RADAR DIVISION - SYSTEMS GROUP

I joined the Systems Group of Radar Division on 29 June 1959, having transferred from the Datamation Group at Baddow. Radar Division (or Services Equipment Division as it was initially titled) had been operating for eleven years. The original title indicated its sector of business; it traded re-engineered radar equipment which, in some cases, had originated from wartime designs and were sold to a number of overseas governments and armed forces.

The Manager of the Division was Colonel E N Elford OBE, who steered it from its origins, and saw its growth accelerated from 1950 onwards, by the ROTOR and VAST programmes. These two huge projects were managed, produced, and installed from New Street; the equipment design work being done at Baddow and by the Radar Development Group at Broomfield. The production programme involved nearly 100 sub-contractors, including some of the largest firms in the country, and resulted in the setting up of a special Contracts and Production Section to co-ordinate this vast under-taking.

When I joined Radar Division, Colonel Elford was still at the helm, Hugh Wassell was Chief Engineer (shortly to be succeeded by Jerry Todd); Len Firmin was Chief of Sales; Bill Quill was Chief of Special Projects Group, that had recently won the NATO Early Warning Chain contract; Peter Max, was Chief of the Systems Group; and Maurice Burrage was Chief of Installations Group. The Division had sponsored the development of a comprehensive range of radar display equipment (the SD1000 series), both moving-coil and fixed-coil type (the latter benefitting from the work of ROTOR); the back-up equipment was modular in concept, to make it adaptable for both civil and military applications. This proved to be ideal for system engineering. The private-venture programme also included a new range of radar surveillance antennas, both civil (S232 and S264) and the military S247 and S300 series; and high-power transmitters SR1000 (10cm) and the SR1030 (23cm) for military use, together with 50kW and 500kW operating on 50cm for the civil market. A new high data rate, long-range height-finder, the S244 was available for both markets.

On my arrival for my first day at Marconi House, New Street, I reported to Peter Max, who ran through the organisation of the Systems Group. His deputy was Gerry Taylor, who was also in charge of the Civil and ATC systems; John Gorton ran the Military Section; John Crispin was in charge of the Ministry of Supply (MOS) contracted work for the RAF Radar Stations; and Eric Royle was responsible for Naval radar systems. To support all this system work, an Installation Design Section operated under Cyril Newland, together with a Drawing Office run by Eric Knowles. Because of the lack of space within Marconi House, both of these latter Sections had had to be accommodated in half of the Works Canteen across the Yard. Peter said I would be working in the Military Section, which was the busiest, as it currently had the NATO Early Warning Chain contract, RAE Aberporth Range, Jordan Air Defence System, Austria, and a number of other NATO contracts. I was then introduced to John Gorton, who briefed me on the work of his Section.

Initially, I worked with Alec Stewart, on the system design of the NATO Early Warning Chain of sixteen radar stations which were to be sited from North Cape, Norway through to Eastern Turkey. Prior to the bidding for the NATO Early Warning contract, the Royal Norwegian Air Force (RNoAF) had sought bids for two Control and Reporting Centres (CRCs), which Marconi’s had won. When bidding for the NATO Early Warning Chain contract, it had been decided for political reasons, to bid in conjunction with the French CSF company; however, when it came to the final adjudication of the bids, Norway requested that all of its stations under the NATO Early Warning contract be supplied with Marconi equipment, as it would be similar to that already ordered under its CRC contract with the Company. Thus there could be commonality of spares, training, and documentation. This was accepted by NATO. We therefore designed two versions of station, an all-Marconi for Norway, and a Marconi/CSF for the remainder; however, even here in both cases, there were variations, and where stations were to have their radars at a remote location, and the Operations Centre elsewhere. After I had become familiar with both basic designs, it was decided that Alec should look after the Marconi/CSF, and I would take care of all of the Norwegian stations, CRC and Early Warning.

A further task Peter Max gave me was to be the specialist on the new range of radars being designed at the Company’s Felling works, near Gateshead. Accordingly, I visited Felling on a number of occasions to become familiar with the design staff and the products; a task I really enjoyed.

