by Mike Brooke
I, with Lockwood, Ross, Morgenfeld and other regular imbibers of fine ales, went to the pub. Snacks were consumed along with at least a couple of pints of the landlord’s best bitter. Unlike the passage of time during the tedious coach journey the hour now flew by. ‘It must be my non-dimensional watch,’ quipped Vic Lockwood. We were in danger of missing the deadline! So we quaffed our drinks and set off at a quick trot back to Hamilton Place. Finding the doors open, we surged in to find our way to the lecture hall and took seats not too near the front.
Rolls-Royce test pilot Harry Pollitt, from Bristol Filton, was giving the lecture that night. The topic of his talk was the test programme of the Olympus engine, carried in the belly of an Avro Vulcan, for the Anglo-French supersonic airliner Concorde. It turned out to be fascinating stuff and I soon became an attentive student once again. However, that did not last much more than thirty minutes. The aforementioned imbibing was making itself felt!
During our briefing we had been apprised of the fact that the gents’ toilet was in the basement. Moreover, we had been asked that ‘in the unlikely event of needing the facility during the lecture’ we should leave the amphitheatre by the double doors at the back, then enter the door immediately on our left, go down the stairs behind it and travel along an underground passage until we reached the gents. I whispered to Tom Morgenfeld that I needed to get past him in order to creep out and relieve the increasing pressure on my innards. He whispered back that he would join me.
We sneaked out as quietly as we could, hoping that Chalky Rodgers would not spot us. We left the lecture hall and found a pair of double doors ahead of us. They looked like fire doors but, following this morning’s instruction, we pushed them open and stepped through. The doors slammed shut behind us. Then a big red London bus went from right to left in front of us. We were outside! There was no way back; the doors had no external handles. Tom and I then made one of those rapid decisions that only jet pilots can make: we would return to the Rose and Crown. That was for two reasons – first, there would be a gents’ toilet there and, second, we could have another beer while we waited for the others to come out of the lecture. It was then that Tom shared one of his many adages. ‘My trouble is that I have three-pint kidneys but only a two-ounce bladder.’ I admitted to the same configuration. Dear old Chalky did have a kind streak after all, because he had allowed us all an hour’s freedom before we would hit the road westward again.
We later learnt that the glazed double doors at the back of the lecture hall, to which the briefing had referred, were actually open so we did not spot them. Hence we ended up like two lost boys standing in Park Lane with our mouths agape and a fearsome need to visit the loo! We went up to the RAeS three more times during the year. I cannot recall the specific lectures, but Tom and I discovered the aeronautical gents’ toilet on our next visit.
The first of a series of educational field trips to British aerospace establishments and companies happened on Wednesday 9 April and did not take us far. It was to the RAE and the Institute of Aviation Medicine (IAM) at Farnborough. Once we got there, we were shown round various RAE departments, introduced to a variety of experimental airborne systems and the mysterious world of the structural engineers. The latter’s Structures Building, containing a heavily restrained Concorde, was probably the highlight. After lunch we visited the IAM where RAF doctors and other civilian specialists spend their time researching and refining anything medical that interfaces with flying. There we were shown a multitude of ways of putting the human body through the sorts of things that would, in any other world, be regarded as degrading and inhuman. The Centrifuge, Climatic Chamber, Decelerator Track and Vestibular Laboratory being just some of the areas that the doctors delighted in and their subjects no doubt dreaded. Little did I know that, within a year, I would be letting the same medical madmen loose on my small but perfectly formed body!
