Trials and Errors

by Mike Brooke

  The trip went off much as planned. At low level the Buccaneer handled very well and was easy to fly at 250ft over the undulating territory of the principality. It was bumpy but I reflected that I could not have sustained such flight in my old Canberra B(I)8. The response to the turbulence of the highly wing-loaded Buccaneer made operating in such conditions totally safe and effective. I reckoned that we were probably the only fast-jet barrelling down the Welsh valleys and over the mountain ridges that day. Here the Buccaneer was at home; doing 450kt at 250ft. Now it was fun and felt perfectly safe and effective.

  When we got back to Boscombe the wind was now so strong that only the shorter, north-south runway was available to us. I did one practice approach and then set up for the final landing. The gusty wind and turbulence made it more challenging than my previous arrivals; there was to be no smooth ‘kissing’ the runway this time – Flt Lt Morriss would have approved! And that was how my initial encounter with Mr Blackburn’s naval bomber ended – with a good carrier arrival: a positive impact.

  So the flying was over and the writing continued. By the end of our allotted time our report ran to over 150 pages. Against the requirements given to us we had found that, overall, the Buccaneer was unacceptable for service in its strike/attack role. Of course that could be construed as a surprising outcome, given that the aircraft was still in service and would go on to operate with the RAF for almost another twenty years. However, the grounds on which we found the aircraft unacceptable, as it was presented to us, were two-fold. First, there was a high probability of the loss of the aircraft if a significant split occurred between the elements of the flap and droop system. We felt that the reliance on aircrew monitoring the three indicators (the aforementioned ‘cheeses’) was an unreasonable expectation; especially in a high stress environment, such as during an emergency. Neil had done an engineering analysis of this system and had worked out a solution that would automatically halt the movement of the flap and droop elements, as well as signal an alarm warning in the cockpit, if a split occurred. This solution involved quite simple and cheap electronics. If it was to be incorporated then the system would become acceptable for service use. The second item that we felt was not acceptable in the mid 1970s and beyond was the overall utility of the pilot’s cockpit; to be a bit less than objective we had heard it called an ‘ergonomic slum’ – and that by some of the Buccaneer’s aircrew. No individual item was bad enough to cause the unacceptable assessment (with the possible exception of the tailplane blow gauge under the pilot’s left armpit!) but there were too many such poor locations and there were multiple possibilities of mis-selection and omission for adequate overall safety.

  The final act was to give a presentation in the large A&AEE HQ Building Lecture Theatre to an audience of our fellow students, ETPS staff, Boscombe Down aircrew and scientists and, most dauntingly, a few folk from the Buccaneer force. Our presentation went quite well but there were audible mutterings when we came up with the final answer. We could not recommend that the HAS Buccaneer Mk S2A be procured for the RAF in the low-level strike/attack role without significant and essential modifications to the flap/droop system and the cockpit layout. We also thought it highly desirable that a more effective yaw auto-stabiliser be fitted, a physical restriction on aileron deflection above 530kt be installed and warnings be issued about the poor longitudinal stability at speeds between 270 and 360kt. Of course this was an academic exercise looking in detail at a 15-year-old aeroplane against contemporary requirements and standards.

  Once we had answered all the questions from our audience, some of which were quite penetrating and even hostile, we repaired to the nearby ETPS crew room where Udo Kerkhoff had stashed several bottles of German schnapps to refortify each team’s post-presentation coffee. After a short while the knowledge that we had nothing else to do started to sink in. It was a very strange feeling. The next event of note was the McKenna Dinner and our graduation. Hurrah!

  Notes

  11 In fact there had been one Buccaneer Preview by ETPS. However, that was by using a Boscombe Down-based aircraft operating under MoD Procurement Executive rules and not RAF Regulations.

  12 The cables installed on airfields work on the same principle as those on aircraft carrier decks. However, because there is a lot more space the run-out length can be longer so the stress on the aircraft is less. The cable is supported by discs of dense rubber, so that the hook will go under it and successfully engage. The cable is restrained and retracted afterwards by hydraulic motors. That is why the installations are called Rotary Hydraulic Arrestor Gear or RHAG.

