Alan Bristow

by Alan Bristow

  Formal executive meetings at Redhill were rare because we had a lean management structure and every day the department heads would meet for lunch, initially in the canteen in Hangar Five, and later in the company dining room when we built BHL’s new headquarters. Working lunches were the order of the day. I couldn’t bear the thought of an hour and a half in the middle of the day when management was not contributing to the profitability of the company. George would always be present – he’d preside over lunch when I was away – together with Jack Woolley and Alan Green, and we’d have a rota of guests to discuss their own corner of the operation. The lunch party might be joined from time to time by chief pilots or area managers, the chief accountant or our public relations man, but rarely by outsiders – lunch was a time to discuss the company’s business openly amongst ourselves. It was a very well-run facility; I persuaded the young lady in charge of catering at Cayzer House, who I discovered lived near Crawley and didn’t like travelling into London, to take over the catering and she stayed with me for twenty years. Not only was it like having a Board meeting every day, but it saved all the executives from having to troop into my office each morning to discuss their problems – they knew they’d get their chance over lunch. We dined off silver and crystal, and we had a waitress who stayed with us for years. The tea lady would sound us out on the menu choices during the morning, and lunch was free. It was a very efficient, practical way of meeting people and addressing their issues. We weren’t a big organisation – any employee could walk into my office and make his case if he thought he wasn’t getting a fair deal from his department head. I’ve been told that some people were too frightened to knock on the door and that I had a reputation for being something of an ogre, but employees regularly took advantage of my open door policy. I was respected because the staff knew I could do any job in the company – fly, build and maintain helicopters, write contracts, do the books, and if necessary sweep the hangar floor. A significant number of Bristow Helicopters staff stayed with the company for thirty years, and you don’t do that unless you think the boss is doing something right.

  After 5.30 in the evening the phone tended to stop ringing and there were fewer staff interruptions, and I would often stay until 8 pm or later dealing with problems in different time zones. It wasn’t unusual to be woken at 4 am by somebody calling from Singapore needing information, answers or decisions. Nor did the job begin and end with Bristow Helicopters. In the mid-1960s I was elected to represent the independent airlines and charter companies on the Air Registration Board, the forerunner of today’s Civil Aviation Authority. It wasn’t a job I’d lobbied for. Occasionally I found myself in the position of having to fight battles on behalf of Air Holdings’ competitors like Britannia and Monarch. In return I was re-elected for a second term of four years. I found it agreeable to be able to access the chairman, Lord Kings Norton, and senior civil servants who helped break through bureaucratic logjams when necessary. Kings Norton was an excellent chairman, and through the Board I met men of great distinction like Sir Stanley Hooker, a working director of Bristols and the greatest of aviation engineers, and Lord Brabazon of Tara, who was simply the embodiment of UK aviation history to me.

  Around the same time, Kenneth McAlpine and I established the British Helicopter Advisory Board, which was nicknamed the Bristows’ Helicopter Advisory Board when I was its chairman. I had been one of the founders of the Helicopter Club of Great Britain, which is still flourishing today, but it soon became clear that a separate organisation was needed to look after the professional interests of commercial helicopter operators. My idea was to bring together the users and the manufacturers in a balanced relationship, and to lobby and educate regulatory authorities and politicians about helicopters. Together with Yasha Shapiro I wrote the articles of association of the BHAB, and it is still working successfully today. The BHAB has had a number of good and able managers, the first of whom was an old Royal Navy pilot, Captain Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown, whom I hired in the early 1970s. He was an outstanding test pilot with a good technical brain.

  Of course, my life was not all office work. When new helicopters became available I would usually be one of the first to get my hands and feet on them for evaluation purposes. One in particular I thought a fine helicopter was the Hiller FH1100, which came out in 1964. It was brought to Britain on a sales tour after the Paris Air Show in 1965, and because of our long-standing relationship with Hiller it was hangared with BHL at Redhill. At the time Bristows were teaching a number of gentlemen to fly, such as property developer Harry Hyams, Kenneth McAlpine, Tommy Sopwith, and Sir John Clark, chief executive of the electronics company Plessey. All were interested in the Hiller FH1100. I used to shoot with John Clark and knew him well, and he seemed very interested when I extolled the 1100’s virtues to the point that he said:

  ‘I’ll buy one if you can loop it.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ I asked.