When I joined the Systems Group, I was viewed with a degree of suspicion by my colleagues, as I was the first engineer to have come from Baddow; everyone else within the Group had been former installation engineers working out in the field on the ROTOR sites. I was judged to be an academic, and from Baddow to boot! Amusingly, I discovered that Baddow was regarded by them as being for egg-heads and the conceited! I resolved to live with it, and after a time my presence was accepted (or possibly tolerated); I was also found to be rather useful when mathematical calculations were involved!

Shortly after I started, it had been decided that Rivenhall (one of the Company’s radar test and demonstration sites) should have the new back-to-back antenna surveillance radar, the S247, and the new height finder S244, together with a representative NATO display set-up installed in Hut 28. It already had a basic display system to receive signals from the S264. Peter Max tasked me to have a NATO display system ready to be demonstrated to the RNoAF by late October 1959. Having completed the design, I worked with the maintenance team of Hut 28 on its incorporation, and the demonstration duly took place on time. Peter Max, John Gorton, and Bill Quill, brought out the RNoAf visitors, and everything worked as required.

Shortly after, Peter called me in to his office, and briefed me on a new requirement for an air defence system for South Africa. The political sensitivities of the time required that the project was highly secret. Peter sketched out the operational requirements and asked me to undertake the task of writing the Company’s proposal. An input to the system would be a GW system (Thunderbird) being produced by English Electric, Stevenage; Peter and I liaised with them, and agreed the technical interface. I later passed the draft proposal to him; subsequently, he flew out to South Africa, and following a great deal of discussion, which changed some of the system arrangements, he returned with an ITP (instruction to proceed) for about £3M.

Early in 1960, Cyril Newland and I visited the Norwegian MoD, accommodated in the Akerhus Festning, an impressive mediaeval fortress over-looking the Oslo Harbour, to discuss and clarify operational, technical, and installation matters with the RNoAF staff, and the military civil works department, FBT. The discussions lasted all week, as we had to cover the requirements for five stations; however, an excellent working relationship was established, which served us well over the following months, especially important when we were experiencing a number of technical problems with the new S244 height-finder. The NATO specification had called for fifteen heights per minute on random targets; to achieve this high rate, it had been decided by Felling to employ hydraulics for both slewing and nodding modes. Severe problems were encountered with the pumps and the flexible hoses, because of the enormous hydraulic pressures demanded. It was jested that an oil well had been created in the sub-soil area close to the installation at Rivenhall, resulting from all the spillage from burst hoses! Eventually the problem was solved by changing to Vickers pumps and triple-ply flexible hoses; thereafter, the S244 established a good reputation throughout NATO.

By this time, 1960, Radar Division business had been expanding on all fronts. Military contracts, apart from those for NATO, had been obtained in Austria, Finland, South Africa, South America, as well as the continuing work on the UK’s RAF radar stations. Civil aviation, too, was expanding rapidly, and with it, the need for radar for both en-route and airport terminal control. Orders for the new S264 had been received from all the major European airport authorities, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Canada, as well as from the UK Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation. To support all this work, the Systems Group needed to be expanded, and move out of New Street to new premises. The Company acquired Broomfield House, attractively set on the edge of Church Green, opposite the 12th century Broomfield Church. It was about three miles north of Chelmsford, and during the 1940s and 1950s, had been a Royal Auxiliary Air Force Fighter Control Regional Headquarters. Behind the House, the Air Ministry had erected a number of Seco huts, linked with a corridor, which at its end led to the former Operations Room, as well as to the Mess. The Air Ministry had vacated it a few months earlier. After extensive refurbishment by Marconi’s, the first floor of the House was occupied by Peter Max and the Systems Group sections (Military, Naval, UK Ministry, and Civil Aviation); and on the ground floor, the Radar Division Installation Group, together with its Chief, Maurice Burrage. Cyril Newland’s Installation Planning Group occupied most of the Seco huts, and the Drawing Office was housed in the former Operations Room. The Mess was re-equipped, and converted into an excellent canteen. The existing car park was extended to the south and east of the site. The whole complex was titled ‘Church Green’, and proved to be ideal for the task. I always regarded it as a ‘happy ship’, and the closeness of all the different sections, one to another, made it a very effective organisation.

