Fun in mil research

Fun in Military Research

I started as a Ministry of Supply student apprentice at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough in 1957. This involved a year divided between college and learning the basic skills of fitting, turning, skiving, etc, before moving on to the research departments of Aerodynamics, Weapons, Radio, etc.

The first time that I took a hacksaw to an aircraft was when I was asked to dismantle a De H. Venom wing for examination of the main spar. No problems had been experienced until 1956. Remember, this was the time of the Suez war. During the war the naughty Egyptian gunners unsportingly shot at our brave aircrew, causing them to pull higher g than they did in training, to avoid being colanderised. This resulted in creaks which might indicate cracks. My job was to reveal the damage.

From there I went onto bigger things. I was asked to start dismantling a 4 engined Lincoln. I had the job of removing all the fire extinguishers and letting them off.

Throughout the 5 year apprenticeship we had rag weeks in September immediately after the SBAC Farnborough Airshow. We were allowed to borrow bomb trolley flat beds to build floats on prior to the procession and to use as much of the material left over from the dismantled Airshow stands as we wanted. It was good training in design. Someone built a quarter scale submarine complete with deck gun that used sodium chlorate and sugar. I built a fire breathing dragon which had a Tiger Moth fuselage as a tail. Unfortunately, the smoke blew back inside at speeds above 4m.p.h. All my floats incorporated a barrel of cider which was mandatory. Unfortunately, this led to a disaster when my galleon float capsized. We had been plying the tractor driver with too much cider and he took a corner too fast. The weight of the 3 scaffolding pole masts was too much and the whole galleon was ripped off by centrifugal force. My friend Graham Rood and I had our fall broken by landing on a girl called Natasha who was then taken to hospital. She was diagnosed as suffering from a serious excess of alcohol.

On another occasion we, the RAG committee, were taken to court for aiding and abetting the driver of a motorised bedstead. He had cleverly attached 4 wheels and a Villiers motorcycle engine to a YMCA bed. He was fined £10 (two weeks pay) and had his license taken away for 6 months. This did not endear the police to us. We were let off with a caution.

Perhaps I should digress, or regress, to the first year of the apprenticeship. We found that personal things were disappearing in the hostel. (Lawrence of Arabia had lived in the hostel as Aircraftman Shaw when it was an RAF barracks but we could not blame him). As we were all new and didn’t know each others background, we suspected each other of the thefts-except for “Jock” who was the heart and soul of the party-until someone spotted him wearing their Cavalry Twill trousers. The “authorities” were alerted but nothing was done and he remained. Some of the lads with a car tied Jock up and delivered him to the altar stone at Stonehenge and left him there. Unfortunately, the police found him and returned him to Farnborough before the lads got back as their car had broken down on the way back. Life is SO UNFAIR. 1 Car rallies were frequent but not all had cars so I decided to have one around the RAE using the internal bus service that ran every 20 minutes or so. The clues were such as : “Go to Q153 building room G4 and find out what is marked on the calendar for 6th May”. Now I had already found that that date had written on it: “Meeting with Smith here”. So a succession of strange apprenti would be knocking on the door with all sorts of weird reasons for entering the office and looking at the calendar. I often wondered what the poor bloke using the office thought. It was all good fun and a help for further educating the uninitiated Degree types at Cranfield who were sadly lacking in RAE apprentice expertise in rocket/bomb making.

After 2 years at Cranfield I moved to Boscombe Down to help with research into ejection seats, parachutes, and aviation medicine.

It was fun blasting ejection seats with air in front of a blower tunnel powered by 6 Merlin engines. The sound from 10 yards away was awesome. It was also the time when we had TSR2. I saw every flight except for the first which took place on a Sunday. If we hadn’t had it cancelled by the Wilson Government we would still be selling spares for it all over the world. That reminds me. Wilson had a house on the Scillies. There was a lovely picture of him boarding a Sea King to get there, wearing a Mk.1 bone dome the wrong way round. I reckon the Navy did it purposely.

