Stanley Hooker

Sir Stanley George Hooker, CBE, FRS, DPhil, BSc, FRAeS, MIMechE, FAAAS (30 September 1907 – 24 May 1984), was a mathematician and jet engine engineer.

He was employed first at Rolls-Royce where he worked on the earliest designs such as the Welland and Derwent, and later at Bristol Aero Engines where he helped bring the troubled Proteus turboprop and the Olympus turbojet to market.

He then designed the famous Pegasus vectored thrust turbofan used in the Hawker Siddeley Harrier.

Stanley George Hooker was born at Sheerness, the son of a farm labourer who had earlier been a licensed victualler, and educated at Borden Grammar School.

He won a scholarship for Imperial College London to study mathematics, and in particular, hydrodynamics.

He became more interested in aerodynamics, won the Busk studentship in aeronautics in 1928 and moved to Brasenose College, Oxford where he received his DPhil in this area in 1935.

In late 1937, while working at the Admiralty he applied for a job at Rolls-Royce, and after being interviewed by Ernest Hives, started there in January 1938.

He was permitted to study anything that caught his fancy, and soon moved into the supercharger design department.

He started researching the superchargers used on the Merlin engine, and calculated that big improvements could be made to their efficiency.

His recommendations were put into the production line for newer versions, notably the Merlin 45, improving its power by approximately 30%, and then the Merlin 61.

The Merlin 45 was fitted into the Spitfire Mk V in October 1940, which was produced in the greatest number of any Spitfire variant.

The same year the Air Ministry made a request for a turbocharged Merlin for use in the planned high altitude Wellington VI bomber.

In 1940, Hooker was introduced to Frank Whittle, who was setting up production of his first production-quality jet engine, the W.2.

The status of this work was summarised in an internal Rolls-Royce Report in March 1941 and made public by the Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust in 1997.

In 1941 the Air Ministry had offered contracts to Rover to start production, but Whittle was growing increasingly frustrated with their inability to deliver various parts to start testing the new engine.

Hooker was excited, and in turn brought Rolls-Royce chairman Ernest Hives to visit Rover's factory in Barnoldswick.

Whittle mentioned his frustrations, and Hives told Whittle to send him the plans for the engine.

Soon Rolls' Derby engine and supercharger factories were supplying the needed parts.

Rover was no happier with the state of affairs than Whittle.

Declining the suggestion to use turbocharging, Hooker instead designed a two-stage supercharger for the engine, with the resulting two-stage-supercharged Merlin 61 being fitted into the Spitfire Mk IX, the second most-produced Spitfire variant, which entered service in July 1942.

The Merlin 61 arrived in time to give the Spitfire a desperately needed advantage in rate of climb and service ceiling over the Focke-Wulf Fw 190.

One major outcome of his work introduced a generalised method of predicting and comparing aircraft engine performance under flight conditions.

In 1942, Maurice Wilks of Rover met Hives and Hooker in the Swan and Royal in Clitheroe.

Wilks and Hives eventually agreed that Rover would take over production of the Rolls-Royce Meteor tank engine factory in Nottingham and Rolls-Royce would take over the jet engine factory in Barnoldswick.

Hooker soon found himself as chief engineer of the new factory, delivering the W.2 as the Welland.

Wellands went on to power the earliest models of the Gloster Meteor, and a development of the Welland known as the Derwent powered the vast majority of the later models.

Whittle had moved to the US in 1942 to help General Electric get the W.2 into production there, returning in early 1943.

Hooker also visited in 1943, and was surprised to find they had made extensive changes and raised the thrust to 4000 lbf.

On his return to England he decided that Rolls should recapture the power lead, and in 1944 the team started development of a larger version of the Derwent that was delivered as the 5500 lbf Nene.

While this proved to be a successful design, it was not used widely on British aircraft, and Rolls eventually sold a licence to the United States, and later, several engines to the Soviet Union, which then went on to copy it unlicensed.

This set off a major political row, and soon the MiG-15, powered by a Klimov VK-1 (a copy of the Nene), was outperforming anything America or Britain had to counter it.

Meanwhile, Hooker's team had moved onto their first axial-flow engine, which had been designed by A. A. Griffith at Derby and which was then known as the AJ.65 but which was soon to be renamed the Avon.

This did not turn out well at first, and Hooker felt he was being blamed for its problems.

At the same time Rolls decided that their existing piston engines were a dead end, and moved all future jet work from Barnoldswick to Derby, their main engine site.

This reduced Hooker's role in the company, and after an emotional falling-out with Hives, he left.

In January 1949, Hooker went to work at the Bristol Aero Engine company.

He immediately started work on sorting out the various problems of Bristol's turboprop design, the Proteus, which was intended to power a number of Bristol aircraft designs, including the Britannia.

The task of rectifying the many faults of the Proteus was immense, but most were solved.

However, a near-fatal accident with Britannia G-ALRX in February 1954, due to a spur gear failure, prompted a telephone call from his old boss Hives, who subsequently sent his top team of Rolls-Royce jet engineers, among them Elliott, Rubbra, Lovesey, Lombard, Haworth and Davies, to give Hooker some desperately needed help.

Sadly, this was the last communication between the two great men.