they were deficient in performance and had not yet passed the tests of the UK or US certification authorities. So the works just went on piling up expensive stocks and work in progress until the cash dried up.

  For once, the British government acted with lightning speed. Overnight it purchased, for an unspecified price, all the company’s assets. I understood this was to forestall foreign creditors from claiming assets on the basis of first come, first served. The government also dismissed the company’s board, with the exception of Lord Cole, Ian Morrow and Hugh Conway, who were left minding the shop.

  In purchasing the assets the government made one specific exception: it refused to buy the RB211. Nobody else wanted it either! The purchase was made, it was said, purely because of the company’s importance to defence in Britain and many other countries. The affair thus came under Lord Carrington, who was Secretary of State for Defence in the Heath government.

  He appointed ‘three wise men’ to give him an appraisal of the technical and financial viability of the RB211. They were Sir William Cook, the former Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Defence; Sir St John Elstub, chairman of Imperial Metal Industries; and Professor Douglas Holder, who held the chair of Engineering Science at Oxford. Bill Cook had been my colleague at Woolwich Arsenal, and he asked me to join them at the MoD to help prepare the report.

  A few days later in February 1971 we were in the midst of our examinations in London when the news came from Derby that engine No. 10011 with new NGVs was running, and that it was showing the predicted performance. At one stroke the thrust for a given TET had been increased from 34,000 lb to well over 40,000 lb. Clearly all that remained was to grind through the many mechanical faults which affected engine reliability. Freddie Morley began to issue his design changes which collectively became ‘The Morley Mods’, and we were close to having a good RB211.

  The Cook Report was favourable, and the British government then made Lockheed an offer they could hardly refuse. Either renegotiate the contract, this time under British law, with one year added to the delivery dates and with an increase in engine price (incidentally for a considerably better and more powerful engine than the original RB211-1), or the programme will be abandoned. Lockheed and their customers were rather relieved, though Lockheed’s own financial position was serious and eventually led to an unprecedented decision of support by the US Congress which was carried by just one vote.

  Thus, after a long series of negotiations which had no historical precedent, we got the RB211 on the road again, and Lockheed went on with the L-1011. The British government formed a new company called Rolls-Royce (1971) Ltd, and paid for the day-to-day costs of the RB211 programme. It also restructured the board, inviting Sir Arnold Weinstock (at the time the No. 1 tough company troubleshooter) and Gordon Richardson (later Governor of the Bank of England) to join. Sir William Cook and Sir St John Elstub were also invited, and so was I, as Technical Director, so that somebody on the board might know about the engineering position.

  Thus I found myself, four years after my retirement, occupying the very chair promised to me by Hs 25 years previously! But elation was the last thing I felt. Under me the great team of engineers, and indeed the whole vast Derby works, was completely demoralized. Many were looking for someone else to blame. I called a meeting of the entire engineering staff and explained the exact situation. I then appealed to their loyalty to the good name of Rolls-Royce to get the RB211 quickly certificated and delivered to Lockheed. I promised 100 per cent support to their efforts and asked any doubters to leave at once.

  Nobody left but a few days later I heard that one senior engineer was dickering with the motor manufacturers who had set up a recruiting office in the Midland Hotel. I sent for him and bluntly asked if this were true. He replied that he had not yet made up his mind. I told him, ‘Well, I’ll make it up for you. I would like you out of this factory by 4 pm this afternoon’. I got the personnel manager to pay him then and there what was due to him. Everyone else decided to stay.

  Rather remarkably, within days of first being called up to Derby a few weeks before, I had been able to put my finger on several crucial faults and to have them rectified very quickly indeed. But one cannot truly know a piece of machinery as complex as the RB211 without living with it from the start. So I did not attempt to run the show but left the day-to-day programme to Ernest Eltis, whom I had displaced as Technical Director, but who gave me the most loyal support, and to his assistant (and an old colleague of mine from Barnoldswick) Johnnie Bush. They proved an inspiration to their teams, and worked closely with Chief Designer Freddie Morley and his assistant John Coplin.

  I bore the ultimate responsibility, however, and soon decided to invite my old tutors, and perhaps the greatest of Rolls-Royce engineers, to join me to form a kind of Chief of Staff committee. I asked Cyril Lovesey and Arthur Rubbra, both well over 70, to come back into the thick of it. They responded with alacrity, and I cannot describe the comfort in seeing Rubbra poring over the drawings, and to discuss the forthcoming programme with Lovesey. Their vast experience was immediately put to use, and I pay tribute to the way they gave this to the new company, as to the old — and, in Lovesey’s case, he gave all his remaining years.

  It was all too obvious that the Derby engineers, normally proud and self-confident to the point of arrogance, had slid from bad to worse when their great leader, Lombard, had so suddenly been plucked from them in 1967. His death had left a vacuum which nobody could fill, and I saw it as a major part of my job to rebuild an atmosphere of confidence in the future so that gradually the vacuum would disappear. Always the crucial programme was the RB211, and whenever it could be seen that more manpower was needed I drafted it, leaving the barest skeleton staffs under Metcalfe to look after the Spey, Dart, Adour and other Derby engines.

