Alan Bristow

by Alan Bristow

  We caught a connecting flight from Bahrain to Doha. There is something uniquely detestable about Gulf heat; not only can it top fifty degrees but it’s an abrasive, oppressive and humid heat that clubs you in the face and saps your heart and soul. June, July and August are simply horrible, and we arrived in July. Doha was so hot one had to put sheets of paper between the car seat and one’s backside, and the local drivers sat on beads and wore gloves because the steering wheel burned the hand. Helicopters perform much more efficiently in cold air; I soon made it clear to Snodgrass that night flying would be essential simply because the intense heat reduced the payload so much that only four passengers could be carried during the day, and sometimes it was touch and go whether a machine would leave the ground at all. The night flying specification included strip lighting fitted around the instrument panel and powerful landing lights.

  In Doha we were met by the local Shell manager, a Frenchman, and Snoddy did all the talking. ‘My name’s Snodgrass, I’m from Shell and I’m here in response to your requirement for a helicopter service within ninety days. This is Mr Bristow, his company is our contractor, and it’s important that we find the safest site for his facility as soon as possible.’

  It was important that we get out of the intense heat, and I could have kissed the Frenchman when he suggested it was too hot to discuss business, and we could reconvene in his office after 5 pm. We were driven to a nearby ridge on which Shell had built a small prefabricated village, where the houses had three bedrooms and there was a school and a small mobile hospital, all air conditioned. All around was a moonscape of rock and sand, with the Gulf shimmering to the north and east. The creature comforts were typical of Shell, who put a lot of work into making even this fly-blown hell-hole habitable. After a siesta an Arab called on us with tea, and a jeep waited to take us to the Frenchman’s office, a Portakabin where I sat as close as I could to the air conditioner.

  Snodgrass set the scene: ‘Mr Bristow will tell you where is the best and safest place from which to fly his helicopters, and you must give him every assistance,’ he told the Frenchman. We were given maps – very good maps, made by Shell – and had the use of the Land Rover and driver. I wanted to be reasonably near the sea so that a float-equipped helicopter could come down in the water if it suffered an engine failure on take-off. I wanted to use the prevailing winds to assist take-off and landing, and the area had to be clear of loose sand and to be accessible by road. I kept coming back to one spot, about two acres in size close to a small jetty that could take a rescue boat, but far enough from the water to minimise salt spray. Unfortunately it was the site of Shell’s pipe store, a repository of small mountains of drilling pipe of all sizes. Shell’s manager objected because they’d have to move all the pipes, but I told him it only had to be done once. Eventually it was cleared. Local contractors were found to excavate and level the area, put down the apron and build the hangar. One side of the hangar was left open forty to fifty degrees off the prevailing wind to afford some ventilation, and a Bedouin tent was hung across the transverse beams to reduce the stifling heat. It looked ugly, but it helped.

  In September 1955 I flew back to London to pick up Shell’s WS55 Whirlwinds for the ferry flight to Doha. As was my habit I flew with Alastair Gordon; Alan Green flew the second helicopter with Earl Milburn. With fuel stops every couple of hundred miles it took the best part of a week to reach Doha. The Whirlwind was comfortable at around eighty-five knots, and at eighty-five knots the Persian Gulf is a long way away. The route took us from Henstridge to Paris and on via Cannes, Rome, Brindisi, Athens and Rhodes to Tripoli in Lebanon. Across the desert we followed the pipeline to Kirkuk then flew south to Basra, Kuwait, Bahrain and Doha. Apart from one nasty section where we had to grope through foul weather in the Alpes Martitimes on our way into Cannes, it was plain sailing. We slept like dead men each night and rose early to avoid taking off in the heat of the day, then flew for ten or eleven hours to the next night stop. The words ‘controlled airspace’ hadn’t been heard of then; one simply drew a line on a map and followed it. Sitting at 5,000 feet with the canopy door slid back I had a chance to reflect on what a fantastic year 1955 had been for Air Whaling. The patents on the aerial harpoon had been sold, the whaling revenues and helicopter sales commission banked, and new horizons were opening up in the oil industry. There was no doubt in my mind that once we’d established a professional presence in the Persian Gulf we’d be invited to tender for more oil contracts. Breaking into the offshore oil exploration market was the hard part – and thanks to Douglas Bader, we were on the ground with minimal investment of my own cash. The two Whirlwinds landed in Doha on 29 September, and it was a big deal for the locals – the Ruler and his Prime Minister were at the airfield to greet us. Next day we were invited to give a helicopter demonstration to the Ruler at his palace. I was frantically busy and asked Alan Green to do the job. He gave a brief flying display then took the Ruler for a short flight in the Whirlwind – and the Ruler gave him a gold watch! I should have made the time to fly him myself.