  11 GRADUATION AT LAST

  Those last days at ETPS were a paradoxical active limbo. By now we RAF guys had received our postings; the overseas course members were going to return to their own flight test centres and become involved in their national aerospace projects. As for the Brits most did not even have to move house because they were staying at Boscombe Down to join one of the test squadrons: Chris Yeo to A (Fast Jet) Squadron; Duncan Ross to B (Heavy Aircraft) Squadron; and Rob Tierney, Simon Thornewill, Terry Creed and Rob Humphries to D (Rotary Wing) Squadron. I think that Neil Sellers ended up involved with MRCA, which eventually became the Tornado. So that left Vic Lockwood, George Ellis and myself to head to pastures new. Vic and I were posted to the Experimental Flying Squadron at the RAE at Farnborough and George to the Aerodynamics Flight at RAE Bedford-Thurleigh. The latter appointment was usually reserved for the RAF graduate test pilot with the most active brain cells; neither Vic nor I could compete with George in this respect!

  My arrival date at Farnborough was slated to be 22 December, ten days after the McKenna Dinner. That threw Mo and I into a frenzy. We had to obtain three competitive quotes for the removal, make journeys to Farnborough to take over our OMQ and check out the local area, as well as packing everything – and just a week before Christmas! When things just got too much, and as I had done throughout the course, I would contact Ted Steer in the ETPS Ops Room and enquire as to whether there might be a single-seat Hunter sitting around doing nothing. One day there was, so I presented myself for briefing and authorisation and spent a very happy hour in my favourite aeroplane and element, flying a Hunter F6A at 420kt and 250ft on a bright, clear late-November afternoon. I also flew the Canberra again, this time with Mike Vickers putting me through the rigours of an Instrument Rating Test (IRT) so that I could turn up at Farnborough fit to fly at night, in cloud and in poor weather.

  Although some days were busy we all found it difficult to ‘wind down’ to a normal sort of life once more. The sixteen-hour days of study, preparation, flying, report writing and just thinking were over. So were the parties; although some farewell dos were happening. It was weird to be once more available to bathe the kids, read them stories, put them to bed, to sit down in the evening to watch TV and even do some cooking. Vic Lockwood reckoned that he would install a desk and anglepoise lamp in an understairs cupboard in his new house, so that when he got ETPS withdrawal symptoms he could retire to his cubbyhole and write a report about it! Then the last day finally dawned. The night we had awaited so long: The McKenna Dinner. It was to be a Mess Dress or Black Tie stag event. Our ladies would be invited to spend the evening at the ‘White House’, the rather grand OMQ occupied by OC ETPS. Naturally our erstwhile schoolmasters saw the whole thing as just another test exercise so there was a briefing, which we all attended. Some of us were allocated a guest to greet, accompany to the anteroom for pre-dinner drinks and ensure that they found their place at table. I was delighted to discover that my charge was going to be Chris Wren, the celebrated and very gifted cartoonist who attended all McKenna Dinners to produce a cartoon of the prizewinners and significant personalities for later publication in Flight magazine. Chris Wren had become a bit of a hero of mine when I first discovered his brilliantly conceived and executed cartoons in the likes of Punch and RAF Flying Review, as well as Flight. From a very early age I had been a bit of an artist and won prizes at my schools. I ha
d learnt cartooning and Wren’s style was a big influence on much of my drawing. Over the past year I had kept an open diary of our course and I still have it today; it has within it many of my own works, but its star insertion is a copy of Chris Wren’s submission for the Christmas 1975 issue of Flight.