  Thus, between February and the autumn of 1971 the Derby works achieved a miracle in totally transforming the RB211 programme. The modifications needed extended to every part of the engine, but they were carried through with a speed and a spirit reminiscent of the Battle of Britain. The costs incurred were controlled tightly by Ian Morrow, and rightly so because it was RB211 costs that had broken the original company. At the same time I knew we were running a race, and it was frustrating perpetually to be told that a modification was not possible because the finance had not been cleared.

  My response was always the same: ‘Get on with it, and I will take personal responsibility for the costs’. Such arguments took up a lot of my time, and eventually I went to Ian and said ‘I am sure you are as keen as anyone to see the RB211 through to certification, but people are using your name to fight against every step we take. Please give me a million pound credit, to use as and when I think fit’. He readily agreed, and I never had to spend one penny of it, because the knowledge that it was there, enabling me to over-ride any financial blockage, ensured that no more such blockages occurred.

  Thus we gradually go
t the great company not merely on the road again but really humming. Bankruptcy may temporarily shatter morale, but it certainly concentrates the mind wonderfully. Very quickly we got a terrific team working on the RB211. Geoffrey Wilde took over design and development of the troublesome turbine blades. Harry Pearson came back from retirement to oversee performance analysis. Peter Colston, within the hour of each of our decisions, prepared formal engineering requests and delivered them to two miracle-workers, Eric Scarfe (Production) and Trevor Salt (Experimental Manufacture).

  In between working with my splendid RB211 team I had to attend main board meetings, which in 1971-72 were devoted largely to establishing the price the government should pay for the company. In the haste of the takeover the wording was that the price should be a ‘fair and reasonable one, as if there were a competing buyer in the field’. This phrase drove Sir Arnold Weinstock mad, because, he said, it was impossible to quantify such a vague generalization. Arnold had the reputation of being the toughest of tycoons, and he was unquestionably the dominating personality on the board. I quickly came to admire his rapier-like mind, and his logical and eloquent exposition of each point of debate.

  He made a quick test case where I was concerned by asking for my opinion on some obtuse point, and I replied ‘Sorry Arnold, I don’t know; you design the company and I’ll design the engines.’ After that he left me out of the arguments on law and finance, but listened with great attention to my reports on technical progress. He used Gordon Richardson as the stalking-horse for the arguments, and the two them, with Ian Morrow, settled point after point of the intricate details of the government purchase and the capital finance needed to run the company. The rest of us sat in silent admiration.

  In the autumn of 1972 Ian Morrow had a disagreement with the Minister of Aviation, Michael Heseltine, about the choice of a new managing director, and he resigned. I much regretted this, because Ian was extremely experienced at many aspects of company finance, as well as being a delightful man to work with. He was one of the key men in getting Rolls-Royce (1971) Ltd on its feet.

  Back at the start of the RB211 programme Rolls-Royce had given Lockheed an understanding — no more than that — that it would eventually develop the engine to 45,000 lb thrust. The idea was that, as experience was gained with the original engine in service, the throttle should be progressively opened to give higher thrusts. This was still the official policy in 1971, but it seemed to me that, in view of the grave difficulties encountered in reaching the contractual figure of 42,000 lb, there was little likelihood of taking even the improved RB211-22 to 45,000 lb.

  At the same time our competitors Pratt & Whitney and General Electric were moving ahead with firm programmes, initially to 47,000 lb for the JT9D, with much more to come, and to 50,000 lb for the CF6-50. These engines were needed for improved long-range 747s, for the longer-range version of the DC-10 and for the European Airbus. All were clearly going to be of the greatest importance. It was later evident that the long-range DC-10 was going to become almost the standard version, far outselling the L-1011 TriStar, while the Airbus could outsell both by a wide margin. Rolls-Royce simply had to have an engine to compete in the increased-thrust market.

  I was forced to the inescapable conclusion that we should at least study a second-generation RB211 in which extensive redesign would give higher thrust, better efficiency and other advantages, just as we had done with the Proteus, Olympus and Pegasus. But this time I had no far-seeing Verdon to put up the finance; we were a bankrupt company with money tightly controlled by a government which, along with many other people, would have thought new versions a presumptuous and unjustified extra risk. Nonetheless, though it seemed a pipedream, I steadily ploughed ahead with the performance, compressor and turbine engineers — almost as light relief — to establish what could be done.

  I set 50,000 lb as the target, and concentrated on the fan, which provides about three-quarters of the thrust. One of the basic design objectives was to make the second-generation RB211 fit the TriStar, including the centre (tail) installation, and if possible we wanted the new engine to be installationally interchangeable. Roy Hetherington, the fan and compressor expert, succeeded in designing a new fan passing 20 per cent greater airflow within the same diameter. We also redesigned the IP compressor to pass more air through the core, but here we ran up against a seemingly insurmountable snag. There was a massive steel aircraft mounting ring in the way, and this was regarded as sacrosanct.