  Jack Woolley brought a Dakota full of spare parts, tools and ground equipment and we launched into a series of familiarisation flights, firstly coming to terms with the performance limitations imposed by the heat, then working on night flying and approaches to Shell’s drilling platforms. We found we could lift five passengers at most times of day, more at night, and that steep approaches to rigs were not advisable given the feeble power margins. So brainwashed had I become about the possibility of hydraulic failure during the WS55’s certification programme that I and all the pilots made manual landings on the rigs and autorotations onto the water in manual control. If nothing else, we had big biceps.

  Shell is known for treating its people well wherever they are in the world, and all the pilots and engineers were lodged in air-conditioned comfort. The hangar had been fitted out by Shell’s contractors, who helped Jack light the building for night operations and air-condition the workshops. Jack obtained a couple of enormous fans five feet in diameter that stirred the stifling air, but there were times when it was so hot you couldn’t ask men to work in the hangar. On the day we took our first passengers out to the rig, two months had elapsed since I had written that speculative letter to Group Captain Bader. When Shell decides something’s going to happen, it happens.

  I was summoned back to England to report to Bader, and found him waiting for me in his office with Snoddy and engineer Bill Williams. I was pleased to be able to report that the service was up and running ahead of schedule, and that there were no problems. That was the kind of talk Bader liked, and his stubby pipe perked up as he grinned his appreciation. Williams, an excellent engineer, was full of questions; they seemed of little consequence – how high were the workbenches, how big was the lean-to storeroom. I answered them, but Bader was impatient.

  ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘Now, this is just a gentlemen’s agreement, isn’t it? Hadn’t we better have a contract? Send us a contract please, Mr Bristow.’

  It seemed strange that I should write the contract given that they owned the helicopters and provided all the facilities. The trolleys for moving the aircraft, the workbenches, the office furniture belonged to Shell. ‘Given the circumstances, sir, a contract would be better coming from your side,’ I said.

  Bader grunted. ‘Snoddy, make up a contract please.’

  In Snoddy’s office the contract was drafted and mutually agreed in no time. Even the service levels were left flexible because usage hadn’t yet been established. Nobody could tell us precisely how much we’d be required to fly. The contract terms filled two pages – that was the way business was done in those days. In later years I was to write all Bristow Helicopters’ contracts myself. At first I couldn’t afford the luxury of a staff lawyer so I got copies of other people’s contracts for digging ditches and laying pipes and used them as the basis for my own. I was always a little bit in at the deep end when it came to how you applied warranty terms. Even after I could affor
d an in-house lawyer I kept a close eye on the contracts, and eventually the workload called for two lawyers. Andrew Muriel was one, an excellent young professional. As an added-value factor, for many years Muriel’s brother-in-law sold me all my wine.

  Throughout a thirty-year relationship with Shell I never took problems to the company. If something happened that cost us money we took it on the chin, even if it was none of our doing. What the Group Captain wanted to hear was that Shell personnel and gear were being transported to and from rigs on time and without loss. What he didn’t want to hear was pettifogging complaints from contractors. I went back to the Persian Gulf basking in his approval.

  In Doha, Air Whaling Ltd quickly proved a far better bet than the supply boats it replaced. In the first six months, only one flight was lost to weather. The records show we were flying almost ninety hours a month with each helicopter, carrying about 500 people and eight tons of equipment. The engineers struggled with unfamiliar problems caused particularly by sand abrading the leading edges of the rotor blades and clogging the filters. We judged the spares requirement fairly accurately, and we ordered what we needed from Westlands by telegram – telex was just coming in at that time. We could be sure of having it within a couple of days. A BOAC service went through Bahrain at least once a day on the way to Australia, and Gulf Air had a connection between Bahrain and Doha using Doves and Herons flown by British pilots. Ted Wheeldon knew how important it was for me to keep the helicopters flying, and Westlands did not let us down.

