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Sir Archibald Russell, CBE, FRS (30 May 1904 – 29 May 1995) was a British
aerospace engineer Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is s ...
who worked most of his career at the
Bristol Aeroplane Company The Bristol Aeroplane Company, originally the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company, was both one of the first and one of the most important British aviation companies, designing and manufacturing both airframes and aircraft engines. Notable ...
, before becoming managing director of the Filton Division when Bristol merged into
British Aircraft Corporation The British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) was a British aircraft manufacturer formed from the government-pressured merger of English Electric, English Electric Aviation Ltd., Vickers-Armstrongs, Vickers-Armstrongs (Aircraft), the Bristol Aeroplane ...
in 1960. He also served as the vice-chairman of the BAC-Sud Aviation Concorde Committee that produced the
Concorde Concorde () is a retired Anglo-French supersonic airliner jointly developed and manufactured by Sud Aviation and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC). Studies started in 1954, and France and the United Kingdom signed a treaty establishin ...
, working alongside Morien Morgan. His designs include the Blenheim,
Britannia The image of Britannia () is the national personification of United Kingdom, Britain as a helmeted female warrior holding a trident and shield. An image first used by the Romans in classical antiquity, the Latin was the name variously appli ...
, Type 188 and many others. He was known throughout his career as a perfectionist, as well as his criticism for those who did not measure up – criticisms that included ministers, civil servants, the
Brabazon Committee The Brabazon Committee was a committee set up by the British government in 1942 to investigate the future needs of the British Empire's civilian airliner market following World War II.Phipp, 2007, pp.15-16 The study was an attempt at defining, in ...
and
BOAC British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) was the British state-owned national airline created in 1939 by the merger of Imperial Airways and British Airways Ltd. It continued operating overseas services throughout World War II. After the ...
.Peter Masefield
"Obituary: Sir Archibald Russell"
''
The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'', 1 July 1995.


Early life and career

Archibald Russell was born in Cinderford, Gloucestershire. He was raised in the
Forest of Dean The Forest of Dean is a geographical, historical and cultural region in the western part of the Counties of England, county of Gloucestershire, England. It forms a roughly triangle, triangular plateau bounded by the River Wye to the west and no ...
and attended East Dean Grammar School where his father (known as "the mathemagician" owing to his facility in complex mental calculation) was headmaster. When he was fifteen the family moved to Bristol and his education continued at
Fairfield Grammar School Fairfield Grammar School was a secondary school in Bristol, England, founded in 1898 as Fairfield Secondary and Higher Grade School. It became a grammar school in 1945 and closed in 2000, to be replaced by a new comprehensive, Fairfield High S ...
, and then the Engineering faculty of
Bristol University The University of Bristol is a public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Bristol, which had ...
where he gained a BSc in automotive engineering. His first job was maintaining buses for the Bristol Tramways & Carriage Company, one of Sir George White's companies.John Coneybeare
"Sir Archibald Russell (1904–1995): Aircraft Engineer"
, Retired Professional Engineers' Club (Bristol), August 2005


