If you are interested, here is the obituary of the chap who invented the angled flight deck. Those were the days! N
------------------------ In 1951, Rear-Admiral Dennis Cambell, who has died aged 92, came up with one of those many British inventions that had to be taken up abroad before their value was appreciated at home. It was the angled flight-deck on aircraft carriers, which saved many lives and millions of pounds. At that time Cambell was in an administrative backwater at the Ministry of Supply, as a naval air liaison officer. Previously, carriers had to launch and land aircraft with catapults and arrester wires, while other planes waited at the end of the only deck. The damage when an aircraft falled to take off or land properly, as often happened, and ploughed into waiting planes, was very high. The Admiralty ignored him until US Navy officers showed keen interest in
1952. The first British experiments were made, with painted white lines, on the carrier HMS Triumph. But it was the Americans who fitted the first real angled deck on their carrier, USS Antietam, which, in
1955, let British Fleet Air Arm pilots have a go after three years of completely successful trials. The Royal Navy eventually took up the idea, which gave aircraft a clear run for take-off and landing. An incoming plane could abort a bad landing and go round again without endangering aircraft drawn up on deck. Only the British Harrier jump-jet, with its ability to land vertically, made it possible to dispense with the angled deck on the three Invincible-class carriers now in Royal Navy service. Britain consistently led the way in carrier innovations, starting with the first flat-top in 1918, but a measure of the country's fateful lack of interest in naval aviation was the fact that Cambell had to pay for his first private flying lessons with money borrowed from his father, before unfashionably volunteering for official training with the Royal Air Force, getting his wings in 1931. At this time relatively elderly American naval officers as senior as captains (and future fleet admirals) Ernest J King and William F Halsey - were lining up for pilot training to qualify for command of carriers. Cambell left Westminster School at 18, and then joined the Navy as a late entrant in 1925. Three years later, when his ship was refitting, he took his first flying lessons while on leave. He served in biplane fighters on Furious and Glorious, both of which had been designed as super-cruisers and converted to carriers. Six months before the second world war broke out in 1939, he rose to command a squadron aboard the new carrier Ark Royal. In September, before the war was a fortnight old, he led two other pilots into an attack on Fritz Lemp's submarine U30, which had sunk the liner Athenia on the first day of hostilities and had then been sighted shelling another ship in the North Sea. But these were early days in airborne anti-submarine warfare (ASW). Cambell's colleagnes were forced to ditch when their tailpianes were blown off by the premature blast from their own bombs. The unscathed U-boat took them prisoner as Cambell escaped. He won the DSC in 1940 for his work with Ark Royal (sunk in 1941), but had to stop flying because of arthritis, mysteriously cured when his appendix had to be removed in
1941. He served successfully as a test pilot until made Commander (Air) aboard HMS Argus, the oldest British carrier, heavily escorted while, ferrying fighters to besieged Malta in 1942. But only a few months later, he was reassigned as a test pilot after two others had died on trials of the experimental Blackburn Firebrand carrier fighter. He managed to fly one from HMS Illustrious, but the design was abandoned. Cambell's career continued ashore with a posting to Washington as naval representative on the British Air Commission in the US, acquiring American planes for British service. It was only after two post-war years at the Admiralty that Cambell went back to sea as commander (air) on the carrier Glory in the Far East. This was followed by a very different seagoing job, commanding a corvette used for ASW training in home waters, and then came the Ministry of Supply. After more than five years in various staff posts, Cambell was delighted in 1955 to take command of the brand new carrier Ark Royal, 50,000 tons and with angled deck, the climax of 35 years in the Navy. Yet, after only 18 months, Cambell returned to the Admiralty, first as director of naval air warfare and, finally, as flag officer, flying training. When he retired in 1960, he was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath - and also received the American Legion of Merit for his simple, but revolutionary, idea of the angled flight deck. In retirement, Admiral Cambell worked as a director in helicopter sales before starting a travel agency for holidays in Turkey. He is survived by his wife Dorothy, whom he married in 1933, and their two daughters.
Rear-Admiral Dennis Royle Farquharson Cambell, sailor, born November
13, 1907; died April 6, 2000