The next item on the field trip agenda was to be on Thursday 24 April and even closer to home: A&AEE Boscombe Down. After an introductory talk by the Superintendent of Engineering we were divided into four parties and each bunch of students was bussed to one of four on-base research and development facilities. The first of these that our party visited was an impressive piece of machinery called the Blower Tunnel. All the wind tunnels I had seen photographs of and films about were enclosed in huge buildings and had big fans. This one was totally different. First it was outdoors and there was no sign of a tunnel. It looked like a Victorian engineering construction of which Isambard Kingdom Brunel in his stovepipe hat would have been very proud. There were wires and pulleys in a framework of vertical and horizontal girders, all producing a dark presence of mysterious purpose. At one end was a huge tapering nozzle, not unlike the back end of a massive jet engine. This is where the eponymous ‘blow’ emanated. To achieve the enormous airflows required the big fan inside the duct was driven by not just one but no less than four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, no doubt left over from the huge production run that powered many of the RAF’s air assets during the Second World War. If, thirty years after that conflict was over, this seemed a risky strategy, we were also shown a substantial pile of wooden crates, each containing a brand-new Merlin. It seemed that spares would not be a problem for some time to come! After a guided tour around this wondrous artefact we were then treated to the sight and sound of the Blower Tunnel in action. It did indeed emit a noise like a runaway Lancaster bomber or a flight of four Spitfires! And the amount of ‘blow’ was very impressive. We were told that all sorts of things were put just downstream of the nozzle including whole aircraft, cockpit sections (for hood jettison and ejection seat tests) and missiles. Using liquid nitrogen the monstrous thing could even be made to produce calibrated ice particles for testing anti-icing systems. It was fascinating and showed our foreign pals just how inventive and cost-conscious we Brits really can be. As we departed the boffins gave us each a brochure about the Blower Tunnel, in which we could read that it would cost £250 per day to hire it!
Declining this offer, we then moved on to a shabby-looking hangar on the south side of the airfield and we were invited to step inside. It was the Environmental Test Centre. In the roof were radiant panels that could heat the place up to Saharan temperatures and around the walls were ducts for blowing freezing cold air in to mimic arctic conditions. Being a hangar a whole medium-sized aircraft could be wheeled in and either heated up or cooled down so that the onboard systems could be run-up and tested for complicity with the requirements for the range of operational temperature. When we had been shown around, the folk who managed the test facility turned the heaters on. It was amazing how quickly it warmed up in there. Having only recently come out of the end of a Wiltshire winter I was glad that they did not demonstrate the cooling.
Having chilled off a little outside we were then told we were going to visit someone called Reg. In fact Reg was not a person but a location. While flying I had noticed a large sunken area alongside the main taxiway. It had concrete parking areas and all sorts of wires on poles and nets of thick cable suspended 20 or so feet off the ground. There were also pointy radar transmitters around the place. Every now and then an aeroplane or helicopter would be parked there. This was the Radio Environmental Generator: hence REG. A boffin showed us round and soon lost all of us that did not have electrical engineering degrees as to what they did and how it worked. The best bit was when he told us that they had recently put a Jaguar fighter-bomber in there and when they had fired their electrical death rays at it all the bombs had fallen off!
The final visit was to the ‘new’ computer building. This was where all the flight-test instrumentation, processing and analysing was to be centred. Only some of this had been done by the time of our visit but we were still expected to get excitedly interested in looking at a series of large cupboards with flashing lights and whirling magnetic tape on them. All this was now beginning to saturate our minds, so glazed looks, similar to those seen at the end of three hours in Ground School, started to appe
ar. Thankfully that was the end of the visit and we retreated to ETPS and what had become normal life.
The introduction to the next Visit Instruction, under Operation Order ETPS 2/75, read:
Object of the Visit. The object of this visit is to enable students to gain some knowledge of: the current research programmes of the Royal Aircraft Establishment Bedford; the design and manufacture of aircraft engines by Rolls Royce Bristol Engine Division; and Concorde’s flight test programmed by the British Aircraft Corporation, Fairford. In addition the visit will enable students to meet design staffs, test pilots and other personalities with whom they may work in the future.
The visit was to be two whole days out of school, on 30 April and 1 May. So it would be our first trip with an overnight stop, at the Royal Hotel in Bristol. For all these visits we had to wear our best uniforms during the day and suits in the evenings.