We found a new way to drill holes in the Salisbury Plain chalk. We dropped field guns from Beverlys and sometimes the parachutes didn’t open! At other times we flew the Beverly at just a foot above the ground to drop platforms out of the back. I asked the pilot what it was like to fly such a large lumbering aircraft so low. He replied “It’s like flying a council house from the top bedroom window”.

Helicopters were more fun but still had some risks. I was doing some de-misting trials in a Wasp with Marvin Buss –an ex-‘Nam pilot. He was also built like a council house but shorter. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the windscreen to mist up despite the O.A.T. being below zero. So we started “hurrring” on the screen with deep breaths. I soon began to hyperventilate and felt very dizzy and hoped he didn’t. I met him years later in Alabama but he could not recall such a minor incident.

In the Aeromedical section there was a RAF Medic who was trying to make an automatic blood pressure meter (sphygmomanometer). He had a tall tube of mercury with electrodes situated at 1cm intervals. As the mercury rose and fell as the bags inflated or deflated there were a series of sparks. The mercury column was open at the top so we were all exposed to mercury vapour. (Moral: Never let the Medical Profession try to engineer anything). One of the good things about Boscombe Down and, indeed, most airfields is the mushroom crop, especially if you can get to normally “out of bounds” parts by .

Return to RAE Farnborough

I was not doing much ergonomics at Boscombe so I moved back to Farnborough to the Human Engineering Division which was concerned with making life easier for aircrew by better cockpit design, controls, displays and clothing, etc.

It was in the days of Blue Sky research and my boss Bob Thorne said I could choose what I wanted to do (within reason). As were the up and coming thing I chose to examine their controls, vision, noise, thermal environment. 2 This entailed flying up each day to RAE Bedford where I learnt to drive a Britten Norman CC2 Cushioncraft. The controls were almost unmanageable, especially on a sloping airfield. The original CC2 was underpowered, so 2 Volkswagon engines were mounted either side driving propellers. They were controlled by small stiff throttle levers mounted on top of 2 whipstaves used originally to control yaw. It was almost impossible to set up the same revs’ on both engines. Starting at the top of the airfield I soon would begin a pirouette all the way down to the bottom-unless I drifted over the 1127 (later to become the Harrier) engine test grid, where I lost all my air cushion, and therefore lift. Embarassingly, a crane had to be called up to lift me off.

About this time the Ministry of Technology had funded an expedition up the Amazon but got little in return. The next year the BBC and Daily Mirror asked the Ministry to help fund another expedition to Africa. This time the Ministry insisted upon sending one of their people on it to do scientific research. Who had hovercraft experience, was both capable and quite expendable? They came up with my name. So on the 12th October 1969 I set off for Dakar in Senegal. All expedition members were issued with Kit bags. This was the first error in a poorly organised expedition. At Baggage Claim I saw my cylindrical Kit bag reach the top of the moving luggage ramp, hit the top sill and then roll back down again. Eventually I had to get the device stopped and retrieve it manually. By this time it was early morning. I took a frightening taxi ride to my hotel, (converted French prison) checked in and went to sleep. I was soon awoken by a pimp knocking on my door offering the services of the fattest, ugliest woman I had ever seen. I politely declined the offer. We set off in an SRN6 hovercraft up the coast to St Louis at the mouth of the Senegal river to await the rest of the party of scientists and journalists. Over the next month we travelled up the Senegal river as far as we could. We dismantled the craft, put it on a narrow gauge railway and reached the River Niger where we reassembled it. British Hovercraft that it would take about 2 days to take it apart and re-assemble. And so it would in their factory with tools and jigs. It took us about a week with just a few spanners and bits of rusty wire to tie it to the railway flatbeds. It was nearly our undoing as the dismantled craft, in 3 bits, became loose. We managed to stop just feet from a railway bridge which would have smashed the craft to bits. We rewired and continued and reassembled. At Bamako we all took a trip by Landrovers to the Dogone region where the tribe worship the invisible Dog Star near Sirius. It is said that every 5th member of a household there is a French anthropologist.