Bristol Aeroplane Company

Another of George White's companies was the Bristol Aeroplane Company. Russell joined the company in May 1925, at age 21, as an assistant in the stress office. He met Miss Lorna Mansfield, a secretary at the company, and they were married for over 50 years. One of his first efforts at the company were stress calculations for the Type 99 ''Badminton'', a biplane racer being built for the 1926 King's Cup. The Badminton crashed a month before the race, which gravely concerned Russell until the reason was revealed to be a seized engine. Another early design was the Type 95 ''
Bagshot Bagshot is a large village in the Surrey Heath borough of Surrey, England, approximately southwest of central London. In the past, Bagshot served as an important staging post between London, Southampton and the West Country, evidenced by the ...
'', a twin-engine monoplane fighter. Russell was invited to take a flight in the Bagshot, and was alarmed to see the wings twisting during control use, a problem that led to the abandoning of the design. He developed a new method of separately calculating bending and torsional stresses, which later led to a new single-spar monoplane wing design that was granted a patent. Over a short period of time, Chief Designer Frank Barnwell drew Russell closer into the primary design team. He worked on the Type 105
Bulldog The Bulldog is a British breed of dog of mastiff type. It may also be known as the English Bulldog or British Bulldog. It is a stocky, muscular dog of medium size, with a large head, thick folds of skin around the face and shoulders and a rel ...
, which went on to see production of more than 500 examples. This was followed by another monoplane fighter, the Type 133, but the contract was won by the
Gloster Gladiator The Gloster Gladiator is a British biplane fighter. It was used by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Fleet Air Arm (FAA) (as the Sea Gladiator variant) and was exported to a number of other air forces during the late 1930s. Developed privat ...
instead. In 1935 the first of the RAF Expansion Schemes was launched, and Bristol won two contracts for monoplanes, the
Bombay Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial centre, financial capital and the list of cities i ...
troop-carrier and the Blenheim bomber. Barnwell and his two chief assistants,
Leslie Frise Leslie George Frise FRAeS (2 July 1895 – 26 September 1979) was a British aerospace engineer and aircraft designer; he designed the Type 156 Bristol Beaufighter. He was involved in the development of aircraft and gun-turret hydraulic systems. ...
and Russell, looked to address the Bagshot's wing problems in the Bombay, and over-designed it to ensure flexing would not be an issue. The design suffered as a result, both overweight and extremely difficult to manufacture. Only 50 were built and saw limited service. The Blenheim was based on newer designs and was originally built for speed, not utility. It was the result of contest to produce the fastest four-passenger plane in Europe, and therefore did not require the higher weights and ruggedness of the Bombay. It had a much simpler design, but proved just as capable, and was easily adapted into a
light bomber A light bomber is a relatively small and fast type of military bomber aircraft that was primarily employed before the 1950s. Such aircraft would typically not carry more than one ton of ordnance. The earliest light bombers were intended to dr ...
. The Blenheim was far more successful than Bombay, with over 1,000 delivered by the start of the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
in September 1939. In August 1938 Barnwell had been killed flying a small aeroplane of his own design. Leslie Frise took over the Chief Designer role, with Russell becoming deputy. They were immediately put to work on a variety of development of the Blenheim, including the Type 152 Beaufort and Type 156
Beaufighter The Bristol Type 156 Beaufighter (often called the Beau) is a British multi-role aircraft developed during the Second World War by the Bristol Aeroplane Company. It was originally conceived as a heavy fighter variant of the Bristol Beaufort t ...
. More than 5,500 Beaufighters were built before the war ended. A final development, the Type 164 "
Brigand Brigandage is the life and practice of highway robbery and plunder. It is practiced by a brigand, a person who is typically part of a gang and lives by pillage and robbery.Oxford English Dictionary second edition, 1989. "Brigand.2" first record ...
", was produced only in small numbers before being replaced by the
English Electric Canberra The English Electric Canberra is a British first-generation, jet-powered medium bomber. It was developed by English Electric during the mid- to late 1940s in response to a 1944 Air Ministry requirement for a successor to the wartime de Havilla ...
. In 1941 the Air Staff placed a development contract for a long-range, 100 ton, 300 mph heavy bomber with a bomb load of 80,000 lbs. The aircraft was designed to fill
Barnes Wallis Sir Barnes Neville Wallis (26 September 1887 – 30 October 1979) was an English engineer and inventor. He is best known for inventing the bouncing bomb used by the Royal Air Force in Operation Chastise (the "Dambusters" raid) to attack ...
' concept of the "Victory Bomber", which would drop huge "
earth quake bomb The earthquake bomb, or seismic bomb, was a concept that was invented by the British aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis early in World War II and subsequently developed and used during the war against strategic targets in Europe. A seismic bomb ...
s" that would destroy dams and other power plants even with a near miss, and thereby render Germany unable to run its industry. Frise and Russell started work on such a design, featuring extensive streamlining for lower drag and better range, powered by eight
Centaurus Centaurus () is a bright constellation in the southern sky. One of the 88 modern constellations by area, largest constellations, Centaurus was included among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one ...
engines, paired to drive four propellers. But before the design had got very far, Wallis had moved onto the idea of a smaller special-purpose bomb that could fill the same role, but would be much smaller. This developed into the famed
bouncing bomb A bouncing bomb is a bomb designed to bounce to a target across water in a calculated manner to avoid obstacles such as torpedo nets, and to allow both the bomb's speed on arrival at the target and the timing of its detonation to be predeterm ...
carried by the
Avro Lancaster The Avro Lancaster, commonly known as the Lancaster Bomber, is a British World War II, Second World War heavy bomber. It was designed and manufactured by Avro as a contemporary of the Handley Page Halifax, both bombers having been developed to ...
.