  Outside working hours, our horizons were small. There wasn’t much to do in Qatar in 1955. When you weren’t working you could fish, and if you didn’t like fishing you could watch other people fish. I kept a little sailing boat I’d inherited from the Frenchman when he moved on to greater things. Jack Woolley and I were planning to row out to it, and Alan Green raced ahead shouting that he would beat us to it. He swallow-dived off the jetty and thrashed away across the water, but as Jack and I prepared the tender, two sharks came steaming by. We shouted an alarm to Alan, who did a Keystone Cops crawl almost on top of the water back to the jetty. We never swam from that place again.

  Alan Green was great company, a man who never lost his humour even in the least congenial circumstances. He worked really hard, and no matter where you sent him he was always cheerful and well received. He got on famously with the Arabs and had friends all over the Middle East. He was never a natural pilot, but he was highly competent and provided the necessary lead to run the operations department quite well. Unfortunately he lost control of his drinking, and as his habits became more widely known he lost respect among his fellow pilots, but in the early days in Doha he could always be relied on to cheer up the proceedings. It was my habit to have a glass of water with me whenever I sat down for a while, and once when I nodded off he replaced it with a tumbler full of gin. I almost choked to death when I woke up and took a swig and I’d have killed him if I’d caught him, but he moved swiftly for a big man. Everyone else seemed to think it was funny.

  As I had expected, our operations attracted the attention of other oil companies, and in 1956 I was approached by BP to transport a team contracted to erect communications aerials on Das Island, off Abu Dhabi. Shell had no problems with me working for BP – in fact I was formally employed by Decca, who were under contract to BP to put powerful radio transceivers on the towers. The first job was to find the right sites for the towers. It was March, so I was happy to stay on Das Island, sleeping in a tent, flying these chaps wherever they wanted to go. Das Island is as miserable a pile of stones as ever stuck out of a shark-infested sea. It was not big – if you stood in the centre of the island and screamed you could be heard on the beaches – and there was no human habitation, although a flock of sheep and some goats had found their way there in the past. I made a small but significant contribution to the development of the island when I vetoed Decca’s first choice of site for a radio tower.

  ‘You can’t have it there,’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’ The team leader, whose name was Sheepy, thought I was interfering in something that was definitely not my side of the ship.

  ‘When BP develops this island there’s only one site that’s reasonably long enough for an airstrip,’ I said, ‘and you’re sticking your mast right on the final approach.’

  To his credit Sheepy took this on board and moved the tower several hundred yards to the north east, where it stands today, well clear of the final approach to the airfield. But it was clear to me that while information on BP’s plans was available in the Gulf, the decisions were being made in London, and that was where I should be. I flew back to Henstridge and began working the phones. Eventually I established contact with the man who was destined to head up the Das Island development. His name was Peter Wainwright, and I arranged a meeting with him at BP House in London.

  Wainwright was an impressive man, immensely practical and able. He’d trained as a petroleum engineer and had worked his way up through the company – he’d been a roustabout and a tool-pusher in his time and knew the business from top to bottom. He was impressed that I’d been to Das Island, and his reports from the field said Air Whaling had helped Decca get a month’s work done in a week. Wainwright intended to use Das Island as a base from which to drill for oil off Abu Dhabi and had ambitious plans to build a ring-shaped harbour to shelter the supply ships. As with most oil company developments the plans were on a grand scale, involving not only building a harbour but establishing an airfield with hard runway and control tower, a small city of Portakabins for living accommodation and offices and all the infrastructure required to support oil exploration. Wainwright knew of the reliability of the service we were giving to Shell, and I left his office with the promise that he’d consider an Air Whaling Ltd involvement in Das Island.

