#Framlingham | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mercurygray · 7 months ago

Text

What Friends Are For

It's a normal afternoon at the airfield, with administration staff running errands and a baseball game in the outfield, until a replacement plane brings a new pilot...and a new perspective on an old face.

It had been the most normal afternoon in the world before the plane came in.

The day’s mission (a milk run of a diversion route, hardly worth worrying over) wasn’t due back for several hours, and everyone who’d been left off the roster was taking advantage of the July sunshine. There were men napping in deck chairs outside the Aero Club and half of a baseball game in the newly mown infield, a strange sense of peace smoothing over everything - until Anita’s voice was heard coming in over the tannoy that everyone was to clear the field and the runway for a flight in from Framlingham.

A wild scramble started at the Aero Club and the motor pool, a jumbled rush for jeeps and bicycles and anything else that could get you to the tarmac as fast as possible. Framlingham meant replacement planes, and replacement planes meant ferry pilots - and ferry pilots just might be female.

Two to a plane, a pilot and and a co-pilot who could run radios in a pinch. It was a job for flyers who were not quite 1A, not exactly front line and not exactly behind it either, and the Air Forces had decided that before they saddled their walking wounded with the indignity of being singled out for noncombat flights, they’d let the women do it. Look nice in the papers, wouldn’t it - fresh-faced young woman straight from college airfields and the Ninety-Nines clubroom. Girl flyers to ferry planes for bomber boys. It would be allowed that they were just level headed enough to fly the plane from point A to point B, but combat duty would be a bridge too far. Handling one of the heavies in anything stronger than a swift breeze was a job for men, not women. (Until someone needed to motivate the men, in which case - it’s so easy they’ve got girls doing it.)

And besides all that - it might be good for morale, to have a couple of cute faces around.

The baseball players made it in first - Egan and DeMarco and Biddick, shirts off and baseball gloves abandoned at the side of the tarmac while the B-17 touched down, slowing steadily and then turning on to the taxiway, one of the crew chiefs waving it down to an open hardstand to give it another once over. The crowd followed. “I call dibs if one’s a blonde,” Dickie was heard to say to his co-pilot, Curt shoving him playfully and telling him where he could put it.

They waited a ways off while the propellers stopped spinning, the familiar whine of the engine dying down until the silence said it was safe to approach.

A figure in Santiago blue emerged from the hatch near the nose, bag tossed on the tarmac and landing with a soft thump on the ground. (More than one man was thinking about how nice those legs looked, getting down out of the plane.)

“Still fun though, wasn’t it?” the woman was asking, waiting for another person to join her on the ground, fixing her gloves and loosening her jacket.

“God, yes,” the second voice agreed, the smile in her voice hardly trying to hide. “I forgot how much.” A second bag, a second pair of legs - but the face that went with it made every single man there pull up short.

Benny got there first. “Callaway?”

Sure enough, there she was - Cordelia Callaway, last seen on a truck south to Wing Headquarters at Horham, trying to brush the creases out of her trousers and shoving a pair of leather pilot’s gloves into her coat pockets. It was strange to see her away from her tower, and perhaps stranger still to see she was pulling down both her briefcase and a navigator’s board, its pencil hanging by a string.

“She was going my way,” the pilot in blue offered, as if some kind of apology were needed. “We were short-handed and it seemed silly to make an old friend wait for the truck.”

The answer provoked more questions than answers, but no one quite seemed to know quite what to ask - or how. “Are you gonna introduce us, Lieutenant?” Gale asked breezily, joining the party with his cap still on and a book tucked under his arm. “Some of us like to pretend we still have manners.”

Cord, too, was a little off balance. “This is Laura Simpson. She’s a... friend of mind from back home. Laura, this is Major Gale Cleven - Captain Benny DeMarco - Lieutenant Curtis Biddick - Lieutenant Dickie Snyder...and Major John Egan. They’re all pilots here at the 100th.”

“You any relation to the Laura Simpson whose father’s an admiral?” Dickie asked, as Laura went around shaking hands.

“Guilty as charged,” the pilot replied. “Hope you won’t hold it against me.”

“And how do they have you flying for the Army?”

“Nepotism only gets you anywhere if your uncle’s a six star general,” Laura said, grinning at her own joke. “The Navy won’t let me near a plane, much less the carrier to put it on - and believe me, Daddy asked. So it’s all Army, all day for this gal. I don’t mind it much, as long as I’m flying. Besides,” she added, with a wink for effect, “I have it on good authority the boys are cuter on this side of the war.”