Chief Designer

In February 1944 this work was able to be re-used when the
Brabazon Committee The Brabazon Committee was a committee set up by the British government in 1942 to investigate the future needs of the British Empire's civilian airliner market following World War II.Phipp, 2007, pp.15-16 The study was an attempt at defining, in ...
ordered a very large transatlantic airliner to carry 90 passengers for 5,000 miles in 17 hours, all with sleeping accommodation. Frise and Russell had just started work on this adaptation when Frise quit to become Technical Director of
Hunting Aircraft Hunting Aircraft was a British aircraft manufacturer that produced light training aircraft and the initial design that would evolve into the BAC 1-11 jet airliner. Founded as Percival Aircraft Company in 1933, the company later moved to Luton ...
. Russell was promoted to Chief Designer in his place. The new design emerged as the Brabazon, but proved to be a commercial failure. Overly large and too slow, it was entering the market just as
turboprop A turboprop is a Gas turbine, gas turbine engine that drives an aircraft Propeller (aeronautics), propeller. A turboprop consists of an intake, reduction drive, reduction gearbox, gas compressor, compressor, combustor, turbine, and a propellin ...
and
jet engine A jet engine is a type of reaction engine, discharging a fast-moving jet (fluid), jet of heated gas (usually air) that generates thrust by jet propulsion. While this broad definition may include Rocket engine, rocket, Pump-jet, water jet, and ...
s were coming into the field.
BOAC British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) was the British state-owned national airline created in 1939 by the merger of Imperial Airways and British Airways Ltd. It continued operating overseas services throughout World War II. After the ...
asked for the second prototype to be powered by four
Proteus In Greek mythology, Proteus ( ; ) is an early prophetic sea god or god of rivers and oceanic bodies of water, one of several deities whom Homer calls the "Old Man of the Sea" (''hálios gérôn''). Some who ascribe a specific domain to Prote ...
turboprops in place of the eight Centaurus', but this engine would need additional development before it could be fitted and BOAC lost interest in the meantime. The prototype was later cut up after suffering from fatigue cracks in the engine/propeller mounting structures. While the Brabazon was turning from design to prototype, the company directors asked Russell to start development of a much more modest freighter design. This emerged as the
Bristol Freighter The Bristol Type 170 Freighter is a British twin-engine aircraft designed and built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company as both a freighter and airliner. Its best known use was as an air ferry to carry cars and their passengers over relatively s ...
in 1945. A small number were sold to a variety of users, and the design was a modest success. In 1947 Bristol won a design competition for "An airliner to required to carry thirty six passengers on routes to South Africa, Australia and the Far East." The number of passengers, 36, had been set by the capacity of the standard BOAC airport bus. Russell redesigned the plane for 68 passengers instead, producing the
Britannia The image of Britannia () is the national personification of United Kingdom, Britain as a helmeted female warrior holding a trident and shield. An image first used by the Romans in classical antiquity, the Latin was the name variously appli ...
. As development continued, BOAC decided the Proteus was ready for airline use, and asked for development to be switched to this engine. With some additional wing area, this allowed the passenger capacity to be increased to 96 without altering the fuselage. The first prototype flew in August 1952, but the engines were still not ready for production. The second prototype, with upgraded Proteus III's, flew in December 1953. This example caught fire in February 1954 and had to be ditched. The cause was eventually traced to a failure in the propeller reduction gearing, but did not significantly set back development. However, at this point the
de Havilland Comet The de Havilland DH.106 Comet is the world's first commercial jet airliner. Developed and manufactured by de Havilland in the United Kingdom, the Comet 1 prototype first flew in 1949. It features an aerodynamically clean design with four ...
suffered a series of mysterious crashes, and the ensuing investigation discovered extensive
metal fatigue In materials science, fatigue is the initiation and propagation of cracks in a material due to cyclic loading. Once a fatigue crack has initiated, it grows a small amount with each loading cycle, typically producing striation (fatigue), striati ...
problems. This led to a new requirement that all designs had to undergo extensive water tank testing. After passing these tests, the Proteus engines proved to have icing problems, leading to additional redesigns. By the time the Britannia finally entered service in 1957, the
Boeing 707 The Boeing 707 is an early American long-range Narrow-body aircraft, narrow-body airliner, the first jetliner developed and produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Developed from the Boeing 367-80 prototype, the initial first flew on Decembe ...
and
Douglas DC-8 The Douglas DC-8 (sometimes McDonnell Douglas DC-8) is an early long-range Narrow-body aircraft, narrow-body jetliner designed and produced by the American Douglas Aircraft Company. Work began in 1952 towards the United States Air Force's (USA ...
were about to enter service, dramatically limiting interest in the Britannia. In the late 1950s Russell led the design of the
Bristol Type 200 The Bristol Type 200 was a proposal for a short-range aircraft by the Bristol Aeroplane Company in 1956. Although it was designed in response to a specification issued by British European Airways (BEA), the Type 200 was larger than the airline' ...
, a concept that competed with the
Hawker Siddeley Trident The Hawker Siddeley HS-121 Trident (originally the de Havilland DH.121 and briefly the Airco DH.121) is a British airliner produced by Hawker Siddeley. In 1957, de Havilland proposed its DH.121 trijet design to a British European Airways (BEA ...
. Russell felt that
British European Airways British European Airways (BEA), formally British European Airways Corporation, was a British airline which existed from 1946 until 1974. BEA operated to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East from airports around the United Kingdom. The ...
' (BEA) specification was too small, so the Type 200 was closer in size and range to the
Boeing 727 The Boeing 727 is an American Narrow-body aircraft, narrow-body airliner that was developed and produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. After the heavier Boeing 707, 707 quad-jet was introduced in 1958, Boeing addressed the demand for shorter ...
, which later sold almost 10 times as well as the Trident. In 1958 BEA selected the Trident and the Type 200 was cancelled.


