Imago
Old-Salt
Not the Mail so have ventured to put it here. Did we know about this before? Sunday Times today: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/newsreview/features/article1384505.ece
Bombs away: Tubby’s mission to expose the third man sabotaging the RAF
A centenarian who helped develop the technology to take the fight to Hitler tells Marcus Scriven his work was undermined by communist traitors who came close to costing Britain the war
“The dining room can be bloody noisy. I’ve arranged sandwiches and a mug of beer in the library. Would that be the answer?”
Group Captain EE “Tubby” Vielle OBE, parade ground moustache imprinted on upper lip, has been up since 5.30am, a self-imposed reveille followed by ablutions, exercises, breakfast, appraisal of the news and the markets (“online”), before starting writing, “till about 12.30pm, then again from about 2.30pm till about 5pm”.
Currently, the harmony of routine is diminished by Windows 8. “I hate the bloody thing: too complicated.”
It is unlikely to impede him for long. A bookcase in his rooms at his Wiltshire retirement home displays 85 editions of the books he co-wrote in the 1960s and 1970s; Hitchcock paid £100,000 for the film rights to the first, Village of Stars, though he got no authorial credit.
But his recently completed memoirs, Almost a Boffin, contain perhaps his most disquieting and startling story — extraordinary disclosures about the long-acknowledged Soviet penetration of Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, during the Second World War.
It is a suitably dramatic epilogue for a life of epic accomplishment and longevity.
Born on April 29, 1913, Vielle’s first memory is of a Zeppelin being hit by anti-aircraft fire over London. “Suddenly it burst into flames. Hydrogen, of course. I can see it exactly.”
Climbing in the Alps aged 15, second from right with his family (PhilYeomans/BNPS)A healthy appetite and robust frame had earned him his nickname by the time he arrived at Dulwich College, south London, where he was a prize gymnast with a problem-solving brain. At 15 he acquired a driving licence and a motorbike, and partnered a pretty 22-year-old in a game of tennis. Two years later he asked her father for permission to marry her.
“Absolutely amazing,” he says, awed by his own audacity. “Bunny was the second girl I ever met. We had a wonderful life together.”
Plans for university were derailed by the Depression of the 1930s, in which his father’s business perished. He became a clerk in a London accountancy firm — opposite the RAF’s administrative headquarters. Learning that prize cadetships were available to the top six in RAF Cranwell’s entrance exam, he tutored himself — and came fourth out of 700.
In a 25-year career, he flew 150 types of aircraft, beginning with an Avro biplane — flying wing-tip to wing-tip, without radio — and ending supersonic. Fatalities were frequent. His own survival, he says, was “very lucky”. As an exuberant youth, he hit a pylon cable. During the war, he displayed what a much younger air commodore describes as “extraordinary courage . . . the greatest feat of flying I have read about or witnessed”, piloting a Hudson, its wings overloaded with ice, its radio broken, below cloud cover that descended to just 50ft above the ground.
His adventures included flying Hurricanes (PhilYeomans/BNPS)Graded “exceptional”, he was seconded to the Fleet Air Arm before being transferred in 1939 to the special duty list at Farnborough to test emerging technology.
He was horrified by what he found. There was, for example, an oxygen system that “failed and failed. I had two air marshals killed simply because the bloody thing switched off itself.” The new distant reading (DR) compass — “a Heath Robinson job” — was no better. “They put it in the tail [of the bomber] on a swing, hoping that it would be mainly upright. It couldn’t work and didn’t work.” There was no gyroscope-stabilised bomb-sight, so those crews who “did find the target couldn’t hit it”.
This, he learnt, resulted not from incompetence but determination by eminent figures in Farnborough’s hierarchy “to make sure that Bomber Command could not operate”, with consequences far beyond the deaths of innumerable aircrew. “I think the war wouldn’t have started if we’d been capable — and shown we were capable — of navigating and bombing accurately. The Germans wouldn’t have dared invade France. We could have bombed the hell out of them.”