That won some points - the smiles got wider and at least one man stood up just a little taller. “Are you going to stick around for dinner, Miss Simpson? The cuter boys always have room for another pretty face,” Dickie offered, obviously trying hard to get the last word in.

“Well, it is the last flight of the day for me,” Laura said, shrugging. “And it just so happens I brought my party clothes, too.”

“I should get going,” Cordelia said quietly, adjusting the grip on her briefcase and hefting the navigator’s board under her arm. “I’ve got film for Bowman and Brennan.”

“I’ll catch you later,” Laura promised. “I’m sure these fine gentlemen will get me over to the women’s quarters in one piece.” She looked around with a winning smile. “Someone going to offer to carry my bag?”

Three hands went up, but Curt’s went straight to the bag itself, which made him the winner, and the whole group set off back to base, Dickie jogging around to retrieve the rest of the baseball gloves.

“Mighty nice of you to jumpseat Callaway back to us, Miss Simpson,” Bucky said with a smile, his long stride loping a little to keep pace with Laura, who wasn’t nearly as tall as him.

“Oh, I didn’t jumpseat anyone,” Laura said strongly, smiling slightly herself. “She drove.”

There were stares, and Bucky actually lost a step. “Callaway’s not a pilot, she’s a flight control officer.”

His stare was just this side of predatory, his dark eyes focused and narrow, but Laura still laughed. “If you think that’s true, there’s a lot about Cordelia Callaway you don’t know, Major.”

“Enlighten us, then,” Curt offered, as generous with his smiles as he’d been with his carrying of her bag.

Laura met his eye with a generosity of her own. “Buy me a drink later and maybe I’ll tell you, Lieutenant.”

Later was after they’d let her fill out paperwork with Jack Kidd about the plane she’d just brought in, and let him make the necessary calls for a seat on a truck headed back to Framlingham so she could be returned to the ferrying roster tomorrow, and after Captain Brennan had made sure there were quarters ready in the women’s block and filled her in on the rest of the base’s amenities. And finally, after all the ts had been crossed and is had been dotted and her bags had been left in the women’s quarters, it was just close enough to happy hour that the whole party found themselves in the officer’s club for a few drinks before dinner.

“So how does an admiral’s daughter end up knowing a WAC from Ohio?” Curt said with single-minded focus, once the drinks had been poured and seats had been found near the fireplace. “Because there ain’t a lot of naval bases in Dayton, the last time I checked.”

“We met on the East Coast air race circuit,” Laura offered plainly, glancing around to blank and confused stares. "You all really don't know who she is, do you?" She laughed and took a sip of her whiskey. "Cord Callaway is the 1939 Cleveland Powder Puff women's pylons champion. She's not just a pilot - she's a racer. And an acrobat, while we’re talking."

"You're shitting me." That was Bucky, sitting back in his chair.

"Not for a moment," Laura assured him. "She's one of the best fliers I know. She did the course at Cleveland and took five seconds off the standing record that year - and she did it in last year’s plane."

"So what the hell's she doing up in a control tower?"

"You'd have to ask her that, Lieutenant Biddick. I only know part of the story."

“So share the part you know,” Bucky advised.

Laura looked around at the waiting faces and settled into her chair. “You all know she grew up at Wright Patterson, right? Her old man’s an engineer there - helps run tests on government contract models. She grew up flying - took lessons from officers at the base when her dad was working late. Practice something long enough and you get good at it, and she got good. The guys who were teaching her were all test pilots - taught her rolls and spins, and she got good at those, too. The Air Force usually sent a couple of guys to Cleveland, and one year she went with. They let her take one of the planes out as a joke, and she smoked three quarters of the field - no one knew who she was or where she’d come from. Next thing you know she’s got a Ninety-Nines membership and an invite to the next meet and one of the guys at Curtis is talking to her about flying their plane - once they find out she’s Wilson Callaway’s daughter. They figure that making it easy enough for a girl to fly will be a selling point.” She smirked. “It’s not just six star generals and admirals, you know.”

Bucky cut in. “Get to the part about the tower.”

