The Meteorological Research Flight and Its Predecessors and Successors
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Journal of Aeronautical History Paper No. 2012/06 The Meteorological Research Flight and its predecessors and successors G. B. Gratton Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements Building 125, Cranfield University Cranfield, Bedfordshire, MK43 0AL, UK Abstract This paper surveys the history of atmospheric research flying in Britain. The history includes substantial use of balloons and kites before the first world war, and expanded with the wartime need for meteorological understanding, leading to the creation of the first dedicated “Meteor Flight” in 1918, which existed for nearly 2 years until being disbanded as part of a post war general demobilisation. Between the wars, regular meteorological observations from aircraft were taken, as well as the provision of crew meteorologists to the new airship services. But airborne atmospheric research activities and the improvement of such capability were minimal through 1941. The creation of a new organisation attached to the Boscombe Down High Altitude Flight in 1942 re-discovered and expanded a “three-strand” pattern of atmospheric research flying which combined instrument development, scientific understanding and enhanced aircraft capability. This led to the creation of the Met Research Flight or MRF in 1946, which from 1946 to 2001 established and maintained a British lead in such work, and led to many fundamental discoveries in meteorology, as well as in several distinct fields of instrument science. Other organisations contemporary with the early period of MRF carried out similar observational work, but lacked the three-strand approach which characterised MRF’s world leading organisation. They had all been disbanded by 1965, superseded by automated observations and irrelevant to research requirements. A continued atmospheric research flying effort, built upon the MRF model, was explored elsewhere in Britain from the mid 1980s and continues to the present day with both new and successor organisations, the largest present successor being FAAM operating a BAe 146 aircraft. 1. INTRODUCTION AND EARLY HISTORY The development of the two sciences of aeronautics and meteorology are necessarily intertwined. As aircraft have become more capable they have needed increasingly high quality data about the atmosphere in which they must operate safety, whilst in order to provide this information, meteorologists must use aircraft to determine the characteristics of the atmosphere, to refine their ability to produce a variety of types of forecast. Meteorological observations from aircraft and balloons cover a spectrum from routine observations for immediate use in producing forecasts to experimental observations that 83 Journal of Aeronautical History Paper No. 2012/06 provide data to advance the science of meteorology, but are not used for immediate forecasts. This paper is mainly concerned with the latter type of observations, but sets these in the context of the full range of meteorological flying. The United Kingdom, historically a leader in both aeronautical development and in meteorological research, has unsurprisingly also tended to take an initiative in meteorological research flying. An early visionary was William Napier Shaw (later Sir Napier Shaw, FRS (1)), director of the Meteorological Office, who in 1913 (2) was already carrying out experiments using kites. In 1907 he had published papers (3) on the effects of vertical air currents and use of kites in meteorological research, proposed that vanes could be mounted on aircraft to measure motion of the air, and proposed that other quantities including “atmospheric electricity” might also be measured. This was arguably impracticable with the crude aeroplanes of the time, indeed Britain would not achieve powered manned flight until 1908, but the rapid development of aeronautical technology during WW1 started to make this possible. A further and more practical pioneer was Flt.Cdr. B C Clayton of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), who in 1916-1917 produced “Records of temperature and altitude” which were published with comments by Shaw in 1917 (4). A contemporary of his, Major W R G Atkins, flying with the Royal Flying Corps in Egypt, was taking similar readings which were published in 1918 (5). Through the middle and later part of the war, despite early resistance, most British military units had access to a meteorologist; The Royal Flying Corps had introduced meteorological training for pilots in 1913 at Upavon (6). In particular, the use of poison gas had substantially concentrated the army’s mind on knowing from which direction the wind was blowing. By 1918, the British armed services were releasing 13,000 balloons per month in order to determine wind strength and direction. Particularly following the earlier work of fighter pilot turned eminent meteorologist C K M Douglas, a further and similarly minded contemporary (7, 8, 9) of Clayton and Atkins, the Royal Flying Corps Meteor Flight was established about February 1918 at Berck (later known as Berck-sur-Mer) in France for weather research flights (10, 11). This consisted of two pilots and four groundcrew, operating two Armstrong Whitworth FK8 aeroplanes (Figure 1), later replaced after several accidents with two de Havilland dH.9s. The aircraft were fitted with psychrometers (combined dry and wet bulb thermometer devices that provided relative humidity) and paper trace recording RAF barothermographs. From March 1918 cloud photographs were also being taken, with a “photographer” (actually a photographic technician) attached to the flight to process these. With the formation of the Royal Air Force from the RFC and RNAS it became the “RAF Meteorological Flight”, but otherwise continued its work as originally established, and Douglas himself took command in May 1918. 