  The day seemed to drag. But by 7 p.m. I was spruced up, in my best RAF bib and tucker, heading up the road with a few of the guys. We arrived to be herded into a room where we were to await our allocated guests, who would be brought to us by those who had ‘volunteered’ to do so. Officially the event was to start at 7.30 p.m. with dinner at 8 p.m. It was not long after 7.30 p.m. that a dapper, moustachioed elder gentleman was headed my way. I introduced myself and escorted him to the large anteroom where aperitifs were being served. After we had taken ours, I asked him about his career, how he had started and why he majored on aircraft and flying. Someone had obviously told him of my artistic bent so he became the inquisitor for a while. After ten or so minutes I thought that I’d acted the star-struck apprentice for long enough and I invited Mr Wren to meet some of the other graduates. As I headed towards a knot of our overseas colleagues I found that progress became interrupted by folk he had met before. Each greeting took time and, before I knew it, we were being invited to process into dinner. I had searched the seating plan for my guest’s position at table and escorted him to it before finding my own. Our senior guest that evening was no lesser figure than the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Andrew Humphrey. I’d never seen a real-life CAS before, let alone heard one speak or shaken his hand! The president of the dinner was, as is the custom, the OC ETPS, or, for the evening, ‘The Headmaster’. During the third term this duty had been transferred from the newly promoted Air Commodore Alan Merriman to the very capable shoulders of Gp Capt. Mike Adams. After everyone was in place and grace had been said, we sat down to enjoy what might be the best dining-in night we had experienced so far. But before a knife or a fork was lifted there was a special ceremony to come. We were all invited to look at a particular corner of the room, where high up on the picture rail was a camera, along each side of which stretched an array of flash units. At the instruction, ‘SMILE!’ there was a blinding flash and we and our cheesy grins were frozen for perpetuity. As the song goes … ‘Flash! Bang! Wallop! What a picture; what a photograph!’

  The cover of our McKenna Dinner menu, signed by many there and with Chris Wren’s cartoons of himself and of me. (Author’s collection)

  The meal passed in the usual way with silver service, ample wine and convivial chat. The food, company, ambience and sense of celebration were all there. It was a night to remember. At the conclusion of the eating, following toasts to Her Majesty the Queen and ‘all the heads of state here represented’, and there were lots of those, it was time for the Headmaster’s speech. Mike Adams was attired with what is known as the ‘titfer’, a rather well-worn schoolmaster’s mortar board, in order to give his report on the class of ’75. The ‘titfer’ had been acquired nefariously by some ETPS students in the dim and distant past.

  Chris Wren’s cartoon for Flight magazine of the 1975 McKenna Dinner. (Author’s collection)

  At the end of his speech, which made many non-too-flattering allusions to some of our number, the CO invited Sir Andrew to present us with our graduation certificates. This took some time, with each of us making our way to the centre of the top table when our name was called. Then it was the prize giving. None of us except the winner of the McKenna Trophy (for the best overall performance on the course) knew who had won what. The McKenna winner knew because it was he who had to give the response and thanks on behalf of the graduating courses.

  US Naval Aviator Tom Morgenfeld was that man. George ‘Mad Dog’ Ellis, he of the deerstalker hat, waistcoat and watch and chain, was the runner-up, taking possession of the Patuxent Shield, which had been given to ETPS by its sister school over the pond – the US Naval Test Pilot School (USNTPS) based at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland. But it was Chris Yeo who won the prize for the most prizes! He took home the Sir Alan Cobham Award as the best pilot and shared the Hawker Hunter Trophy for the best Preview with our great Dane, Svend Hjort. Rob Humphries won the Dunlop Trophy as the best FTE and Terry Creed the Westland Trophy as the top Rotarian. But the biggest cheer went up when it was announced that the erstwhile Italian Starfighter pilot turned whirlybird driver, Bruno Bellucci, had won the Edwards Award, given by the other stateside test pilots’ school, for the most improved student.

  Sir Andrew spoke great and good words; the only part that I still recall nearly forty years later is his introductory sentence: ‘If you wake up one morning and find that you have become the Chief of the Air Staff …’ That was something that was not likely to happen to any of the gathered company! Later, after port, cigars and liqueurs, we retired to the anteroom where postprandial chat continued and got progressively louder. The new graduate test pilots downed much beer and many silly jokes were told.