Instead, British aerial supremacy was first undermined and then eradicated during the inter-war years. “From 1920 to 1939, three scientists in particular prevented Bomber Command from being able to operate — made it impossible to drop a bomb accurately, or to navigate accurately. The lack of a bomb-sight was critical.”
Two of the key figures responsible he names as Ben Lockspeiser and FW Meredith. Both, Vielle argues, were thwarting innovation at Farnborough so as to benefit their true masters — in the Soviet Union. Meredith became managing director of Smiths — “producing instruments for aircraft” — while Lockspeiser, knighted in 1946, became the first president of Cern, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. He died in 1990.
Farnborough’s records show that Lockspeiser and Meredith were monitored by the security services because of communist sympathies that had become apparent during the General Strike in 1926.
Documents at the National Archives in London additionally record that Lockspeiser’s mail was intercepted, though there was insufficient evidence to justify his dismissal from RAE. Both, says Vielle, were eclipsed by a third man who has, until now, eluded mention — Jack Richards, the wartime head of Farnborough’s instrument department, a man who went out of his way to befriend Vielle.
When Richards asked if he could spend a week with him and Bunny, while his wife was in Wales recuperating from illness, Vielle agreed. He was staggered by what followed. Night after night, Richards tried to “turn” his intended protégé. “He got very impassioned, said that in Russia they were all equal. Extolled the virtues of communism.”
Not long afterwards, it was almost unanimously agreed that RAF bombers should be fitted with the American-designed Sperry autopilot; Richards alone dissented, insisting that Farnborough’s own autopilot should be installed instead. Its performance proved as abject as that of the oxygen system and DR compass.
The pattern recurred after the war, when radar developments repeatedly fell behind schedule: Richards had by then become head of the Telecommunications Research Establishment in Malvern, Worcestershire.
Asked why he was delaying a particular project, Richards replied: “I do not think it will benefit the world for the RAF to have it.”
Vielle reported the remark to the RAF’s director of intelligence, who, a week later, warned him that his life could be in danger, explaining that Richards had allies “in even higher positions”.
Later that year, in December 1949, while piloting a Meteor, Vielle inexplicably stalled. Both wings, both engines and the fuselage disintegrated in the ensuing crash; the cockpit — and Vielle — survived. “Miraculous,” he agrees. Only afterwards did he notice that the airspeed indicator was of a superannuated type, calibrated in mph rather than knots, with indistinct markings, as if they “had been rubbed with a bit of emery paper”.
The director of intelligence, investigating why an obsolete instrument had been fitted to a modern aircraft, concluded that an attempt had been made on Vielle’s life, but added that it would be “unwise to try” to discover by whom.
Vielle concentrated, instead, on developing an idea he had had during the war — of gyroscope-guided missiles — and another, exploiting sideways-facing radar to allow aircrew to plot their positions precisely over land. He produces the original folder, headed: “Vielle Bombing System: Report on Visit to USA, October 1950, by Group Captain EE Vielle OBE.”
The Americans embraced his ideas, initiating what became the first cruise missile programme; Britain did not. “Richards was on the distribution list,” observes Vielle. Offered double the salary of an air marshal to develop an anti-collision system, Vielle left the RAF aged 43. In 1962 he started on his memoirs. “Then I thought, ‘This is dangerous; I’d better not.’”
Today, 24 years after Bunny’s death, he sees Pat, the middle of their three daughters, once a week, and has 15 great-grandchildren — and “a girlfriend who rings twice a week. A bit of a problem with my prostate, therefore the sex side is rather out of it.”
He gave up skiing “at about 85, and driving at 95”. Cancer meant that “a bit was cut out here” — he touches his right ear.
But his appetite is good. “Nothing like a bit of red meat — very rare.” He laughs, then stops. He describes what happened at Farnborough as “evil”.
The man from the Zeppelin age has opened up the battle on Facebook and YouTube.