  ‘Absolutely. I’m happy with my Widgeon, but I’m looking for something more modern. If it can be looped, I’ll have one of these.’

  Looping a helicopter is a far cry from looping an aeroplane. The helicopter simply hangs pendulously below its main rotor and relies on gravity to stop the blades chopping into the fuselage. It you upset the equilibrium by turning it upside down you’re likely to run out of rotor revs and be cut to pieces, but if you get your speed and your control inputs exactly right, you ought in theory to be able to loop the helicopter and survive. Hiller’s chief test pilot was a chap called Philip Johnston. ‘Do you think this thing can be looped?’ I asked him.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I do wingovers in my demonstrations, not quite getting into negative G, but right on the corner . . .’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s a semi-rigid teetering rotor and as far as I’m concerned, there’s a sporting chance it can be looped. But you’re the test pilot – can it be done?’

  Phil Johnston sucked his teeth.

  ‘There’s a sale in it,’ I reminded him.

  ‘No reason why it shouldn’t be looped,’ he said at length.

  Without further delay we got in and started the helicopter, took it up to 2,000 feet over Redhill aerodrome and tried a few wingovers. I found them very enjoyable. Down below I was aware that groups of Bristow’s employees were coming out of the offices and hangars to watch. The word had gone round: the Old Man’s gone off to kill himself – come and see!

  The Hiller FH1100 was capable of 125 mph in level flight, which I thought ought to be enough to carry the helicopter over the top of a loop as long as the rotor RPM stayed reasonably constant. I flew right across the airfield and pulled up, and as the helicopter started to pitch over onto its back I noticed the rotor speed had dropped by only 20 RPM. In split seconds we were over the top and descending in a vertical dive, from which the helicopter refused to recover – no matter what I did with the azimuth stick, the helicopter kept plunging ever-faster earthwards in a death dive. In desperation, as we passed through 1,000 feet I put in full right pedal, and the tremendous torque couple changed the airflow over the main rotor. At 500 feet the FH1100 was starting to pull out of the dive, and by 100 feet it was straight and level again. It must have looked very impressive from the ground.

  Phil Johnston looked at me and didn’t say a word. It struck me he was rather pale. I hover-taxied to the tower, landed and shut down. Outside, people were applauding. I got out and lit a cigar, trying to keep my hand from shaking. My mouth was bone dry. John Clark stood in front of me.

  ‘There you are,’ I said. ‘Looped it.’

  ‘You did, too,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t think you’d try. I don’t really want one.’

  ‘You said you’d buy one if I could loop it!’

  ‘I was only joking!’

  Something about my expression must have caused him to reconsider. ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy another Widgeon.’

  So it wasn’t a complete waste of a near-death experience. John Clark remained a goo
d friend, and never again did I try to loop a helicopter.

  I also had an early opportunity to fly the Bell 204B, for which I had to travel to the Bell factory in Fort Worth, Texas. BHL was bidding for an unusual contract in Peru and needed a helicopter capable of lifting a 4,000 lb underslung load at 6,000 feet ASL. The Bell 204 was the company’s first turbine helicopter and had tremendous advantages over piston-engined helicopters. The ‘B’ model had a Lycoming T53-09A engine giving 1,100 horsepower, which I calculated would enable 4,000 lbs to be lifted over short distances.

  Alastair Gordon and I flew to Texas to have a look, and were shown around by one of Bell’s demonstration sales pilots, Joe Mashman. Joe had been a test pilot of some distinction, and he and I got on famously, professionally and personally. His daughter had a pony, but she didn’t like riding the American way. I had an English saddle made for her, and Joe was everlastingly grateful for the effort I’d made to help. The 204B was big and noisy, but the only way we could be certain it would lift the prescribed load at the specified height was to try it out.