If Laura seemed surprised by his insistence she didn’t say anything, just kept on with the story. “Jackie Cochran had reached out to a number of us in...was that the same year? I think it was. Wanting to talk about flying for England - ferrying duties. I didn’t feel like it, but then Nancy Love reached out...maybe a year later, a year and a half, about doing the same thing stateside, after Arnold asked her, and that sounded good to me. I called around to see who else I might be seeing, and I thought for sure Cord would be game, but she - she said she wasn’t doing it, that she was joining the WAC instead to do air traffic.” She paused, took a sip of her drink. “There was ...a guy she’d been mentioning a lot, and apparently there’d been an accident. He was due to join his squadron in a week.” Laura took another sip of whiskey, ice clipping around in her glass. The entire group had gone silent. “Captain James Chapman. Jimmy. When your number’s up, I suppose.” She raised her eyebrows and finished the rest of her whiskey. “And that’s what I know about that. If you want whatever’s left of the story, you’ll have to get it from her.”

It was a somber note to end on, but the mess sergeant was ringing the bell for chow, and man by man they trooped out to the dining hall, Curt and Dickie having apparently claimed the right to have Laura sit at their table. By the time they got to dinner everyone was talking and laughing again.

The officer’s club certainly wasn’t crowded after dinner, but Bucky still slid into the seat directly next to Cord and made himself comfortable watching Laura with her current dance partner across the room. For a moment the two sat in silence. “I think Curt’s getting ready to propose to your friend,” Bucky said, casually.

The observation made her glance up in alarm. He was right - Curt looked very serious indeed, his hand gently cradling hers as the two danced. “Someone had better tell him to save it,” she warned. “Laura’s already spoken for. She’s got a boyfriend over in Fighter Command with a right hook that’s just as good as Curt’s.”

Bucky seemed to be considering it for a moment, but he remained in his chair, his eyes fixed on Cord again. “You know, she’s telling some wild stories about your course record in Cleveland, Lieutenant.”

Cord met his eye for a moment in fear, her eyes quickly falling back to her drink. “I wish she wouldn’t,” she said, softly.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” Bucky leaned over the table, his glass in both hands. “About being a pilot?”

“I didn’t think it was relevant.”

“So then why’d you give up flying?” Bucky wasn’t taking no for an answer here, clearly trying to understand more. “They would have let you, same as her. Was it this guy - this guy Jimmy?”

The name made her freeze for a moment, a deer under the hunter’s eye. “She told that story, too?”

Bucky nodded and leaned back in his chair again. “I have to say, I’m kinda struggling to picture you breaking your heart over a boyfriend, but what do I know?”

“That’s not why I did it.” Her tone was almost harsh. “It wasn’t a broken heart, and he ...wasn’t my boyfriend.” She said all this like that would be the end of the matter, and then made the mistake of glancing at Bucky, who said nothing, spreading his hands and raising his eyebrows like he was inviting her to say more. “It was an accident,” she said, finally. “A terrible, perfectly avoidable accident.” Again he said nothing, the silence guilting her to speak. “Control gave him and the next pilot in the flight pattern the wrong approach angle and windspeed - they collided in midair.”

If Bucky had a smart reply to that, he couldn’t immediately find it, and Cord, for once, looked vindicated. Every pilot worth his salt knew you invited trouble by talking about air accidents, and what she’d just described was one hell of a mistake. “Decided then war didn’t need more pilots,” she added, draining her drink with a bitter look. “It needed more people to get them back on the ground safe.” She scraped her chair backwards and stood up, leaving the empty glass between them. “I’m going to bed. I think Laura knows where she’s staying. Don’t let her get into too much trouble.” And then, just like that, she was gone, and Bucky was left alone at the table, staring at her wake. Plane crashes, pylons champions... Cord Callaway, a pilot!

The music wound down and Laura flung herself into Cord’s vacated seat, flushed and smiling and breathing heavily, a fresh glass in her hand. “You look like a man trying to figure something out, Major.”

“I am,” Bucky decided, sitting up a little and smoothing out his jacket. “I’m trying to figure out how the two of you are friends when you’re goddamn delightful and Callaway is -”

Laura rolled her eyes. “She’s not always like that, you know. She’s got a big job up there, and she takes it very seriously.” She brushed a hair out of her eyes and took a long sip of her drink. “You know, Cord talked a lot about you, on the way over,” she said, watching Bucky for signs of life. He looked up in surprise. “I mean, she talked about everyone, but she talked a lot about you in particular, Major Egan.”

Bucky scoffed. “Well, that’s not surprising. I’m a stone in her shoe. She trying to warn you off me?”

