Sir Peter Masefield

Obituary

Sir Peter Masefield, who died on February 14 aged 91, was one of the leading figures in Britain's post-war aviation industry, playing an important role at British European Airways (BEA) and in the development of the Britannia aircraft; from 1965 to 1971 he was chairman of the British Airports Authority. Masefield was that rare phenomenon, a journalist who succeeded in business. In 1939 he was contributing freelance reports of Royal Aeronautical Society lectures to The Aeroplane, whose editor CG Grey appointed him technical editor. Although he wrote highly readable accounts of the activities of characters such as Geoffrey de Havilland and Frederick Handley-Page, Masefield was also enough of a scientist to meet the requirements of his job description. Moreover, he already held a pilot's licence. When he was taken on by Grey, Masefield was earning Ł3 10s a week working in the drawing office and wind-tunnel of Fairey Aviation, and he leapt at the offer of Ł7 10s a week and the opportunity to broaden his horizons. Peter Gordon Masefield was born on March 19 1914, at Trentham, Staffs, the son of a doctor. He was educated at Westminster, Chillon College in Switzerland and Jesus College, Cambridge. While reading for an Engineering degree, he spent the long vacations helping to overhaul Argosies and the first HP 42 in the Imperial Airways workshops at Croydon. This 1s-a-week holiday task was the happy realisation of a dream which had been born when, aged 13, he had been "bitten", as he put it, "by a mad aeroplane" while listening to a lecture by Handley-Page at the Royal Aeronautical Society. The Air Show at Olympia in 1929 fanned his enthusiasm. And in the same year he was thrilled to meet the pilot of an Armstrong Whitworth Siskin which had beat up Heston airfield; this was Wing Commander Sholto Douglas, a former 1914-18 Royal Flying Corps squadron commander, who 20 years later - as Marshal of the RAF Lord Douglas of Kirtleside and chairman of BEA - would employ Masefield as his chief executive. By the outbreak of war in September 1939, Masefield was well placed to make use of his developing talents and contacts as an aviation jounalist. He was appointed air correspondent of The Sunday Times and war correspondent with the RAF, initially with the Advanced Air Striking Force in France. Between 1939 and 1943 he flew on operations; and after the Americans entered the war he accompanied Eighth Air Force daylight B-17 Fortress sorties as either a co-pilot or an air gunner, as well as in his role as a reporter. He also edited an official aircraft recognition journal for Lord Beaverbrook's Ministry for Aircraft Production. Before Masefield was 30, Beaverbrook (by now Lord Privy Seal) had appointed him his personal aeronautical adviser and secretary of a War Cabinet committee planning for post-war civil air transport. In mid-war, the committee's deliberations on airline and airport requirements struck Masefield as a supreme act of faith - not least on the occasion when, as a V1 flying bomb cut out overhead, he and Beaverbrook dived for cover under the committee table. Beaverbrook's patronage opened doors, and at one point Masefield was offered a safe Conservative seat. But he had no interest in a political career, later noting: "That extraordinary posture so beloved of politicians of sitting on the fence with both ears to the ground did not seem to me to be likely to be elegant. My first love was aviation and I wanted to be faithful." Instead, when the war ended Masefield was appointed Britain's first ever civil air attaché in Washington. In 1946 he arranged, and was a signatory in Bermuda to, the first Anglo-American agreement on the future of air transport. Afterwards he negotiated the purchase by BOAC of six C-69 Lockheed Constellations from the US Air Transport Command. Masefield returned home as director-general of long-term planning and projects at the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Even though ambitious projects such as the Bristol Brabazon and the 10-engine Saunders-Roe Princess flying-boat proved costly failures, it was valuable experience for his later career in commercial aviation. From 1949 Masefield and Lord Douglas worked together for seven years, developing BEA from a small, newly-formed airline operating with makeshift wartime conversions into a substantial and profitable carrier of world stature. Masefield provided the airline with a new fleet, beginning with 20 elegant Airspeed Ambassadors, operated as Elizabethans, the best twin-engine transport of its