My job was to take environmental measurements in the cabin every quarter of an hour. I was also evaluating the “Harlequin Suit” which was made from 4 sets of different material. It was joined by a zip which went from front of neck to back of neck. The clever idea was that 2 materials could be worn at the same time and a comparison made between materials under exactly the same conditions. It also had the advantage that when nature called, one could expose as little of ones backside as possible to thorns, mosquitoes and other nasties (journalists) that might be waiting to inflict damage. Some of the other scientists would make side trips to collect specimens of plants, etc. When the going got hard the journalists would leave the expedition and go by road and stay in a hotel and often missed the fun. On one occasion, the village on the Niger where we stopped for the night laid on a display of 40 large war canoes for us VIPs. The BBC cameraman discovered later that he had forgotten to put film in his cine camera so the poor natives had to repeat everything next morning. Eventually we reached Timbuctoo which was all sand and donkeys before the Dakar rally started. 3

I had to return from Niamey in Niger and was replaced by a Medic I had worked with at Boscombe Down. He went on and, after repeat dismantlings and reassemblings, the craft returned via Chad and the Congo to the Atlantic where it was swamped and never seen again. I might add that some of the natives in remote villages who had never seen even a Landrover thought we were a satellite that had crash landed. We sometimes gave them tins of sardine which they opened up for the metal and threw away the fish!

On return to RAE my boss and I were told to make use of the TSR2 rig at Weybridge that the M. of Tech. were paying for, despite the fact that TSR2 was no longer. First, we tried to evaluate the effects of vibration and helmet weight upon pilot performance. I designed a series of tests involving flying accuracy, dial reading, mental arithmetic, etc. Naively, I used Test Pilots who showed no decrement in any of the tests when compared to no helmet and no vibration. Never use Test Pilots.

I did not learn! The next experiment was to simulate take off from a rough runway. Again I had to use the Concorde test pilot team. We did find a slight decrement in performance which was just enough to get the front undercarriage modified.

I then moved on to helicopters to find out what problems were due to the lack of ergonomics principles. I said, jokingly to my boss “I ought to go on a helo’ flying course”. He agreed! I spent a few happy weeks learning to fly Sioux, Scout and Gazelle. It was fun except for practice engine failures when the power is cut and you fall like a stone but pull out at the last moment (if you get it right) and run along the ground to a stop.

I realised that my observational skills left much to be desired, especially when under the stress of flying into remarkably small forest clearings, little larger than the helo. I borrowed a 16mm cine camera from a guided missile trial. It was fitted with a “fisheye” lens with over 180 degree field of view. I was able to record all that was going on in the cockpit for later analysis in the ‘lab. The pilots were keen to say what they were doing and why which I recorded from the intercom. By putting the two together I had a very good record and insight of what tactical helicopter flying was all about. Furthermore, my team found that by comparing changes in speech phonemes they were able to detect changes in pilot stress, e.g. the mere mention of “wires” (which are a cause of worry and danger to pilots) caused a change in speech frequency. This proved to be a perfectly non-intrusive way of detecting stress in aircrew, unlike a medical colleague’s idea of taking in-flight blood samples to detect ketosteroid changes!

Now helicopter pilots need one hand on the joystick, one on the collective lever, one on the throttle, another to operate switches on radios, etc and both feet on the rudder pedals. The very first filmed flight illustrated some of the problems in helicopters. We were flying “nap of the earth” (NoE) i.e. 60k at 10 feet above ground level,(or less) when the pilot had to turn round to operate the radio behind his seat. I lost the power of speech when I saw a high hedge coming up and recorded myself on film pointing to the imminent danger! When very stressed this is what happens and one of the several reasons why Voice recognition is not always a good thing to have in a cockpit. ( My team were the first in the UK to investigate Voice Input equipment for aircraft)

4 I recorded a lot of flights on cine film and tape recorder. These involved different types of aircraft and different types of sorties from take off and landing in small clearings to cruise and GCAs.

From much time consuming analysis I found a paradox: The lower pilots flew-the more time they spent looking inside the cockpit, even when they were down and in amongst trees. Why? At 100 or more feet, the pilot can see what is over the next hedge or wood and can see exactly where he is. At ten feet he can only see the next hedge in front of him. He has to consult his map constantly to find out where he is. Sat.nav may have changed this but it would be good to see if this is so. At low level radios may have to be retuned and instruments have to be scanned more frequently since in NoE there is not much time to do anything if, say, the engine is misbehaving. I found that pilots dwell time on an instrument could be as little as a twenty fifth of a second. Now all good ergonomics text books say that it needs three quarters of a second to read an instrument! Are pilots a special breed? Yes, but when they scan they don’t actually read an instrument-they just check for changes.