Concorde

Through the 1950s Russell became increasingly interested in
supersonic Supersonic speed is the speed of an object that exceeds the speed of sound (Mach 1). For objects traveling in dry air of a temperature of 20 °C (68 °F) at sea level, this speed is approximately . Speeds greater than five times ...
flight, and was particularly interested in the "breathtaking novelty" of the slender delta wing, which gave good lift at high
angle of attack In fluid dynamics, angle of attack (AOA, α, or \alpha) is the angle between a Airfoil#Airfoil terminology, reference line on a body (often the chord (aircraft), chord line of an airfoil) and the vector (geometry), vector representing the relat ...
due to the phenomenon of
vortex lift Vortex lift is that portion of lift due to the action of leading edge vortices. It is generated by wings with highly sweptback, sharp, leading edges (beyond 50 degrees of sweep) or highly-swept wing-root extensions added to a wing of moderate s ...
. Russell and his team proposed a number of designs using the new wing, eventually leading a number of paper studies for a
supersonic transport The ogive.html" ;"title="Concorde supersonic transport had an ogive">ogival delta wing, a slender fuselage and four underslung Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 engines. file:Tu-144.jpg, The Tupolev Tu-144 was the first SST to enter service and th ...
, starting with the Type 198 in 1961. The team, led by Bill Strang, Mick Wilde, Doug Thorn and Douglas Vickery, had produced a number of designs when they learned of similar efforts at
Sud Aviation Sud Aviation (, 'Southern Aviation') was a French state-owned aircraft manufacturer, originating in the merger of Sud-Est ( SNCASE, or ''Société nationale des constructions aéronautiques du sud-est'') and Sud-Ouest ( SNCASO or ''Société nat ...
under the Super-Caravelle project. Russell developed a friendship with his counterpart at Sud, Louis Giusta, which aided the eventual formation of the Concorde project. Russell became the joint chairman of the Concorde Executive Committee of Directors between 1965 and 1969. Russell was appointed chairman, Filton Division of the
British Aircraft Corporation The British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) was a British aircraft manufacturer formed from the government-pressured merger of English Electric, English Electric Aviation Ltd., Vickers-Armstrongs, Vickers-Armstrongs (Aircraft), the Bristol Aeroplane ...
(BAC) in 1968 and retired in 1969. He was also vice-chairman, BAC-Sud Aviation Concorde Committee 1969 to 1970. Russell won the RAeS British Gold Medal in 1951, was made
CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...
in 1954, FRS in 1970 and Knighted in 1972. With his wife Lorna he had one son and one daughter. Lorna died in 1984 and Russell married Judy Humphrey in 1986. Archibald Russell died in Angarrack, Cornwall on 29 May 1995, one day short of his 91st birthday.


References


External links


Retired Engineers Celebrate Brunel200 with Engineers’ Walk
{{DEFAULTSORT:Russell, Archibald 1904 births 1995 deaths Concorde Alumni of the University of Bristol British aerospace engineers Commanders of the Order of the British Empire People from Cinderford People educated at East Dean Grammar School People educated at Fairfield Grammar School Fellows of the Royal Society