day, and also the more numerous Vickers Vikings. Following BEA's move from Northolt to Heathrow, Masefield introduced the turbo-prop Viscount, which set the airline on the road to profitability. In 1953 he entered a BEA Viscount in the air race from London to Christchurch, New Zealand. Determined not to miss the fun, he flew as team manager and employed John Profumo MP, deputy Minister of Civil Aviation, as steward; the Viscount's time was 40 hours and 43 minutes, earning it second place in the transport handicap class. Yet for all Masefield's success with BEA, he did not always have an easy time. Frequently at odds with the airline's Whitehall paymasters, he had to fight off attempts at control by Lord Pakenham (later Lord Longford) and his Ministry of Civil Aviation. By 1955, therefore, Masefield was ready to accept the post of managing director of Bristol Aircraft, with the principal task of bringing the turbo-prop Britannia into production and airline service ahead of jets. (Before this appointment had been announced, he was asked to succeed Sir Miles Thomas as chairman of BOAC, but felt obliged to decline the offer.) In the event, Masefield flourished at Bristol, which was involved not only in airframe and engine manufacture, but also in building helicopters, guided weapons and cars. He made frequent business trips between Bristol and London piloting a personal de Havilland Chipmunk which he modified with a bubble canopy, spat wheels and ejector exhausts, adding 20 mph to its 119 mph cruising speed. On a visit to America to sell the Britannia, Masefield spent "a fascinating week" with Howard Hughes, who insisted on flying the aircraft with bare feet, claiming that he got a better feel of it through his toes. Hughes was impressed, and asked for 30 aircraft for TWA. Unfortunately, Bristol's capacity was unable to meet Hughes's demand for one a week from May 1957. In all during Masefield's period in charge, 85 Britannias were built, 60 for BOAC and 25 for RAF Transport Command. Meanwhile, in 1960 Pressed Steel invited Masefield to launch a new light aeroplane manufacturing company to fill the gap made by de Havilland moving out of light aircraft and being absorbed by Hawker Siddeley. Hence, the next year Masefield was appointed managing director, later chairman, of British Executives and General Aviation, soon to be sensibly contracted as Beagle Aircraft. Following the success of his souped-up Chipmunk - which, in 1962, he flew into third place in the King's Cup Air Race - Masefield was in his element. He relished such developments as the Beagle-Auster Husky, Airedale and Bulldog trainer until he left in 1970. Since 1965 Masefield had coupled Beagle with the chairmanship of the new British Airports Authority, established by the Labour government to take over responsibility for the country airports from the Ministry of Aviation. Under Masefield, runways were extended, new terminals built, management was streamlined. Heathrow was successfully expanded, and by the end of Masefield's period in charge the BAA was making a profit. He was knighted in 1972. In 1975 he returned to airlines as a director, later deputy chairman (1978-87), of British Caledonian, remaining until 1988. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Masefield served on many boards, councils and committees. Yet he still found time, between 1980 and 1982, to serve as a trouble-shooting chairman and chief executive of London Transport (LT). As Masefield wound down his business career, he continued to be involved in a range of voluntary activities, and he wrote articles on aviation, transport management and the 1914-1918 war. As a member of the wartime committee on peacetime aviation, he had examined the feasibility of reintroducing airship passenger transport, and this led to an enduring interest in the R101 disaster near Paris in October 1930, when 48 people - including Lord Thomson, Secretary of State for Air, and Major-General Sir Sefton Brancker, Director of Civil Aviation - had lost their lives. In 1982 Masefield published a book about the disaster, To Ride The Storm. Masefield had been president of the Brooklands Museum Trust since 1993. He was also a liveryman of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators (GAPAN) and a Freeman of the City of London. He was a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and president in 1959-60. He married, in 1936, Patricia Doreen Rooney, with whom he had three sons and a daughter; one of his sons is Sir Charles Masefield, the president of BAE Systems.

Datum: 18. 02. 2006