The installation of the CRCs and the Early Warning Stations (titled HPRPs-High Performance Reporting Posts) was underway in 1960, and a promise had been made by the Marconi management to handover one CRC (Kletkovfjell- in the Bodo area), and two HPRPs (Honningsvaag- North Cape and Maakeroy- south of Oslo) by the end of 1961. At the request of the RNoAF, and agreed to by Peter Max, Bill Quill, and Maurice Burrage, I was seconded to Norway to assist with the commissioning (having written the station test specifications earlier), and to liaise with each of the Site Managers, and the SHAPE inspectors, to ensure that the target was met. The target was achieved the day before Christmas Eve 1961, when the Commander-in-Chief of the RNoAF signed the Acceptance Certificate in my presence at Maakeroy; thereby, releasing a progress payment cheque for £500,000, which I flew back with to London.

As an aside, a few lingering memories of those stimulating times in that beautiful country:

1. At the Honninsvaag site, having set-up the acceptance test for the SHAPE Inspector to check that the S244 could achieve fifteen heights per minute in the automatic programming mode, I left him observing with his stopwatch, and went outside for a breather. It was late afternoon, pitch black, and I stood listening to the height-finder’s hydraulic sounds, amplified by the radome, as it responded to the demands of slew and nod. Then I happened to look down at Honningsvaag a thousand feet below; to my amazement, I observed the lights of the town brightening and then dimming in step with the commands of the S244. Clearly, the electricity regulation in this part of Norway was not up to IEE standards! Fortunately, our acceptance test was judged to have been met by the SHAPE Inspector, and we could cease upsetting the residents of the town.

2. At the CRC site at Kletkovjell, we had reached the stage where we were displaying live returns on the Radar Office monitor console, and now needed to set up the radar head/console system, which involved the auto-align Selsyn link. For this purpose, I had previously bought a protractor in Bodo, and carefully set the contacts on the cam at the head end to eight degrees. When we rotated the surveillance head once more, we discovered that, instead of the Lofoten Islands painting where they should be, they were skewed further north, according to the map. After some puzzlement, I discovered that I had purchased a 400 degree protractor (NATO standard) instead of a 360 degree version!

3. On one of the sites, I encountered an electrician whose task was a major wiring job up in the back-tube of the surveillance radar head. Because he was so isolated from the rest of the team, and he thought that he might be forgotten, he used to set his alarm clock for lunch-time and knocking-off time, just to be on the safe side! The transport, whether it was a Snocat, cable car, or all ski down the mountain together, was always held until everyone was accounted for. Duty of care of each other was a by-word within the installation team.

4. I was invited to the British Polar Club, which had been established at the RNoAF Bodo Air Base. Early on, after the Marconi Team had arrived to install Kletkovjell, it was discovered that there were a number of British people at the Air Base, most originating from marriages after the Second World War. On my first visit for the social evening the welcome was so genuine, and the atmosphere wonderful. Amongst the many who I met, I particularly remember Major Klepsvik, who as a teenager, had rowed with two friends under cover of darkness in an open boat, across to the Shetlands to escape the German occupation and to join the RAF; he later qualified as a fighter pilot. Everywhere I travelled in Norway, I sensed a real bond of friendship towards the British, originating from the Second World War, and also the fact that we gave safe haven to their Royal Family. It also explained why the Installation Team had painted a Union Flag beside the Marconi roundel on our Land Rovers; when the Team first arrived, the locals had associated Marconi’s with Italy and thought they were all Italians as well. As soon as it was explained that Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company Limited was a British company, the Norwegians could not do enough for the Team.