  The following week a document arrived at Henstridge bearing the title ‘Invitation to Tender’. I read the terms with a mixture of excitement and concern; BP were not interested in owning helicopters, and wanted the operator to provide the aircraft, fly them and maintain them. BP would look after the hangarage, hard standing, refuelling and living quarters. The contract was only for an initial twelve months, which made buying helicopters a serious gamble. During the initial exploration drilling phase BP wanted a helicopter capable of carrying up to three men, day and night, and the smaller Westland WS51 Widgeon fitted the bill. The Widgeon was much improved over the original S51, with more power and flight controls that were better harmonised. I pored over my costings with George Fry and we weighed the risks. We could depreciate the Widgeons over four years, and at the end of that time we’d be cash-happy if we survived. I went to see Ted Wheeldon at Westland and showed him the BP tender document. Cash flow from Shell was good, Air Whaling had more than enough cash in hand for deposits, and Wheeldon was keen to give me terms that enhanced my prospects of winning the tender. We had good references from Shell, and importantly, we were established in the Gulf and knew our way around. We were able to buy Widgeons for the BP contract without stretching Air Whaling’s resources unduly.

  While in London I was invited to have lunch with Douglas Bader at the Savoy, the first of many such lunches we were to have. It was Douglas’s way of staying in touch on a personal level – in the office he always seemed businesslike and brisk, on the golf course he was absolutely dedicated to his game, but relaxing over lunch he became a different man, less formal and austere, more humorous and approachable. I was always sensitive to the right and wrong times to discuss business with Douglas, who kept his work and home lives strictly separate. As a friendly lunch came to a close, he frowned.

  ‘Just one thing, Alan – some of our partners have been asking us why we’re getting invoices from a company called Air Whaling. It’s come up in our inter-company group meeting. Couldn’t we have a better name to deal with?’

  At that time, opposition to the whaling industry was spreading, but it hadn’t crossed my mind to change the name. I thought of it as an advantage – pilo
ts who had flown in the Antarctic had been tested in the fire and felt superior to those who hadn’t. Even Jack Woolley’s machine tool business invoiced as Air Whaling Ltd. But if Douglas Bader had concerns, I would address them.

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ I said.

  I discussed the issue with George and Jack, and it was decided that nobody could object to Bristow Helicopters Ltd, so George reregistered the company in that name. It was as Bristow Helicopters – BHL – that we tendered for the BP contract on Das Island. I don’t know how many other companies were invited to bid but BHL won, and the new Widgeons, with ‘Bristow Helicopters’ painted on the side, were flown to Abu Dhabi. The next stage of the company’s growth had begun.

  Today Abu Dhabi is one of the richest cities on earth but in the mid-1950s it was dirt-poor, occupied by skeletal date farmers, fishermen and a handful of nomads who herded goats and camels. The pearl-fishing industry that had once helped support the population had been devastated by the development of cultured pearls in Japan, and most of the people lived in barasti, flimsy structures of palm fronds. If you were rich, you had a mud hut, and there wasn’t a paved road in the whole country. The Ruler, Sheikh Shakbut, was a benevolent old soul but a bit on the unbalanced side, and I bent over backwards to accommodate his whims. I flew him around his kingdom to look at his oil concessions, but his English was on a par with my Arabic so communication was difficult. Even for the times he was an old-fashioned, conservative ruler – he was rumoured to keep his money in milk churns hidden around his palace. His younger brother Sheikh Zayed was more forward-looking and a lot brighter, very much an Anglophile who spoke passable English, and we got on well. In the mid-1960s Shakbut was deposed by Zayed with the tacit consent of everyone in the country, and Zayed began the process of turning Abu Dhabi into the powerful economy it is today. It was a bloodless coup; I was told Shakbut had been put in a home, but one never knew. Sheikh Zayed became and remained a friend. I erected a beautifully appointed Arab tent for him when he came shooting at my estate at Baynards Park in Surrey, and he very much appreciated the gesture. I made a point of keeping all the ‘Sheikhy Babies’ on my side, cultivating them, putting our assets at their disposal, knowing them and being known. The head of the Royal Guard in Abu Dhabi was an ex-SAS chap, Colonel Charles Wontner, and from him I was able to glean much useful intelligence.