Martyn Bolus writes:
‘His many FAA friends will be sad to learn of Joe’s recent death, after a short illness. He was born in Kenya – his father was a retired NO, who had retired out there to grow coffee, and the family returned to the UK in 1934.
My friendship – as another flying plumber – with Joe, goes back to the early days of Keyham and Manadon in 1949, when the latter was still being built (and it’s sad to think that some 50 years later it is now a housing estate !). In the early 50s, Joe was at sea getting his Steam Watchkeeping ticket, and this was followed by his going off to the US to do his flying training at NAS Pensacola, where he met Jan, his wife to be.
Being too long in the thigh for Venom ejection seats, Joe then went to 813 with Wyverns, and thence to 796 training observers at Culdrose. From there he went to the chopper course (705) and then the MTP course at Anthorn.
We met up again at Daedalus, where Joe was one of the MTPs at Fleetlands, and I was doing the chopper course. Joe, I remember at that time was quite exercised with the Whirlwind tractor tow-bar mechanism, which as he pointed out had not been designed according the time-honoured and universally accepted automobile Ackermann front wheel tracking system, and which was why it kept breaking the tow-bars! (for the younger members, the WW had 4 wheels!) This resulted in his being awarded a Herbert Lott prize and £100 for his endeavours.
In February 1959, as the MTP at Culdrose, I was summonsed to go to Donibristle to take over from Joe, who was down with the flu. Although he was on Fleetlands’ books at the time, he had been press-ganged to go to Donibee, where there was a backlog of Hillers, Dragonflys and Skyraiders, which had to be flight-tested, all in a hurry, before the place shut down. I managed 6 tests in the week, but it didn’t seem at all likely that the deadline would be met, and despite our joint best efforts, I have a feeling that most of the backlog left by road !
Joe then went as the MTP at Hal Far, where tasks included flying the ‘unmanned target’ Fireflys, and in fact he (manned) and flew the last flight on the Firefly U (for unmanned) Mk 8, as is recorded in his book The Firefly from the Cockpit (No 4 in the splendid Ad Hoc series). From there he was appointed in 1962 to the BRNC Dartmouth, looking after the Britannia Helicopter flight (Dragonflys), and then, in 1964 to Portland – where he bought his first Aston Martin. This was followed by a spell with the RAF at Andover – a dull appointment, but enlivened by being so close to the Thruxton motor racing circuit, where Joe was able to race the Aston!
In 1968 Joe retired from the RN, and did a spell in the Motor Industry, as Chief Engineer Prototype Build for Rootes at Coventry. After 6 years Rootes were taken over by Chrysler, so he took his redundancy and returned to Africa (Nigeria), to work for Savannah Sugar. This was followed with jobs in Brunei, and then Kenya, where Joe’s finest achievement, as Chief Engineer of the Brooke Bond tea plantations, was probably his master-minding and commissioning the ‘Tagabi Hydro Electric scheme’, successfully generating electrical power from the local river. Then after some 17 years as ex-pats, Joe and Jan returned to the UK, settling in Ottery St Mary, and ‘finally’ retiring, aged 70, in 1999.
Needless to say, he didn’t really retire, and as well as a multitude of local charity jobs, he joined Remap – a charity group of volunteers who design or adapt special equipment for the disabled. So to the end he applied his considerable engineering talents and skills to the benefit of the less fortunate. He was a kindly, generous, humorous man – who will be sadly missed. And to me he was also a link to the senior generation of MTPs, Sharkey Robbins, Chris Jenne and others. Sadly Joe was unable to see his View from the Cockpit on piston-engined helicopters published before he died; but it is in the queue with Roger Chesnau, and it is expected that it will soon appear in print.