Re-organisation of Radar Division

During 1962, Dr T W Straker (who had succeeded Colonel Elford the year before) reorganised the Division into business groups, and Bill Quill headed up the NATO Group. Unrelated to these arrangements, Peter Max had left the Company to become General Manager of Cossors, it having been recently acquired by Raytheon of the USA. The system engineers were moved out of Church Green to be with their appropriate new Groups, either at Marconi House New Street or at Baddow; I became Chief of Systems with a team of six, responsible to Bill Quill. It was an intensely interesting time with a number new business opportunities for which to bid. One such project was the NATO Missile Firing Installation (NAMFI) to be located on Crete, for which Bill Quill had formed a consortium with CFTH of France and HSA of Holland; another was the preparatory work towards setting-up the NADGE consortium. With the near completion of the HPRP Chain, the flight-checking programme of the individual radar stations was now gathering pace. Discussions with the RAF No. 360 squadron (tasked by NATO) had been held earlier at Church Green with John Gorton, who had expertise in this area having been a former Fighter Controller. English Electric Canberra aircraft were being used to carry out the flight- checking task NATO-wide.

NADGE (NATO Air Defence Ground Environment)

This programme had been budgeted at £110M; in 1962 it was still steeped in international politics as to how the spoils should be divided; eventually, the ’balance of payments’ sharing formula was accepted by the fifteen NATO nations. The principle was that each contributing nation should receive back, either in production or in ‘kind,’ to reflect its national financial contribution. For instance, the USA would expect to receive 33%; Germany 25%; UK 11% etc. It was evident that when various consortiums were being set-up to bid for the programme, each would be lead by an American company. Previously, there had been an association with France, following an agreement between the UK and French Governments known as AFCAD (the Anglo- French Consortium for Air Defence), comprising an industrial grouping of Marconi and AEI of the UK, and CFTH and IBM of France. With the USA blocking the idea of AFCAD undertaking the task of implementing the new air defence system, NADGE emerged as the new agreed programme; however, in the preliminary discussions with Hughes, Marconi said they would like to continue their past association with CFTH, and it was agreed that CFTH would be invited to join as the French member company within the Hughes Consortium. Continuing negotiations brought in to the Consortium, HSA (Holland), Selenia (Italy), Telefunken (Germany), and Northern Electric (Canada). All the meetings were held in the Hughes offices in Paris; this was still the time when the NATO HQ was in Paris. A number of committees were formed to gather specialists together (e.g. Technical, Commercial, Legal, Contractual, Administrative etc, etc.). All of these operated under the authority of the HUCO Management Board who governed overall policy matters. Each member of my team was involved in the technical discussions at different times, depending on the topics to be aired. I would attend the overall system discussions, and if required, at the Management Board in support of Bill Quill, who was the permanent Marconi Representative. Jim Evans was the HUCO Boss in Paris, and in a relatively short time, had welded the different companies in to a committed team, and the proposal work started in earnest. Sensibly, Hughes advocated their ‘in-house’ format of proposal writing so that each company’s contribution was in the same layout. They called it ‘STOP’ (Sequential Technique Of Presentation), where the text on the left-hand page was self-contained, and directly referred to the illustration on the facing right-hand page. It took a little time to get used to this arrangement, but we soon found that it forced the writer to be succinct, and not revert to the traditional form, which the Americans dubbed ‘the river-raft’ approach, where the text can meander on, leading into ‘the tunnel of confusion’! To maintain the same appearance, irrespective from which company had originated it, each typist had to use the ‘golf-ball’ type machine.

After the broad commercial/technical decisions had been made, the detailed technical work began in earnest. One aspect of the inter-company discussions that I found most heartening was that, even allowing for understandable inter-company rivalries around the table, there was general respect and acceptance of the experience of Marconi’s in air defence radar system design and implementation. It was often the case, when uncertainty arose over the best approach to adopt with a particular problem or situation, the Chairman would turn to the Marconi representative and ask ‘what do you think is the way to go on this?’ I can remember a few years later, when we were working with Hughes on space communication studies for SKYNET, the enormous respect that it had for the Company in general. This obviously served us well when Marconi was playing its part in implementing NADGE, although I had moved into Space Communications Division by that time. My other recollection of the period when my colleagues and I were each writing our contributions to the HUCO Proposal and attending technical meetings in Paris, was the limited field that some of the representatives felt confident to discuss. On many occasions, the Chairman would say that we would be discussing so and so the following day, and who would be their representatives? Invariably, another person would be flown over for the meeting, because it was outside the realm of the representative present; however, unless it was a fairly obscure subject, our engineers felt confident to attend the meeting, and be prepared to play their full part. I am certain that it was the way that our engineers had been trained, and had had the opportunity to gain such wide experience with the Company, which gave them the confidence to think on their feet. The Americans, in particular, seemed to rely on specialisation in each post, and felt unable to talk outside these boundaries.