  So that was that. I, along with all those folks, some of whom would stay friends for life, had passed the most demanding flying course that the RAF could devise. We British officers would have the miniscule characters ‘tp’ added to our entries in the relevant service lists. Those letters and our certificates were the total extent of the recognition of our ten months hard labour. But that didn’t matter. We knew what we had achieved, so did our families. And much of what I had been able to achieve in 1975 was down to the support of my long-suffering wife. She had typed all my reports, except the Preview, which was typed by the lovely HQ Typing Pool girls on base. Mo had also taken back a lot of the domestic duties to allow me the time to do my ‘homework’ on most evenings. She had been a tower of strength in many ways and helped to keep my feet, not literally of course, on the ground.

  What had we learned? Well, lots of maths, physics, Greek, test techniques, grammar, syntax, paragraph structure and how to fly about ten disparate types of aircraft. But the most important thing was that there was now a new way to work. We had to be objective, gathering evidence to build a case for improving effectiveness and safety and we had to do it with unwavering honesty and integrity. So bring it on!

  For the final entry in my chronicle of the 1975 ETPS courses I wrote the following, in the school’s recommended style for the summary to a flight test report:

  The Summary

  There was a requirement for certain, selected members of the human race to attend the 1975 courses at the Empire Test Pilots’ School (ETPS). The aforementioned persons became members of Nos 34 Fixed Wing, 13 Rotary Wing and 2 FTE courses from February to December 1975.

  The ETPS courses were thoroughly tested over a period of ten months, one week and five days, in variable weather conditions, and were found unacceptable due to excessive and extensive pilot workload (HQR 9).

  Recommendations are made that the aforementioned human beings be forever prevented from having to undergo such a course again and that they are awarded the accolade that they so richly deserve: that all men will know that they are banned from all further ETPS courses. It is also recommended as essential that the courses be reduced in length by ten months and one week and consist only of rehearsals for the McKenna Dinner.

  PART 2

  TESTING TO LEARN

  12 FARNBOROUGH

  In the mid 1970s the RAE was a large government-funded aerospace research organisation that operated as a part of the UK Ministry of Defence called the Procurement Executive; henceforth referred to as MOD(PE). This title is an anagram of the word ‘MOPED’ and I would soon come to realise that there was a significance relating to the speed at which things got done within the organisation. The MOD(PE) head offices were in central London and I wondered what the man in the street there would make of someone announcing that they worked in ‘procurement’.

  I was headed for the Farnborough arm of the RAE, which was the biggest of the nationwide locations from where it managed its wide variety of research projects. The other main RAE si
tes were at West Freugh13 in southwest Scotland, Aberporth in west Wales and at Thurleigh, near Bedford, in the English Midlands. The RAE site at Farnborough was originally a large, open area of heathland known as Laffan’s Plain and Cove Common that stretched about 3 miles west from the Farnborough to Aldershot road. By the end of the nineteenth century the British Army had, under the direction of the Royal Engineers, developed the use of hydrogen filled balloons and set up their headquarters at the nearby military garrison of Aldershot. But by 1905 the activities there needed more space than was available within the garrison. In the search for more elbow room for his large, floating charges, the beady eyes of the OC, Col J.E. Capper RE, looked northwards and found Laffan’s Plain and Cove Common wide open and waiting.

  After the move and the construction of a huge hangar14 the unit became known as the Army Balloon Factory. But balloons were not going to be the only output of ‘the Factory’. Capper was joined at Farnborough by two pioneers of British aviation: Samuel Franklin Cody and John William Dunne. Both were given honorary military ranks and encouraged by Capper to pursue their individual efforts to design, build and fly an aeroplane. It was the eccentric, American born, ‘Colonel’ Sam Cody who was the first to succeed. On 16 October 1908 he took his large biplane to the top of a slight rise at the eastern end of Laffan’s Plain and took off in a westerly direction; he flew less than 300 yards. It was the first officially recorded sustained flight in Britain of a heavier-than-air, powered, man-carrying aeroplane.