  A company called Loffland Brothers from Elk City, Oklahoma, had created an air-portable drilling rig which could be broken down into individual parts that were supposedly less than 4,000 lbs each. At the airport I found I only had English coins in my pocket, so I called Loffland Brothers collect – reversed the charges – told the Chairman my story and asked if I could borrow some of his company’s drilling rig components to test the performance of the Bell 204B. There was a non-committal grunt at the other end of the line.

  ‘Well, mister helicopter service company owner, I’ll take your call when you can afford to make it,’ he said. ‘Call me back when you’ve got a dime to your name.’

  I liked his style. We spoke again when I’d managed to get a handful of small change. The upshot was that Alastair Gordon and I ended up flying a 204B up into the Rocky Mountains of New Mexico where Loffland Brothers had positioned a number of components, including the largest section of a collapsible drilling rig, the ‘doghouse’, which weighed two tons. The doghouse is the nerve centre of the rig, a cabin about ten feet by twelve housing all the controls. The Loffland Brothers’ rig was a well-designed and engineered product where the parts fitted together with simple male-female locks. It could be erected and dismantled quickly by a small team working in difficult conditions, and it worked very well. In New Mexico, Alastair and I lifted a few light components to start the testing, and eventually graduated to the main event, the doghouse. I was flying, and there was a bit of a breeze, which helped me to lift the doghouse off the deck. Unfortunately the doghouse started swinging all over the place and I had to ‘pickle’ it – dump it before I lost control of the helicopter. It fell about five feet and wasn’t too badly damaged. Underslung loads that started to ‘fly’ were a constant problem. The magnitude of the oscillations could overwhelm the flight controls, and there was no alternative but to pickle the load. Alastair had all sorts of schemes for drogue chutes on the sides of the load, but the answer was simple – don’t fly fast enough to start the swing.

  BHL won the contract and financed two Bell 204Bs through a bank in Bermuda. We sent an ex-Navy pilot called John Griffiths to Fort Worth to take Bell’s course on the 204, and I flew to Peru to have a look at the lie of the land. When I looked at the maps I thought they were joking. Mobil had decided the top of a mountain had to be flattened so they could start drilling there. An enormous earth moving machine had to be flown in piece by piece and assembled on the mountain top. Why they didn’t go for angled drilling lower down I’ll never know. Griffiths first flew in labourers to cut down trees to make an area big enough to operate from, then he flew bulldozer components onto the mountain site, half an engine block in one trip, half a track in another. Every morning he had to take up the team of technicians who were assembling this machine, and his last job would be to bring them back in the evening. Finally Mobil got the bulldozer bolted together, started it up and simply pushed the mountain over. Then Griffiths began flying in the Loffland Brothers’ drilling rig. At 5,000 feet it was perhaps fifteen degrees cooler than at sea level, and the 204B coped very well. There was usually a lot of cloud around the 4,000 foot level, and sometimes it was a challenge to get through. It was a real flying operation, demanding great patience and skill. John Griffiths loved the country, and married a local girl.

  Closer to home, BHL had set up a training school for Royal Navy helicopter pilots in 1961 when the Navy converted two ships, HMS Bulwark and HMS Albion, into commando carriers, with helicopter squadrons supporting amphibious operations. The Navy found its own training operation couldn’t handle the extra workload, and civil operators were invited to tender for the work. The Admiral in charge of selecting the contractor, Percy Gick, was flying his flag at Yeovilton. I first met him while serving in the Fleet Air Arm. He was a captain at the time, and very keen on boxing. As the flag appeared at RNAS Yeovilton he used to join in playing rugby in the wardroom. It was a terrible rough-house that devastated the place. Right in the middle of the melee would be Percy Gick. His father and my father had served together, one rank apart, throughout their careers. Admiral Gick came to Redhill with his aide-de-camp, Commander Lane, to inspect our facilities and capabilities before the contract was awarded. I showed him the helicopters BHL proposed to use – Hiller 360Cs that had been inherited from Fison Airwork – and the facilities we would make available to the Navy. The Admiral seemed satisfied.