From 1963 and onwards, Dr Straker asked me to also become involved with space communications and look at all opportunities as to how the Company could get involved. He could foresee that it would be a market of great potential; within Radar Division and the Company, we had the ability to design and manufacture large antennas, mechanical engineering, transmitters, receivers, precision control gear, displays and so on. Thus, in parallel with my heavy commitment with NADGE, I became involved in what clearly was going to be an exciting venture. I stayed with NADGE throughout the proposal generation phase, but moved from Radar Division in October1965 in the major re-organisation of the Company, and to the newly created Space Communications Division. HUCO won the NADGE competition the following year.

Tributes

From Robin W:

I’m very sorry to hear of John's death.

I knew John when I was at MRSL and had many interactions before he rejoined the RAF. His conversations on MOGS were always interesting and informative 

RIP John.

From Malcolm M:

John gave me a ring on Sunday 21/12/25, to wish us a Happy Christmas. He did say that he had fallen and was hopefully on the road to repair. He was talking of coming over to Essex this year; as he did in 2023, when we went out for lunch with him. He kindly gave me a book some years ago about the Post Office Telephone Engineering Department, which brought back many memories. So to hear that he has passed away has come as a bit of a shock.

John was a fount of knowledge and history with respect to the radar world, from both a customer’s and contractor’s perspective.   I have to thank him for his assistance and advice to myself over the last five years. I shall miss his erudite emails.

RIP John.

From Philip B:

I was very sad to hear about John’s demise; he lived not far away in Dorset and we were going to try to meet up but health issues meant it didn’t happen.

How We Met (Electronically).

In July 2020 during COVID I was giving talks via Zoom. I set one up for the Plessey Radar folk (they operate via a private facebook site) with a proviso that the link and my contact details could also be sent to trusted customers, colleagues etc. The talk was on ’The True History of Radar Development’ and afterwards John contacted me. We discussed his dealings with Plessey Radar and Plessey Navaids.

When I joined Plessey in 1976 my first major challenge was to be given the extensive portfolio of ’standard products’ and told to ’sort it out'. There followed a lot of hard decisions, I terminated contracts that practically could not be met by the Plessey companies for reasons various — there was a lot of push back within Plessey.

The  Plessey Navaids group was subsumed into Plessey Radar with their prime product, the 'PLAN 17, 18 & 19' Instrument Landing Systems. I quickly realised the product was fundamentally flawed as even the trainers couldn’t keep the reference equipment within specification. 

The Navaids design people at Addlestone were very defensive & I was preparing for a major battle to get the product killed & the contract with the MoD RAF terminated. 

Out of the blue came a message that the RAF had terminated the contract saving me a lot of internal hassle.

That gave me confidence (I was a very new boy, used to MRSL ways) and I went on to sell off all the laser based systems IPRs and bring to a satisfactory end a number of contracts before more money & reputation was lost (legacy from John Winstanley’s time at Plessey).

It wasn’t until John Brown & I connected and exchanged notes in July 2020 that I realised he was the one who had terminated the ILS contract and saved me more white hairs.

He confirmed it and went on to be complementary about the Plessey AR15/2 & ACR430 radar and particularly the way Plessey Radar sales, projects, training & engineering worked to support him as a customer. 

We had a number of chats by phone and e-mail but sadly never made 'face to face’.

John was knowledgeable and very perceptive as to when things weren’t going right, to find an acceptable fix.

A true gentleman.

From AlanHS

As recorded elswhere on this site I in fact had two encounters with John as prior to his Marconi career he served his NS in the RAF and he was one of my trainees at RAF Locking.