The Arctic The helicopter research took me to Bardufoss in northern Norway in March 1975 to measure cockpit conditions, clothing, etc. It was cold but worth it to see the northern lights. On one flight we practiced deplaning troops on mountain peaks. I should have realised it would be dangerous when I noticed the crewman secretly crossing himself before we took off. We landed on a gentle convex slope and I was asked to get out and take a photo’ of the Wessex. I walked a little distance away but could not see where the icy slope went. I took the photo and climbed back in and as we flew around the mountain I saw that the icy slope ended in a sheer drop of 700 feet. Even worse, I had been standing on an overhang of ice. I never trusted the Navy again.

I flew in a very cold Westland Wasp. I asked why the heater was not turned on. The pilot replied that it interfered with the radio. This was typical of the sorts of problems that were endemic in our helicopters-and probably still are! Then a tank ride!

ASW I flew with the Navy on anti-submarine sorties. They even let me fly a Sea King until I blew a hatch open. Piloting a Gazelle was like driving a sports car. Piloting a Sea King was more like an HCV. One day they were demonstrating the problems of finding vessels by using a dipping sonar. The Sea King waits in hover and dips the sonar microphone into the Oggin and listens for propeller noise or turbulence. We waited and waited but detected nothing. I happened to look rearwards out of the side window and could see only the bows of a huge tanker bearing down on us. I told the pilot.

I think that was the time my team were billeted in a posh hotel at Loch Maddy in the Outer Hebrides. One night we heard a lot of noise coming from the other end of the hotel. The next night we found that it came from the other bar so we went in. There was not a stick of furniture in it. –just an advert for a ballet stuck on the wall. Apparently, the previous night was dole payment day for the large number of unemployed on the island. As soon as they received it they headed for the bar, spent it on whisky and then began to fight so all furniture was removed. Sad really.

Germanic Thoroughness We required a bicycle ergonometer (now known as a static keep fit cycle) to study oxygen uptake etc with subjects wearing protective 5 clothing. In those days we had to get them from Germany. We raised a purchase order. Being for the Government it had to be marked with a figure of a broad arrow. When it arrived we were amused to find engraved on a piece of plastic, riveted onto the crossbar, the words “BROAD ARROW”.

Cable Markers The Australians came up with an idea of marking hazards such as electricity cables with small 6 foot high pyramid like structures on the ground to warn crop sprayers of the wire danger. I was asked to try them out in the scrub at the end of the airfield. We had a tame Wing Commander who liked to fly. (He had flown 4 engined Albermarls during the war. I asked what were they like? He replied “Alright,- but only if you wanted to fly right hand circuits”). He took me up in a or Devon and we flew over the airfield looking for the markers that had been repositioned between flights. The Markers were painted different colours and we found that “Dayglo” yellow was the best and first colour to be seen, even at a distance of 3 miles. At this distance it looked white and stood out against white obects that looked dirty white. The next best was “Dayglo” red, but this could be lost in amongst poppies. Then came “Dayglo” white, followed by ordinary yellow, red, white and finally red & white 6” stripes. At a distance the eye integrated the stripes to look pinkish. I never wrote this up as a published paper as we stretched this out just to go flying and eventually the data was lost in one of my departmental moves. We managed to get our Registration No. taken on one flight when we crossed the Larkhill firing range but it didn’t stop us from flying!

ASW again In the 1970s the RN wanted a Sea King Replacement to fit all the new ASW equipment into. MoD thought they could just update the existing aircraft. I got hold of a Sea King fuselage that had been dredged up from the English Channel, complete with a few barnacles. I fitted models of the proposed new equipment in the hulk. It fitted in but left no room for the operators, especially when wearing immersion suits. This resulted in Westlands coming up with a new design- the Merlin. I did some early simulations with the firm to show how many crew would be needed if the equipment was suitably integrated with the crew requirements. (Never did get any acknowledgement from WHL for either work).

