Bring Out A Camera and Benefit from Every Artifice, how British civil aviation

[Rheged]

Another one of those ideas that's been slowly developing  in my mind. It's not really much use to whiffery, other than offering an excuse for all sorts of lumps, bumps and odd protuberances  in otherwise sensible models.  If it's of any use to anyone please help yourself

Bring Out A Camera and Benefit from Every Artifice,  how British civil aviation contributed to national security.

When Winston Churchill attended the 1942 Moscow Conference, he travelled in the freezing bomb bay of a  Liberator bomber. This brought home to him the absence of modern British airliners and the need for action with regard to  future transport aircraft. As a result, Lord Brabazon was engaged to  set up a  committee to "define, in broad overview, the impact of projected advances in aviation technology and to forecast the global needs of the post war British Commonwealth in the area of air transport, for passengers, mail, and cargo." (1) This committee first met on 23rd December 1942 and over the next 14 months held nine further meetings before submitting an interim report that recommended short term adaptation for civil use of the Avro York, Vickers Warwick and Short Hythe/Sandringham.  These were to be stopgap aircraft, to be used only until aircraft specifically for civil use were designed and built. The committee's report visualised the following five aircraft types:-

Type I: a very large, long-range landplane for the North Atlantic route.
Type II: an economical replacement for the Douglas DC-3 for European services.
Type III: a four-engined, medium-range landplane for the Empire routes.
Type IV: the most advanced of them,  a jet-propelled mailplane for the North Atlantic.
Type V: a twin-engined, fourteen-passenger feederliner.

In May 1943, a second committee was set up with a  much more detailed agenda to assess the needs of the British civil aviation industry.  Civil servants and staff from Farnborough,  BOAC and later BEA  were involved. Over two years, the committee argued, with unreasonable requirements being outlined by individuals with little practical knowledge.  Civil service input  is best exemplified by  Sir Cyril Musgrave, the Permanent Under-Secretary in the Ministry of Supply, who stated that that "Only I can order civil airliners!" (2)This attitude was a source of considerable difficulties in this process.

Whilst the main committee meetings were challenging, a lesser known series of sub committees made considerable progress on aero engine and equipment development . Stanley Hooker and Ernest Hives of Rolls-Royce  and Roy Fedden of Bristol were much more robust with fellow committee members, and engine development proceeded unhindered. The "ancillaries " sub committee was similarly free from interference, as among the committee members were "Gentlemen from the Foreign Office" who were keen to have certain unusual equipment installed in all British registered  foreign going airliners. This sub committee's minutes have not been released but use of other governmental records, discussions with senior aero engineers and airline press releases has made it possible to put together a review of their activities.

The ancillaries subcommittee  is known to be responsible for the development in the UK of radio navigational aids, weather radar and "Autoland" blind landing systems ; to name but three.  However several much less public initiatives were taken.  Some examples are given here.

Following the partitioning of Germany during the Cold War, and especially after the Berlin airlift, flights by BEA Germany were especially valuable to certain member organisations of the  Brabazon ancillaries sub committee .  BEA operated a network of internal German routes between West Berlin and West Germany as part of  Cold War agreements regulating air travel within Germany.  BEA Vikings, Viscounts and later Comets  flew to several German destinations from the BEA Berlin Templehof hub.  A peculiarity of BEA Germany aircraft was the "bullion hold", a void under the cockpit of the aircraft for high value and sensitive cargo.The void in question was exactly the right size to allow the installation  of a Williamson F24 camera with the augmented film cassette, permitting 1000 exposures.  Flights within Germany carried a supernumerary crew member tasked with precise navigation through the permitted air corridors to Berlin. This crew member was often an RAF officer seconded to BEA in order" to keep up to date Transport Command's crew  flying hours and to gain experience of civil aviation." On arrival at their destinations  BEA flights were met by an RAF team who ostensibly checked  flight logs to ensure that Berlin air corridor regulations had been fully observed. This team also took the opportunity to exchange camera film cassettes.  In 2016, digital copies of  the vast array of imagery held at RAF Wyton were presented to the Deutsches  Bundesarchiv in Koblenz.

"Bullion holds"  were also to be found in most BOAC aircraft, as was extra "communications equipment".  A detailed scrutiny of photographs of BOAC VC10s will reveal  sundry extra aerials. BOAC VC10s continued to carry a dedicated radio operator long after most other airlines had deemed this post superfluous; this crew member monitored the scanners and 20 track recorders  absorbing as many  signals from as wide a sector of the electromagnetic spectrum as possible.

