COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

COMBAT AND COMPETITION
thinking, top management. Rapid growth through a proliferation of
highly motivated product oriented divisions.
Divisional managers, learning the rules of success and survival,
fought their corners, poaching each others markets and people, and the
weakest went to the wall. Maybe there was internal strife and
unnecessary duplication. By many standards the whole concept was
grossly inefficent. But line management was put firmly in the collar
and achieved some remarkable results. As a policy for rapid growth,
in the circumstances of the time, it was a remarkable success. Later,
as the company grew towards maturity, there were modifications, but
the proven divisional structure still remained.
My own particular niche was in the Aviation Research Laboratory
run by Jack Pateman. There were two main projects, a master
reference gyro - MRG 'B 1 for V bombers and stand-off guided
missiles - and an autostabiliser cum autopilot system for the English
Electric Lightning. With no specific brief as yet it was the latter which
attracted my interest.
Jack was in charge of work on the Lightning and even after he had
been joined by Bill Alexander and Ron Howard, an Australian who
had come straight to us from Woomera, he kept a firm hold on that
project. With the help and support of those three - Jack, whose mind
was already beginning to turn strongly in a commercial direction -
Bill, lately of Ferranti, full of sound advice - and Ron, the most
innovative in flight control systems - I started to get my part of the
show on the road.
Bricks without straw. It had to be that way at first. Exploiting the
knowledge and the limited hardware arising from the Lightning
contract, in order to move in on other projects against established
competition. For Smiths and Sperry had been around for a long time
and Elliotts were unknown.
Fortunately for the little team at Borehamwood they possessed a
unique advantage. The Lightning system was totally different to
anything which had gone before. It was fully integrated. The fast
response electro-hydraulic actuators were series input, permanently in
the control circuit, quite different to the traditional autopilot with its
heavy low performance electric actuators which could be clutched in
and out at will.
For safety reasons the system had only limited authority. But, for
the first time, it had the performance to provide three axis
autostabilisation over the full speed range of a supersonic fighter. The
198