Dogsbody for RAE Management in MSU MSU stood for Management Support Unit but Gillian said it was Mid Stream Urine. This was an interesting 2 years about the Falkland war time. I got involved in most Departments except a funny area on the far side of the airfield. I organised presentations to VIPs and even a visit from Michael Bentine who we made an honorary RAE Apprentice since his Dad worked at Farnborough in WW1. Usually I had trouble getting Superintendants to give presentations to VIPs but, strangely, they all jumped at the chance to meet Michael. This reminds me, my boss Ken Turner, an earlier ex-App’, and I had to fetch some young BAe engineers who had flown down from Warton. We asked what was going on there. They replied that they were repairing Chilean Mk1 Canberras but were having trouble finding suitable spruce for the fin. They said ”You can’t get the wood” at which Ken and I burst out laughing. They thought we were odd as they were too young for the Goon Show. Perhaps the pinnacle of my career was to re-open the RAE Museum which contained ’s note book and an early Black Knight nose cone (singed) that had returned from space. Sadly, the Museum was closed down some years later and the bits dispersed. 6 Farnborough Air Sciences Trust has done a fantastic job in getting a new museum opened but many of the relics seem to be lost forever.

Another highlight was attending a H&S Fire Prevention course at the Black Shed end of the main runway. I thought it odd when the Deputy Chief Fire Officer appeared. He had no eye brows. He let us let off fire extinguishers. (I was already adept at using water filled extinguishers as they were the main form of amusement at Cranfield). He went on to show how to put out a petrol fire. He positioned himself down wind of a tray containing petrol and then threw a match in. There was a “Whooosh” and a smell of burnt hair. It got better. He went on to demonstrate what happens with a magnesium fire. Again, he set light to some magnesium. Now Mg+H2O= MgO+H2 where MgO is a dense white gas. The H2+O =steam when ignited and produces even more dense white smoke. It is a wonder to behold unless you are an HGV driver encountering it on the A325 30 yards downwind. I remember still the screech of brakes. It was probably the start of my current deafness.

A move to Systems Assessment involved a bit of forward thinking about weapons systems. Unsurprisingly, I migrated towards helicopters and made sure that my team (of 1) and I got some practical weapons experience. We Lynxed from Middle Wallop to Larkhill and took turns in the Lynx to fire Tow anti-tank missiles. Something went wrong on one firing which I watched from outside. It went vertically upwards until out of sight. I remembered what goes up must come down and made record time to a bunker. We never did find out where it went. It happened to be the day when the Defence Minister, Heseltine, was visiting the range, so I suppose it was hushed up. Perhaps someone was trying to get rid of him? I got involved in laser weapons by chance just because I was trying to get laser sensors fitted to helicopters. A laser weapon is an ideal pacifists weapon since you have only to say you have one and everyone keeps their head down. I did a simple trial with a pilot flying a Gazelle with and without laser protection. I found that with laser protection from goggles the pilot flew much higher and much slower and therefore was much more vulnerable to conventional weapons. Laser dazzle is another factor that I studied. It is now being used by hooligans to upset airline pilots.

I inherited a contract just about to end with a firm in Weston Super Mare who devised an equation for calculating how lasers could penetrate battlefield smoke. They produced a long equation with a couple of dozen terms in it. I asked how many data points were used for the equation. They said “Two”! I was appalled. They needed to use only y=mx +c to fit the 2 data points. I tried to stop the payment but was over ruled by my welsh boss who didn’t want to upset them and gave them a bonus.