The "acorn" fairing on a VC10 fin houses an air intake which can be used to acquire air samples for later analysis.  A similar arrangement was to be found in  other BOAC and BEA aircraft; the pinion tanks on a Comet 4 wings were especially useful in this respect. Earlier flights to Moscow detected atmospheric radioactive particles emitted by Soviet scientific institutes, which allowed staff at Aldermaston to assess the progress of Soviet  research.  Flights to Helsinki often overflew  Agesta in Sweden in the early 1960's and detected similar atmospheric anomalies.  British diplomats informed their Swedish equivalents that whilst  of course the UK could not approve of nuclear proliferation, the  Swedish  weapons programme  might find the filters installed at Windscale at the insistence of Sir John Cockcroft useful to prevent any other nation detecting atmospheric radionuclides.  Monitoring of atmospheric samples in the Near East and Eastern Europe also detected potential biological or chemical weapon research, allowing discreet diplomatic intervention at an early stage.

Vibration sensors fitted to BOAC long range aircraft undercarriage were, initially ,a purely company engineering resource to predict maintenance requirements.  However, it was found that the vibration logs  produced by both take off and landing could be analysed to produce considerable data on runway  construction and,  usually, combat aircraft use as the wear/scorch patterns differed from civil aircraft.

To cartoonists of the period BOAC might have been lampooned as "Better On A Camel", to certain Whitehall organisations it might better be translated as "Bring Over A Camera" and BEA as "Benefit from Every Artifice". 

All of the above examples are basically passive information gathering  systems, but some more active results of the work of the successors to original Brabazon ancillaries sub committee can be noted, especially in regard to Her late Majesty's use of Concorde.In 1977 the Queen flew onboard the Concorde for the first time. The aircraft, which was registered G-BOAE, was flown by British Airways and marked the Queen's first supersonic flight and the first time Concorde landed in Barbados. After this trip, the Concorde became Queen's favourite aircraft. Afterwards, Her Majesty travelled onboard the supersonic jet several times to Kuwait in 1979, Barbados in 1987 and 2003, the Middle East in 1984 and USA in 1991. It was during the 1991 visit to the USA that an unusual phenomenon was observed .  As Concorde approached the coast of USA, an area of anomalous radar propagation was noted, described by USAF as a four hundred mile blur. Records showed that a similar  anomalous event had occurred near Barbados in 1977 and 1987.  The blur had shown a mean speed of advance of 1220 MPH and was eventually identified by USAF as centred on Her Majesty's  Concorde aircraft.  When questioned about this by  USAF staff, the RAF officers accompanying the Queen  ascribed the radar anomaly to Blue Dragon, Pink Petticoat and Green Ribbon installations. These, although deemed inappropriate for military use, provided a radar screen for aircraft of the Queens Flight.  Should any aircraft pierce the radar screen, USAF personnel noted a total of six Skyflash air to air missiles installed  just outboard of the engine air intakes. The Royal Navy ADC accompanying Her Majesty outlined Queen's Flight defence doctrine as "Baffle and bewilder them if you can, smash them if you can't" .

Basically, the work of the Brabazon ancillaries sub committee and its successors was to provide means to gather data, and as the Secret Intelligence Service to remain secret, intelligent and serviceable.  British Airways is probably still carrying out these functions, albeit with more modern aircraft .


(1)  Brabazon Committee - Wikipedia
(2) Quoted in:- Masefield, Sir Peter; Gunston, Bill (2002). Flight Path. Shrewsbury, England: Airlife. ISBN 978-1-84037-283-0.

[PR19_Kit]

On which subject, but with an RAF twist, I found a black & white photo in my Dad's multiple collections showing him and some of his mates standing in front of an RAF York while it was waiting for clearance to take-off from RAF Gatow in Berlin. The pic was dated sometime in the mid-late 50s when Dad was a member of TCTDF (Transport Command Training & Development Flight) then based at RAF Abingdon, but which later moved to RAF Benson. TCTDF had the last three Yorks in RAF service, all in the MW series of serials, and they were used to develop accurate navigation systems for cargo drops etc.

For some reason they regularly flew to Gatow, a 'milk run' according to my Dad as he'd done it many times before. 

But the thing about this pic is they were standing right in front of the very large RAF roundel on the York's rear fuselage and the red centre bit was missing! The resulting hole was as clear as day and there was a camera mounted close up behind it, pointing out of the hole! I suggested to my Dad that they had been carrying on their wartime tasks of photographing 'interesting parts' of Germany, specifically the DDR, but he assured me that the 'camera' was 'just a trick of the light' and that the roundel was painted quite normal in reality.

Yeah, right...................... 

[zenrat]

Didn't they continue doing the same into the 80's flying Pembrokes into Berlin?

[George the Cat]

Didn't they continue doing the same into the 80's flying Pembrokes into Berlin?

Yes. The Pembroke at the RAF Cosford Museum is one of those.

[NARSES2]

Neat story sir