  I sent for Freddie Morley, who was up to his neck in design mods for the current engine, and, pulling his leg, said, ‘Freddie, I hear that you will not allow us to change the mounting ring, so that we can redesign the IP compressor and raise the thrust to 50,000 lb.’ I knew perfectly well that he had never heard of the proposal, and he almost burst a blood-vessel. His response was ‘Nobody has told me a f - - - - thing about the f - - - - ring!!’ He departed in high dudgeon, to reappear a few days later with a splendid drawing of the redesigned mounting, fully interchangeable with the existing one but giving us the room we needed.

  Thus we completed the design of the superb RB211-524 series. It was to be another two years before, under Sir Kenneth Keith, we were at last permitted to go ahead with full development. Today the -524, in several versions, is the standard RB211 for large long-range aircraft, and it not only gives thrust over 52,000 lb but it demonstrates the lowest fuel consumption and best performance retention of all the big fan engines.

  One Saturday afternoon in September 1972 I was telephoned by the Secretary of State for Industry, John Davies, and informed that Lord Cole was resigning and that his successor would be merchant banker Sir Kenneth Keith. The next time I saw Gordon Richardson I asked what he was like, and was told ‘He is a Big Gun, but you will like him’. And so it was. From our first meeting we have been friends; in fact Kenneth told me he saw only two friendly faces when he arrived at Rolls-Royce’s London office, mine and Bill Cook’s!

  A large man in every sense, he had powers of leadership the company had not seen since the days of Hs, and after years of the doldrums the whole workforce of the company soon realized that at last they again had a great man at the helm. The only sad thing about his coming was that there was not room for him on the same board as Sir Arnold Weinstock, and the latter soon resigned. Kenneth brought with him another Kenneth, K. G. Wilkinson, a fellow board member of British Airways. Thanks to Hugh Conway’s disagreement with Ian Morrow we were short of a managing director and Wilkinson filled this job for a time before returning to the airline.

  As chairman of Hill Samuel, Sir Kenneth was used to high finance, but had formed the view that £5 million was a lot of money. I told him we had added a zero to his stature, because after a few weeks on the RB211 he soon came to understand that £50 million is peanuts. He took the job on the condition that he had a free hand and direct access to the Prime Minister (then Edward Heath). His task was to restructure the giant firm and make it viable in the long term. He found a lack of discipline which appalled him. He gathered a small handpicked group around him to run the company and said ‘Anyone else who sticks his head above the parapet will get it struck off!’ Rapidly everyone recognised that a man of courage and decision had taken over. For his part, he learned rapidly, rivalled Hs in his tireless passion for work and visited all the factories and all the big customers. At each factory he had a private and forthright meeting with all the shop stewards and quickly cleared up their problems and grievances. With the customers he replaced their belief the firm would never survive by a new confidence and an eager anticipation for production RB21 ls. He came for two years and stayed for seven, leading us with panache and verve and defending us from bureaucratic interference. When we gave him his farewell dinner his voice was choked with emotion, because even men as big as he soon come under the spell of the magic of the name of Rolls-Royce.

  The RB211 programme might easily have foundered in 1971 had it not been for the steadfast support of Eastern Airlines, one of the major launc
h customers for the Lockheed TriStars. The President of Eastern was one Sam Higginbottom, who never wavered and thereby acquired some criticism. He eventually left Eastern to become President of Rolls-Royce Inc. in New York, and such is the respect for him and his vast experience in civil air line operations that the RB211 programme in the USA has gone ahead, despite the vicissitudes of the bankruptcy and engineering problems in the programme.

  Chapter 13

  Romania and China

  Today British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce have close connections with two countries which have Communist governments and which used to be considered to be remote. I was lucky enough to be in at the start with both these foreign connections, which have been rewarding in many ways including that of money.

  Our association with Romania arose solely because of the tireless efforts of George Pop. This remarkable man had been born in Romania, studied at the Sorbonne and eventually became a British citizen. He spoke almost every European language fluently — certainly English, Romanian, French, German, Italian and Spanish — and he lived at the ultra-modern Hotel Inter Continental in Bucharest where he beavered away at his self-appointed task of selling British aviation to Romania.

  He was given official backing by none other than the world famous Henri Coanda, who before 1914 had been given the title of ‘chef technique’ at the British & Colonial Aeroplane Company which was the origin of the Bristol Aeroplane Company. After 1945 the new Communist regime in Romania tracked down Coanda and invited their most famous scientist to return to Bucharest. He did so on condition that he was given back the family house, which had been appropriated by the state, and that the street where it stood was renamed after his father, who had been assassinated. The Romanians did more. They appointed Coanda Head of Inventions and Development, with the status of a minister, and he was able to advise on all technical matters.