A Helicopter escape system was being offered by a US company. It proposed to blow off the main rotor blades and extract the pilots by rocket and then deploy parachutes automatically for them. Success rate was about 80%. From analysis of UK helicopter crash records our military fatality rate was just a few per cent. Some of those were due to daft (a technical term) things such as someone walking into a tail rotor. Most UK military helicopter accidents were survivable and often the could be repaired. Not only would the US system result in a wrecked airframe but any passengers would be killed. The system was very expensive and MoD could not afford it anyway. Wires were, and still are, the greatest threat to low flying helicopters in peace time. I found that very effective wire cutter could be retro-fitted to our helicopters for a fraction of the cost of the US system. We have still not fitted them. 7 India: About that time I became the UK representative on CAARC, (The Commonwealth Aeronautical Advisory Research Council) which met annually in one of the English speaking Commonwealth countries with an aeronautical research interest. As a result, I was asked by the Indian Air Force to go out and give lectures in Bangalore. I asked if I could extend my trip to take in a Tiger reserve. The IAF laid on a car complete with 2 Wing Commanders to take me to the Nilghiri reserve about 250 miles away. I noticed that upper cast Indians used their car horn on average every 7 seconds! We had to make constant detours due to the rioting lower class which resulted in getting to the reserve very late. I did manage to see a motheaten Stuffed tiger in a glass case and then it was time to return. We picked up the chief surgeon from Mysore Hospital who wanted to get to Bangalore. By now the rioters were getting into the swing of things and we were soon stopped at a road block. I was told to keep my WHITE face hidden. The road block leader looked into the car and recognised the surgeon who had taken 2 bullets from his leg the previous year. He was so pleased to see the surgeon that he gave us a safe pass for the rest of the journey.

Simulation of air combat in Flight Systems was my next job. I inherited an assessment of how a helmet mounted sight (HMS) obviously would be a great advantage over conventional bore sighting. Basically, with bore sighting the pilot has to quite accurately point his aircraft at the target to get his missile seeker to lock on. He has to pull his aircraft round with high “g” if the target is manoeuvring or off axis. With a helmet sight his missile seeker head is slaved to where his head is pointing and his manoeuvres are less violent. Our results showed little advantage of the HMS. WHY? By the time the pilot has donned at least a dozen bits of clothing and strapped himself tightly into an ejection seat he can hardly move his head!

I tried to quantify how far up & down and how far to the right & left pilots could point their heads when sitting in current fighter cockpits. It seemed only a matter of time before pilots eye movements would be tracked and used to point missile seekers, so I did that as well. This data appears in Def Stan 00-25 Part2, “Body Size, Human Factors for Designers of Equipment” which I wrote for the MoD.

My team acquired a couple of Harrier pilots to perform HMD movements in the IAM centrifuge. We tested them up to 7g when they were no longer able to move their head in a controlled manner. It was fun for the female Australian Doctor to watch them and laugh at their discomfort but we were amazed at their fortitude.

Hopefully, this HMS work made Martin Baker redesign the ejection seat head box. This is a perfect example of how no matter how clever the hardware and software are, it will fail if the simple ergonomics are ignored.

During this period I was invited to the Army Show at lovely Aldershot and also to the RN Equipment Exhibition at Whale Island, Portsmouth. There was usually a small hovercraft on display at the latter. I managed to con my way to driving one. Unfortunately, I broke something and we skidded sideways onto a mudflat. The firm’s engineer disappeared under the skirt to mend a broken link. He was unaware that the tide was flooding in and just about to wet his feet when he crawled out from underneath. I was not invited to drive a hovercraft again.

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I should have mentioned earlier that I was involved in evaluating Helmet Mounted Sights about 20 years earlier when we borrowed some from the US but could not think of a use for them. It was only when new short range air to air missiles with wider gymbal limits were designed that helmet sights came into their own. I remember testing the HMS in a Shackleton along the low level route around the Blackdown Hills and looking UP at the Wellington monument.

I decided to use “my” Air Combat Simulator for laser dazzle trials on Test Pilots. It confirmed my opinion stated earlier that the mere mention of being exposed to, even, a safe “Laser” worried pilots into poorer performance. In case you are concerned about ethics etc, I had the full permission and backing from the Medics at the IAM.

My team took me out to the Air Combat Manoeuvring Range at Decimommanou in Sardinia. We were comparing One-on-one and Two-on-two air combats between our old ex-US Navy Phantoms (from the Monthan desert to replace our Tornados that had gone to the Falklands) with up to date F16s. I learnt that 2 pairs of eyes in an old fighter are usually better than 1 pair of eyes in a modern fighter. I learnt, also, how to get used to drinking “Decci Red” wine from a Jerry can and forget the taste of kerosene. We repeated the exercise in 2- dimensions at the weekend when we hired some Zodiac RIBs. I very nearly drowned. That was before the Massage.

