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Aviation History
1979
1979 - 0035.PDF
FLIGHT International, 6 January 1979 The Spitfire team Flight photo) >, 33 formed and there was the need to find a chairman for these warring tribes, someone who could pull them together, Portal saw it as his duty. I think he was 67 when he took the job on. He did so because it was impor tant nationally and most of all because to him it was vital for the Royal Air Force to have a decent aircraft industry. I'm sure that he had no idea of what he was letting himself in for but he really gave himself to it and I got very close to him. There was a feeling amongst some of his old colleagues that Portal was aloof and detached. I said to Richards before he started to write his book that he was going to find it very difficult, because Portal was so self-effacing and so modest that all the usual flamboyant biographical stuff didn't exist. Anyone who modelled his life on Portal's wouldn't go far wrong. The dignity and the courage with which he faced his end is the sort of thing you never forget. He was deeply religious, a real Christian. The fact that he was about to die wasn't the end of the situation—it was the beginning of another one. His integrity was self-evident all the time. Although he learned to deal with politicians in the war, I think he resented some of the political infighting that went on during his tour with BAC. I know he resented the tactics that had to be employed. I had to steel him to playing the game when I was fighting some battle or other, when it wasn't any good putting all our cards on the table in the belief that the other chap was going to do the same. I knew from my long and bitter experience that this just wasn't going to happen! •*** .*§<* i# The immortal Spitfire planform is referred to by Sir George Edwards. Inset The Spitfire team, with fi. ]: Mitchell on the running board of his Riley Nine. Left to right: test pilot Mutt Summers; assistant designer Payn; Scott-Hall; test pilot Jeffrey Quill (now with Panavia) We used to work as a sort of double act. He always liked to start off. He wrote up a piece before we went, so that he was quite clear what he was going to say. He used to make a damn good statement from the bridge, then he'd blow the whistle and the chief engineer would emerge in his boiler suit and porkpie hat and proceed to play the game the way he thought it needed to be played. We got let down pretty badly once or twice by what he had interpreted as an undertaking from some minister or civil servant, which I knew was hedged about with qualifying phrases giving them an "out." Peter Portal thought that a man who made a statement of that sort had made a commitment. Such words as "well of course I will have to get my Minister or the Cabinet to ratify this" were in Portal's eyes a mere formality. Unless he could deliver what he had promised he would never make such a statement, even though a formal approval might be necessary. I think his integrity and his honesty made this aspect of the job difficult for him to take. He was such a human old boy. 1 shall never forget the day the One-Eleven prototype crashed and killed Mike Lithgow and Dickie Rymer and several others. I needed a bit of help that day. You don't become a chief designer of an aircraft outfit unless you have disciplined yourself to cope with such things. But in that sort of a crisis, when you have got everybody else under control, whatever you might feel like yourself, you need a comforting shoulder to lean your head on. The last thing you want is somebody
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