  ‘Show me around the airfield,’ he said.

  Lionel drove us around the perimeter track in my long wheelbase two-tone Rolls-Royce, and I pointed out the airfield boundaries and the training areas allocated for specific exercises.

  ‘Do you mind if I smoke, sir?’ I asked.

  ‘Not at all. What are you smoking?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I’ve just taken delivery of a new jar of Upmanns,’ I said. ‘Would you care for one?’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do.’ The Admiral sat back and puffed happily.

  I opened the cocktail cabinet set into the partition. ‘What will you have to drink, sir?’

  ‘Beg your pardon?’ he said.

  ‘Pink gin, sir?’

  So with a pink gin in the Admiral’s hand and an Upmanns in his face, Lionel drove us around the airfield at five miles an hour. As we returned to the hangar, the Admiral turned to me and smiled.

  ‘You civilians know how to live, don’t you,’ he said. And as he stepped out of the Rolls-Royce he added: ‘I think our chaps will like it here.’

  Two years later we won a similar contract to train Army Air Corps pilots at Middle Wallop. BHL had an excellent ex-Army pilot called Bryan Shaw, and he had suggested taking over Army training to release their limited stock of helicopters and pilots for operational duties. The Army Air Corps eventually came around to his way of thinking, and a three-year training contract was put out to tender. As with the Navy contract our main opposition was BEA Helicopters, but BHL won, and we started the operation with ex-Fison Airwork Hillers. We never lost that contract in all the time I was running Bristows, and it became a steady contributor to profits. Because of uncertainty over whether Stanley Hiller was going to stay in the helicopter business – he didn’t – the Army eventually stipulated that Bell 47s be used, and we were able to phase the Hillers out nicely and to bring in Westland-built Bell 47G4As. The Hiller had been an excellent training helicopter and personally I preferred it to the Bell, particularly the ‘C’ model. It vibrated less, and its autorotative characteristics were better. Stan Hiller became disillusioned by the helicopter business when a dirty tricks campaign by Howard Hughes robbed him of a major military contract with the FH1100, and he quit the business and went on to become America’s foremost corporate rescuer, a man who turned around more than a dozen ailing Fortune 500 companies and became a billionaire on the proceeds. He even engineered the take-over of the Hughes Tool Company and profited hugely from the deal, at a time when Howard Hughes was raving his life away in a casino penthouse i
n Las Vegas. Personally, I would have preferred it if he’d kept making helicopters. He had a lot to offer.

  But even with all this work going on, I never took my eye off the North Sea for a second. I knew it was going to be a major opportunity for the company. Through Cranley Onslow MP, whom Bristow Helicopters had on a substantial retainer to represent our interests in Parliament, I was introduced to the civil servant responsible for negotiating the North Sea concessions on the west side of the Median Line, which separated the British, Norwegian, Danish, German and Dutch spheres of operation, with the oil companies. This was a man of absolute integrity, well-read and self-effacing, and he stayed sober no matter how much whisky was poured into him. I had enormous respect for him and so did all the oil companies, although they might have preferred to pay less for their concessions.

  The United Kingdom Continental Shelf was divided into quadrants of one degree latitude and one degree longitude. Each quadrant was subdivided into thirty blocks measuring ten minutes of latitude and twelve minutes of longitude. Some blocks were later divided further into part-blocks where areas had been relinquished by previous licensees. They were coded for easy identification – for instance, block 13/24a was located in quad 13 and was the 24th block; the letter ‘a’ related to a later subdivision. On the wall of my office was a huge map of the North Sea carrying every scrap of information in a colour-coded system that meant I could see at a glance who had what, and what development stage they had reached.