Nimrod Mk2 Unfortunately, or in the long run, fortunately, the Head of Department switched me from simulation to running the ASW Nimrod Mid Life Update Programme while my boss was away. When he returned he was furious but it was too late and I was already in charge of a team of contractors (One 5ft 4” Indian and one 6ft 2 inch tall Chinaman from Manchester) plus some normal freaks from Flight Systems.

We did some good work and the contract was eventually cancelled but not before my team had several trips to RAF Kinloss and flights in Nimrods. For some reason most of the flights were at night so we had the days to carry out subjective assessments of malt whisky at the local distillery. My flight was during a NATO exercise somewhere between Norway and Greenland and in daylight. A US Viking had seen some signs of a Russian submarine that was following our task force as was normal practice then.

The Viking was short of fuel and passed on the search area to us. We used MAD (Magnetic Anomally Detection), ESM (Electric Support Measures), RADAR and dropped Sonobouys but found no trace of the sub. All of a sudden the pilot spotted the Echo 2 nuclear sub with his Mk1 eyeballs just as it was surfacing. He pulled the Nimrod round in an almost vertical bank that caused the main spar to make some frightening noises. The Russian Commander must have seen a wing tip flash past his view through his periscope and promptly crash dived. I asked the crew if they saw this sort of thing often. They said about once a year if they were lucky! As my work on Nimrod Update was drawing to a close I opted to join the Mission Management Aid (MMA) as an ergonomics adviser. 9

The MMA was a consortium of BAe, GEC, , Smiths Industries and RAE. Its’ purpose was to automate the work that was done by a navigator in a strike aircraft and to guide the pilot to a target and back with the minimum of risk from enemy weapons. It did this by integrating information from radar, ESM and aircraft systems. We had a team of about 20, mainly software writers but other specialists as well. The total budget was about £1M in 1990. The US had a similar programme costing many millions of dollars.

We all lived in a Portacabin inside the FS hangar and we did not know if it was day or night or raining outside as we had little contact with the outside world. We had to enter by using a coded magnetic key. Everyone had a key hung round their necks by a short chain which meant they had to stoop to put it in the lock. Being a practical ergonomist, I made a long chain so I did not have to stoop to use the key. After a year the guy who had set this up left and I took over despite knowing almost nothing about programming and nothing about C++ the main language that we used. I was like a thin bit of Spam sandwiched between 2 thick slices of wholemeal bread. I saw my main task to keep 2 levels of management from each of the 5 organisations from interfering too much with my team of thinkers and doers.

I adopted an open door policy so anyone could come into my (the only) office and discuss things. This could have been a problem until I moved the visitors’ seat under a cold air vent. No one stayed moaning for more than 2 minutes.

I used a “Clear Desk” policy for security reasons despite the fact that we were doubly ring fenced. However, when I had visitors that I knew well (and as will become clear, are now ex-friends) I would have only a pair of scissors upon my desk. But I would have a large horseshoe magnet balanced on my knees which I moved from side to side. I would get my excellent Secretary, Judith, to bring in some coffee. While waiting the visitor would notice the scissors moving on their own. It had an interesting effect upon them!

I did get my comeuppance. I let the key on my extra long chain touch the magnet and could no longer get in.

I took some of the team for an E3 AWACS flight from RAF Waddington, just about the time (March 1992) of the Soviet Union falling apart. The Central plot showed all flight movements over the whole of Europe. The Left hs side of the screen was a mass of colours. The Rhs showed 3 or 4 movements. Such was the effect as the Soviets pulled out of the Eastern Block countries. Probably a good time to retire!

Just before my 53rd birthday (April) I took early retirement but by then the team had produced a system that would do everything, (and probably a bit more) that was asked for in “real time” (and meet the target date!) About 6 months later my successor had the rug pulled from under him and the MMA Project was dissolved. We achieved on a shoestring what the US never did. Just what the UK always does with so many projects.

Ted Lovesey

10th October 2011

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