The venerable Argosy was wheeled out again, with the senior staff at the helm, ably assisted by at least two of our air engineers. We all boarded in time to be airborne by 8.30 a.m. We were in gleeful mood, like so many boys going on a school trip; hardly surprising because that was very close to the truth. Our first destination was to be the large airfield at Thurleigh, near Bedford, with its 10,000ft long runway. It appeared over the horizon about half an hour later; hardly time to get into the good book I had brought. We were soon whisked away, in separate parties, around the place looking at and even ‘flying’ various research simulators. We were told of the current experimental flight tests being undertaken on aircraft such as the BAC-111 and HS 748 airliners, a highly modified single-seat Folland Gnat and a Wessex helicopter. The trials varied from Civil Aviation Authority sponsored work on landing safely in zero visibility, steep approaches and esoteric research into air turbulence. As well as talking to and being talked at by the scientists, most of the resident RAF and RN test pilots were there to chat to us and give us a foretaste of what the next few years might bring.
By the end of the morning, lunch was beckoning, but we had to travel to Bristol to get it. After another hour or so in the innards of the Argosy our own, by now empty, insides were replenished with a magnificent spread laid on by the marketing department of Messrs Rolls and Royce; it really was a Rolls-Royce of a buffet! The company’s itinerary then very sensibly avoided the post-prandial trap of putting us into a warm, quiet and darkly-lit room for lectures, where most of us would have had no difficulty in dropping gently into the arms of Morpheus. Instead we were taken on a tour of the engine assembly areas and test facilities. As might be expected there were lots of cylindrical constructions of varying sizes all wrapped in tortuous pipework, which we all recognised as jet engines. The best bit was watching an RB 199 Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MRCA) engine being run up to full reheat in one of the test facilities.
Having got us through the post-lunch soporific danger hour we were then taken into the aforesaid warm, quiet and darkly-lit lecture room where we met the R-R test pilots: Graham Andrews, John Lewis, Ken Robertson and our recent acquaintance from the RAeS, Harry Pollitt. They talked to us about various test programmes on their current range of engines, including the RB 211, Olympus, Adour and Gem. Then came a talk that many of the UK contingent speculated might be a late April Fools’ joke. Apparently the company had proposed an airborne simulator for asymmetric flight. As I knew all too well, from my many hours as a Canberra pilot and instructor, teaching pilots to handle correctly and safely a multi-engined aircraft following the failure of one or more engines was a hazardous business. Certainly on the Canberra force, more aircraft and aircrew had been lost practising these procedures than had been lost under actual engine failure cases. Thus R-R had come up with an idea for a Jet Provost trainer to be modified in an imaginative and unique way to give student pilots a fairly realistic opportunity to learn how to fly an aircraft under asymmetric power.
Their idea was to put a vane inside the end of the jet exhaust pipe. On selection of the ‘engine failure’ system by the instructor this vane would then be deflected to give the student experience at correcting the yaw and the engine thrust would be reduced. On the face of it this would cause the same effects as losing an engine in a twin-engined aeroplane and had the potential to be a safe and cost-effective way of introducing pilots to the principles and handling techniques of asymmetric flight. During the tea break that followed a few notable remarks arose following the presentation of this cunning scheme. The most memorable were:
Duncan Ross: ‘Only the British could build the Jet Provost and then reduce its thrust and give it an asymmetric problem!’
Chris Yeo: ‘It’s a great idea … the ultimate stall turn device!’
The evening was spent playing skittles at the White Lion hostelry in Thornbury. But this time there was a trophy to be won. It was a large bone, mounted on a wooden stand. This strange prize was known as the Bone of Contention and was played for annually between teams from Filton and ETPS. We had been told that we should not try too hard to win as the CTFI, who had to keep the Bone in his office, was not partial to the suppurating and smelly object! However, the opposition was even worse than we were and, anyway, telling a bunch of pilots not to be competitive was a bit of a waste of time. The skittles match was followed by another sumptuous meal, several nightcaps and return to our hotel.
