3 minute read
Screwjack Letters
Works Training
Istudied in my spare time and eventually passed Part 2 of the IMechE exams, as a Grad IMechE, for which I received an impressive scroll with a portrayal of George Stephenson as the logo. Part 3 of the IMechE exams was about Industrial Administration, which I could study later. I applied for my longawaited ‘Works Training’ in 1963. This had recently been reduced from 18 months to nine. I applied to go to Westland Aircraft in my home town of Yeovil, and this was accepted. I knew the works airfield well. In 1944, aged seven, with my pals Tony and David, I sometimes went to see the new Spitfires taking off for their test flights. Westlands Yeovil built over 2000 Spitfires and Seafires. The perimeter track was now a public road just outside the airfield fence, but the old concrete runway still went across the perimeter extending into the field to the west. Locals called it the Spitfire runway. I’m not sure why a Spitfire would need it, the airfield is big enough, unless a Spitfire had engine failure during take-off.
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I started in the transmission shop, assembling Whirlwind* (helicopter) gearboxes. From there I worked on crack-detection of minor components. The Officers’ School wanted me to write an article for the Corps Journal, I think, so I took an interest in, and wrote about, the manufacture and testing of main rotor blades. In the experimental shop there was a continuous noise coming from a sound-insulated box. I learnt that they were testing a Helicopter gearbox with ‘conformal’ gears. I think the principle was invented by Novikov, a Russian. The pinions had convex teeth and the crown wheel had concaves such that the load-bearing surfaces were cylindrical and so greater in area than with conventionally- toothed gears. Some years later the Westland Lynx was fitted with conformal gearing in the main rotor gearbox. Main rotor hubs and blades were tested in fenced ‘whirl towers’, which ran in a corner outside the main sheds to determine safe lives in flying hours. Other components were tested on vibration rigs inside the factory, monitored by a retired Army Officer called Dobson, carrying a clip-board. Of further interest to me was the Fibreglass Department of Westlands, a few miles from Yeovil, where, among other things, a fibreglass main rotor gearbox casing was being made as an experiment.
Gill and I lived in a rented flat adjoining a garage in Sherborne. An elderly mechanic at the garage had a 1932 Hillman Minx saloon and he sold it for £5 to a Sherborne schoolboy. The MOT had just been introduced and I told the lad that I would buy it from him for a fiver if it failed the test. It failed the MOT for excess play in the steering box. I bought the car, removed the steering box, re-ground the drop shaft and made a new bush in the garage workshop. It then passed the MOT. I sold my Austin Healey for £205. I hand-painted the Hillman in primrose yellow with black mudguards and white bumpers. I also painted red ‘L’s front and rear so that I could teach Gill to drive in it. The car was old and rough, but it had one remarkable talent. If, when driving, I took my foot off the accelerator, then switched off the ignition, then switched on again two seconds later, an enormous bang came from the exhaust with no sign of damage. Talent indeed, you will agree. Gill was not impressed, just embarrassed, she said.
One fine summer evening I was driving us downhill in a lane after a dinner at the Mandeville Arms when there was a crowd of young people outside the Foresters Arms pub lower down the hill. One of them pointed at my car and they were all laughing. As we drew near them I reached for the ignition switch and timed it perfectly as we went past.
* Westlands produced a twin-engine fighter in 1936, faster than the Spitfire, also called the Whirlwind. Its Rolls-Royce Peregrine engines, however, were not as reliable, but a few hundred went into RAF service.
Arborfield Old Boys Association (AOBA) Reuniting the 71-ers
The year 2021 is the 50th Anniversary of those former REME Apprentices who joined the Corps at Arborfield in 1971. Maj (Retd) Jim Chadwick is trying to contact former
Apprentices who joined the Corps in 1971, with the view to meeting up at the annual AOBA Reunion at the National Arboretum this year (COVID-19 permitting). If you are one of those Apprentices, or you know one of the 71 ‘ers’, please contact: Major (Retd) Jim Chadwick
