Duncan Campbell-Smith - Jet Man: The Making and Breaking of Frank Whittle, Genius of the Jet Revolution

JET MAN

JET MAN

The Making and Breaking
of Frank Whittle,
Genius of the Jet Revolution

DUNCAN CAMPBELL-SMITH

AN APOLLO BOOK

www.headofzeus.com

This is an Apollo book, first published in the UK in 2020 by Head of Zeus Ltd

Copyright Duncan Campbell-Smith, 2020

The moral right of Duncan Campbell-Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN (HB): 9781788544696

ISBN (E): 9781788544689

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To Morwenna

I owe particular thanks to three individuals. My first debt is to the late Alec Collins. One of the most distinguished aero-engineers of his day, Alec joined Rolls-Royce in 1952 and rose to the top of its engineering hierarchy in a career that spanned forty-three years. In his retirement he devoted endless hours to the Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust (RRHT), while pursuing his own research into the technical evolution of the early jet engines. We met at the RRHTs museum on Derbys Osmaston Road shortly after I began my research for this book in 2017. I think Alec took it as a challenge to find a non-engineer asking innocent questions about the nature of Frank Whittles achievements. With consummate patience and generosity, he thereafter set aside the time for many long discussions complemented from time to time with explanatory forays out of our meeting room into the surrounding hangars of the museum, home to a unique collection of historic aero-engines. Shortly before his sudden untimely death in December 2019, we made a joint visit to the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge so that Alec could delve for the first time into Whittles own private papers and marvel over some of his personal artefacts (including one faintly nicotine-stained slide rule). It was a memorable day. No doubt this book makes judgements that Alec might have questioned, and I must absolve him from any posthumous responsibility for its telling of Whittles story. Without Alec, though, I doubt I could have written it.

And it was entirely due to Alec that I was also able to draw on a substantial archive deposited at the RRHT, amassed by a former aviation journalist who worked for many years on a planned biography of Whittle. With an unrivalled knowledge of aero-engine history, Ken Fulton (19282011) came to know Whittle personally and built up an enormous private collection of papers, including hundreds of documents copied from The National Archives. With too many other interests competing for his time, and dogged by ill health in his later years, Ken never got around to writing his intended book. After his death, his collection might have been lost but for Alec Collins intervention: Alec shipped it home and spent three months cataloguing it before arranging for it to be given permanent shelf space at the RRHT. Access to the KF archive fired my initial research and I owe much to Ken Fultons years of trawling through the public records. I hope his surviving family will see Jet Man as at least a partial fulfilment of his long-held determination to see a life of Whittle into print.

My third special debt is to Ian Whittle. To be approached by a total stranger declaring that he would like to write a biography of your father would surely put most sons on their guard. Ian, a retired commercial pilot, had reason to feel especially wary, having himself written and lectured authoritatively on his fathers work for many years without the satisfaction of seeing any independent account of it that, in his view, came close to telling the full story. Concealing the scepticism he must certainly have felt, Ian responded kindly to my initial enquiries early in 2017, putting his own private papers at my disposal and granting me permission to quote from his fathers voluminous papers. Later he scrutinised the finished text with an eagle eye that I hope he wont mind my comparing with his fathers attention to detail. Ian offered many helpful amendments and I am extremely grateful to him for his support in the final stages of the books preparation.

Many others helped along the way. I must thank first the staff of the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge, under its Director Allen Packwood and Senior Archivist Andrew Riley, for their assistance over the course of several visits made all the more enjoyable by accommodation in the colleges splendid Cowen Court building that had just opened when I arrived for my first stay. In Derby, my research at the RRHT was made much easier by the kindness of its staff under Peter Collins, and latterly Neil Chattle who also assisted with securing Rolls-Royces permission to use some of the many photographs archived with the RRHT. At Cranfield University, Anne Knight and Karyn Meaden-Pratt assisted my work on the Kings Norton Papers. At Londons Science Museum, Hannah Nagle, Natasha Logan and Alex Smith helped me find my way to the papers I needed to see at the Dana Research Centre and Blythe House. At the tiny Lutterworth Museum, close by Power Jets former site, volunteers look after a charmingly miscellaneous collection of Whittle memorabilia and Geoff Smith generously lent me several precious papers to take away and prepare as illustrations. Brian Riddle, Chief Librarian at the National Aerospace Library in Farnborough, guided me to the most useful articles on Whittle from its many shelves of bound periodicals and to additional online material including the many historic BBC radio broadcasts by famous names from aviation history, accessible via the National Aerospace Sound Archive. Frank Armstrong, another distinguished career engineer turned historian, found time to read a section of the book at short notice and suggested several wise amendments. Jonathan Glancy pointed me towards some useful clues to Whittles character. Nicholas Jones of Quanta Films provided me with the script of a long interview with Whittle that he and his father Glyn Jones filmed in 1986 (and that Nicholas subsequently used in a BBC Horizon documentary about Whittles achievements). Chris Weir, whom I met by chance at the Churchill Archives Centre, sent me useful background material about the work of those who developed the fuel atomiser adopted by Whittle and manufactured for him by the Joseph Lucas company. Louise Essex, Ann Brine, Ruth Long and Joe Moseley on the staff of Warwickshire County Councils Resources Directorate enabled me to make use of some of the many photographs of Whittle kept at Rugby Library. I would also like to thank Mark Copley, Tom Gillmor, Robert Cutts and Wayne Davis for their help with picture research, as too Gary Haines at the Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon. My research involved many interviews, and I am once again indebted to Nicki Brown and her colleagues at Transcribe It for their expertise at turning long tape-recordings into immaculate scripts for me. I am grateful to David Thomas and Peter Simpson for reading early drafts of the text and providing excellent suggestions on how to improve it.

Special thanks to all those who saw the book through from concept to publication, starting with Bill Hamilton at the A. M. Heath agency. Bill seemed to have a total grasp of the books final shape from the outset and offered shrewd advice at every turn. I am hugely grateful to Anthony Cheetham at Head of Zeus for his belief in the book and to all the staff at HoZ who kept their 2020 publishing plans going despite the great difficulties posed by the pandemic, especially Anna Nightingale, Clmence Jacquinet and Richard Collins. Holding everything together, my editor Richard Milbank performed virtual miracles from his virtual desks out of the office and deserves a real medal.