During the afternoon we had been asked to provide ten student volunteers to go flying the next morning, the only drawback being that we would have to rise at sparrow-break and forego breakfast; I volunteered. The bus duly turned up to collect us at 6.30 a.m. and, within the hour, we had boarded a strange-looking aeroplane called a VFW 614, which was a 40-seat, short-haul airliner of German origin. It was at Filton for tests on its M45 engines, which were uniquely mounted on pylons above the wings. The logic of the bizarre configuration was driven by a desire for the aircraft to sit low to the ground for ease of access and maintenance. R-R test pilot John Lewis was at the pointed end and kindly invited us each in turn to go up to the cockpit and ‘have a go’. I actually don’t remember much about that, other than there was nothing out of the ordinary there. The aircraft handled much as one might expect for a fairly simple machine of its size and weight. What was odd from a passenger appeal view was that the rearmost rows of seats, two each side of the aisle, had no sight of the ground but an excellent view of the engines, which, in any turbulence, tended to wobble sideways on their pylons. The VFW 614 did not turn out to be a success story; however, we were all very grateful for the opportunity to fly in it and experience handling it.
After we returned to Filton we transferred to the Argosy for the final stage of our visit and we were flown the short hop to Fairford, in Gloucestershire, the home of the British Concorde test team. There we met two of Concorde’s celebrity test pilots Brian Trubshaw and John Cochrane, who talked to us about that beautiful flying machine’s flight test programme. There were lots of questions followed by a look around the impressively graceful aircraft itself. ‘Awesome, astounding, amazing’ were just some of the words emanating from the gobsmacked student body – except the Frenchman, who was telling everybody that Concorde was really a Gallic invention! After that we were treated to our final buffet lunch and then boarded our faithful old freighter to return to Boscombe Down; from the sublime to the ridiculous!
If we thought that was a good outing, we had something even better to come. On Friday 6 June we were due to visit the Paris Air Show. Passports were retrieved from almost forgotten places, alarms set for an early start and best suits donned. The Argosy was airborne by 7.45 a.m. and an hour or so later we arrived at one of the French Air Force’s Flight Test Centres, a place called Brétigny, about 60km south of Paris. From there we were bussed (yet again) north, past Orly Airport and then via La Périphérique around Paris, to Le Bourget and the Paris Air Show; or as the French call it: Le Salon International de l’Aeronautique et de l’Espace. No wonder the French talk so much, they have to get in so many more words!
We arrived at coffee time and me
lted into the considerable crowds. Looking round the static aircraft display there was a lot to see: the latest American F-14, F-15 and F-16 fighters, French Dassault Mirages of all sorts and, most impressively, an Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-144 supersonic ‘Concordski’ airliner. We were allowed to walk under it and I couldn’t help noticing boiler-plate strengthening with huge round-headed rivets under the aircraft’s centre-section. Engineering more reminiscent of shipbuilding than aviation!
Each of us had been given the name of a UK aerospace company to remember; those that did so and managed to locate the appropriate chalet were rewarded with lunch and drinks. As I sat there in the sunshine, with a prawn cocktail and a glass of wine, watching the latest products of the worldwide aircraft industry being put through their paces I could hardly believe my fortune. It made all the long hours of report writing, Ground School, test card preparation and demanding flying worthwhile. I could have stayed there for the whole week. But that was not to be. At about 5 p.m. it all came to an end and we took another hour-long coach journey through the jams around Paris back to CEV Brétigny, where we wearily climbed back aboard the Argosy and set off to return to good old Blighty. However, it was far too late on a Friday night for Boscombe Down to be open so we landed at RAF Lyneham. Then, yes you’ve guessed it; there was another coach journey. By the time we reached Boscombe the Officers’ Mess Bar was closed! Back to reality!
We had only one day back at school before we were off again. The man trying to keep the flying programme running to schedule, Graham Bridges, was now pulling his hair out – all these beautiful summer days going by with no productive syllabus flying being completed! This next trip was to the seaside, landing at Shoreham aerodrome on the English South Coast for a visit to the Singer Link Miles factory in nearby Lancing. Transport this time was courtesy of the RAF Handling Squadron and their Andover military transport aircraft. The purpose of this visit was to see the civil and military flight simulators that the company produced for customers around the world. The lunch at the Chatsworth Hotel in Worthing was definitely real and not simulated, nor were the wines. The gourmets among us were starting to draw up a league table of the quality of field trip lunches. To date Rolls-Royce had a narrow lead over Singer Link Miles. Who would be next?