84 Journal of Aeronautical History Paper No. 2012/06 Figure 1 Armstrong Whitworth FK8 (Expired Crown Copyright) After a last instrumented ascent on 31 March 1919 this was partially disbanded at the beginning of April 1919, moving to Bickendorf near Cologne where flights recommencing on 10 June. In July the dH9s were replaced by a third type, the Bristol fighter. The flight however was permanently disbanded in September following a last flight on 28 August 1919, as part of the general post-war demobilisation, but not before it had obtained substantial temperature and humidity data up to 14,000 ft. It is certainly this short-lived unit that built on pre-war foundations of kite and balloon observations, and wartime balloon observations, to first formally and rigorously fly instrumentation on board a powered aeroplane in support of meteorological research. Douglas himself transferred to the Meteorological Office where he later became regarded as his generation’s pre-eminent forecaster. Figure 2 Meteor Flight’s “logo”, as displayed on their aircraft (From reference 10) By the end of WW1 then, meteorology was developing the form of a science, and the taking of measurements in aircraft was, whilst in its infancy, both established and published (12). In 1919 for example, there was a meteorologist in the crew of the first flight of the R34 Airship across the Atlantic – Lt. Guy Harris (6). It is known that there were observations made by, and forecasts issued to, pilots of the new airborne mail services, but historical records in this regard 85 Journal of Aeronautical History Paper No. 2012/06 are poor. In the same year, the Meteorological Office became part of the newly formed Air Ministry. Two further, short-lived met flights are known to have been formed, at Baldonnel (southwest of Dublin) and Upavon in the early 1920s, but their impact was small. A new start occurred in 1924 when a Meteorological Flight was formed within the Royal Air Force, initially at Eastchurch then moving to Duxford in 1925. This operated for most of its history with Siskin IIIa aircraft which appear to have been on the strength of the unit until 1936, occasionally supplemented by Gloster Gauntlets and Gladiators. The flight suffered one fatal accident (a mid-air collision killing Met Flight pilot Flt.Sgt. Cecil Tostevin in December 1928 (13)). In 1936 the unit was moved to RAF Mildenhall. Little published research exists from the work of this unit, but given that it existed for about 12 years, presumably at the time it was considered to have considerable value to the RAF and the meteorological office. A similar unit was also established at RAF Aldergrove in 1936, equipped initially with Bristol Bulldogs, which were replaced early in 1937 with Gloster Gauntlets. All of these were arguably obsolete aircraft when in Met Flight use – a pattern that typifies much of the history of meteorological flying. The most notable pilot of the flight was Flying Officer Jeffrey Quill, later Chief Test Pilot of Supermarine, who joined the flight in 1933 and became its commander in 1934 – receiving the Air Force Cross in recognition of achieving a 100% flight record for twice daily meteorological ascents to 25,000 ft through a 13 month period ending in December 1935 (14). This was his last RAF position, as he left the service to become deputy Chief Test Pilot at Vickers Supermarine in January 1936. Quill describes flights measuring humidity at 50mb (~1400 ft) intervals using a psychrometer mounted on a wing strut, very similarly to that flown by Meteor Flight in 1918/19, and a large accurate altimeter calibrated in millibars (now known as hectoPascals). He also describes that: The RAF in those days was very far from being an all-weather air force. In the Met Flight we developed our own all-weather techniques and very effectively in the circumstances. Many of these techniques seem to have spread informally through the RAF, and became a standard currency in aircraft operations – including contacting and obtaining meteorological information from potential diversion airfields, use of controlled descents over low terrain to make cloudbreaks, and accurate flying in cloud using only airspeed, altitude, a slip-ball and turn needle and no horizon reference (which would now be known as “partial panel” but at that time reflected the total instrumentation available in these open cockpit biplanes).