“I feel I’ve too short a time, probably, to do much,” he says, “but I’ll do anything I can to get that bloody man Richards — and the others — into public knowledge.”
Bombs away: Tubby’s mission to expose the third man sabotaging the RAF
A centenarian who helped develop the technology to take the fight to Hitler tells Marcus Scriven his work was undermined by communist traitors who came close to costing Britain the war
“The dining room can be bloody noisy. I’ve arranged sandwiches and a mug of beer in the library. Would that be the answer?”
Group Captain EE “Tubby” Vielle OBE, parade ground moustache imprinted on upper lip, has been up since 5.30am, a self-imposed reveille followed by ablutions, exercises, breakfast, appraisal of the news and the markets (“online”), before starting writing, “till about 12.30pm, then again from about 2.30pm till about 5pm”.
Currently, the harmony of routine is diminished by Windows 8. “I hate the bloody thing: too complicated.”
It is unlikely to impede him for long. A bookcase in his rooms at his Wiltshire retirement home displays 85 editions of the books he co-wrote in the 1960s and 1970s; Hitchcock paid £100,000 for the film rights to the first, Village of Stars, though he got no authorial credit.
But his recently completed memoirs, Almost a Boffin, contain perhaps his most disquieting and startling story — extraordinary disclosures about the long-acknowledged Soviet penetration of Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, during the Second World War.
It is a suitably dramatic epilogue for a life of epic accomplishment and longevity.
Born on April 29, 1913, Vielle’s first memory is of a Zeppelin being hit by anti-aircraft fire over London. “Suddenly it burst into flames. Hydrogen, of course. I can see it exactly.”
Climbing in the Alps aged 15, second from right with his family (PhilYeomans/BNPS)A healthy appetite and robust frame had earned him his nickname by the time he arrived at Dulwich College, south London, where he was a prize gymnast with a problem-solving brain. At 15 he acquired a driving licence and a motorbike, and partnered a pretty 22-year-old in a game of tennis. Two years later he asked her father for permission to marry her.
“Absolutely amazing,” he says, awed by his own audacity. “Bunny was the second girl I ever met. We had a wonderful life together.”
Plans for university were derailed by the Depression of the 1930s, in which his father’s business perished. He became a clerk in a London accountancy firm — opposite the RAF’s administrative headquarters. Learning that prize cadetships were available to the top six in RAF Cranwell’s entrance exam, he tutored himself — and came fourth out of 700.
In a 25-year career, he flew 150 types of aircraft, beginning with an Avro biplane — flying wing-tip to wing-tip, without radio — and ending supersonic. Fatalities were frequent. His own survival, he says, was “very lucky”. As an exuberant youth, he hit a pylon cable. During the war, he displayed what a much younger air commodore describes as “extraordinary courage . . . the greatest feat of flying I have read about or witnessed”, piloting a Hudson, its wings overloaded with ice, its radio broken, below cloud cover that descended to just 50ft above the ground.
His adventures included flying Hurricanes (PhilYeomans/BNPS)Graded “exceptional”, he was seconded to the Fleet Air Arm before being transferred in 1939 to the special duty list at Farnborough to test emerging technology.
He was horrified by what he found. There was, for example, an oxygen system that “failed and failed. I had two air marshals killed simply because the bloody thing switched off itself.” The new distant reading (DR) compass — “a Heath Robinson job” — was no better. “They put it in the tail [of the bomber] on a swing, hoping that it would be mainly upright. It couldn’t work and didn’t work.” There was no gyroscope-stabilised bomb-sight, so those crews who “did find the target couldn’t hit it”.
This, he learnt, resulted not from incompetence but determination by eminent figures in Farnborough’s hierarchy “to make sure that Bomber Command could not operate”, with consequences far beyond the deaths of innumerable aircrew. “I think the war wouldn’t have started if we’d been capable — and shown we were capable — of navigating and bombing accurately. The Germans wouldn’t have dared invade France. We could have bombed the hell out of them.”
Instead, British aerial supremacy was first undermined and then eradicated during the inter-war years. “From 1920 to 1939, three scientists in particular prevented Bomber Command from being able to operate — made it impossible to drop a bomb accurately, or to navigate accurately. The lack of a bomb-sight was critical.”
Two of the key figures responsible he names as Ben Lockspeiser and FW Meredith. Both, Vielle argues, were thwarting innovation at Farnborough so as to benefit their true masters — in the Soviet Union. Meredith became managing director of Smiths — “producing instruments for aircraft” — while Lockspeiser, knighted in 1946, became the first president of Cern, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. He died in 1990.
Farnborough’s records show that Lockspeiser and Meredith were monitored by the security services because of communist sympathies that had become apparent during the General Strike in 1926.
Documents at the National Archives in London additionally record that Lockspeiser’s mail was intercepted, though there was insufficient evidence to justify his dismissal from RAE. Both, says Vielle, were eclipsed by a third man who has, until now, eluded mention — Jack Richards, the wartime head of Farnborough’s instrument department, a man who went out of his way to befriend Vielle.
When Richards asked if he could spend a week with him and Bunny, while his wife was in Wales recuperating from illness, Vielle agreed. He was staggered by what followed. Night after night, Richards tried to “turn” his intended protégé. “He got very impassioned, said that in Russia they were all equal. Extolled the virtues of communism.”
Not long afterwards, it was almost unanimously agreed that RAF bombers should be fitted with the American-designed Sperry autopilot; Richards alone dissented, insisting that Farnborough’s own autopilot should be installed instead. Its performance proved as abject as that of the oxygen system and DR compass.
The pattern recurred after the war, when radar developments repeatedly fell behind schedule: Richards had by then become head of the Telecommunications Research Establishment in Malvern, Worcestershire.
Asked why he was delaying a particular project, Richards replied: “I do not think it will benefit the world for the RAF to have it.”
Vielle reported the remark to the RAF’s director of intelligence, who, a week later, warned him that his life could be in danger, explaining that Richards had allies “in even higher positions”.
Later that year, in December 1949, while piloting a Meteor, Vielle inexplicably stalled. Both wings, both engines and the fuselage disintegrated in the ensuing crash; the cockpit — and Vielle — survived. “Miraculous,” he agrees. Only afterwards did he notice that the airspeed indicator was of a superannuated type, calibrated in mph rather than knots, with indistinct markings, as if they “had been rubbed with a bit of emery paper”.
The director of intelligence, investigating why an obsolete instrument had been fitted to a modern aircraft, concluded that an attempt had been made on Vielle’s life, but added that it would be “unwise to try” to discover by whom.
Vielle concentrated, instead, on developing an idea he had had during the war — of gyroscope-guided missiles — and another, exploiting sideways-facing radar to allow aircrew to plot their positions precisely over land. He produces the original folder, headed: “Vielle Bombing System: Report on Visit to USA, October 1950, by Group Captain EE Vielle OBE.”
The Americans embraced his ideas, initiating what became the first cruise missile programme; Britain did not. “Richards was on the distribution list,” observes Vielle. Offered double the salary of an air marshal to develop an anti-collision system, Vielle left the RAF aged 43. In 1962 he started on his memoirs. “Then I thought, ‘This is dangerous; I’d better not.’”
Today, 24 years after Bunny’s death, he sees Pat, the middle of their three daughters, once a week, and has 15 great-grandchildren — and “a girlfriend who rings twice a week. A bit of a problem with my prostate, therefore the sex side is rather out of it.”
He gave up skiing “at about 85, and driving at 95”. Cancer meant that “a bit was cut out here” — he touches his right ear.
But his appetite is good. “Nothing like a bit of red meat — very rare.” He laughs, then stops. He describes what happened at Farnborough as “evil”.
The man from the Zeppelin age has opened up the battle on Facebook and YouTube.
“I feel I’ve too short a time, probably, to do much,” he says, “but I’ll do anything I can to get that bloody man Richards — and the others — into public knowledge.”