Laura shook her head. “She’s lived around pilots her whole life, Major. Cowboys and showoffs aren’t new.” Another pause, another drink. “No, I think it’s something else. You’re the guy they look up to - the one who’s invincible, who tells them it can be done and then does it. That’s how Jimmy was. And she saw what losing him did to the other guys with him.” She sat up a little in her chair and leaned over the table. “Did she tell you the part of the story about how she met his mother afterwards? She and his father were coming to see him off - missed the telegram. Instead of a vacation they got their son in a box, before he’d ever even got to the war. So she doesn't do it to be an ice queen, Major Egan. She does it because however she feels about you, she respects what you do. And I think - no, I know - that she cares about you. Maybe not that way - but she cares."

She gathered up her glass and moved off, to the table that Dickie and a few of the others were sharing, leaving Bucky to wonder in peace about secrets, and friends who shared stories, and just what kind of guy Jimmy Chapman must have been, to make a girl give up flying for him.

#i have written a thing #mercurygraypresents #tds cinematic universe #masters of the air OC #masters of the air x oc #cordelia callaway

33 notes · View notes

thedudleywomen · 2 months ago

Text

ON THIS DAY - 14 October 1586

On This Day (14 Oct) in 1586, the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots began at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire: she had been charged with plotting the assassination of Elizabeth I.

Mary had been arrested on 11 Aug 1586 whilst being held prisoner at Chartley Manor, Staffordshire; she had been held there since Dec 1585, the residence of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. From here she was transported to nearby Tixall House, before finally being moved to Fotheringhay on 25 Sep 1586.

It was whilst at Chartley that Mary corresponded with Anthony Babington, a Catholic and long-time supporter of hers; letters were written in cypher and transported in and out of the house in beer barrels. Babington was the head of the eponymous 'Babington Plot' - a conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth and place the Catholic Mary on the English throne. However, Elizabeth's Secretary of State and 'spymaster' Sir Francis Walsingham was able to intercept these letters, leading the arrest of Babington, his co-conspirators and eventually Mary. It was these letters that were used as evidence against Mary, and led to her being tried on charges of high treason.

Mary's trial was held in the Great Hall at Fotheringhay - an 'examination' of the evidence by a panel of English nobles, under the 'Act of Association'. Being found guilty under this act would lead to Mary being stripped of her claim to the English throne, and lawfully being put to death. She appeared in person at 9 o'clock in the morning, in front of crown representatives and noblemen, including William Cecil, Baron Burghley (Elizabeth's Lord High Treasurer) Walsingham and George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, under whose custody she had been held for 15 years. She wore her favoured garments of her captive years: a black velvet dress and mantle, with white headdress (with widows peak) and veil.

Mary denied the charges put to her, as well as arguing that she had been denied access to legal counsel. She continued to assert her authority as an anointed queen, and expected to be treated so. Correspondence between the two were passed around, in addition to Babington's deposition and signed confessions of two co-conspirators; Mary denied ever having met Anthony Babington, and accused Walsingham of inventing the cyphers and manufacturing the plot to implicate her. However, she confirmed that she continued to support Catholic interests in England, as well as abroad.

Elizabeth had ordered that no sentence be passed until all the evidence had been presented to herself, and following the conclusion of the trial on 15 Oct, the panel returned to London. Their findings were subsequently presented to Elizabeth on 25 Oct 1586 at the Star Chamber in London; Mary was found guilty of being "not only accessory and privy to the conspiracy, but also an imaginer and compass of her majesty's destruction" and a sentence of death was passed. However, Elizabeth continued to demonstrate ambiguity, requesting attempts to obtain a 'full confession' from the Scottish Queen, in an attempt to save her life, and void any retaliatory action from Mary's Catholic allies abroad.

#tudor #tudors #tudor women #tudor queens #tudor england #tudor history #history #England history #tudor people #Elizabeth i #Mary queen of scots #francis walsingham #Anthony babington #Babington plot #George talbot #bess of hardwick #Charley manor #Framlingham castle

2 notes · View notes

usafphantom2 · 1 year ago

Text

the 390th Bomb Group at Framlingham. Below, J square, the 390th Bomb Group, naming themselves "Wittan's Wallopers". They claimed 342 e/a destroyed. #WWII

@FrancesBekafigo via X

68 notes · View notes

queenmarytudor · 5 months ago

Text

Mary I's Fight For The Throne

20th July - Mary is victorious

Having heard of Robert Dudley proclaiming Jane queen in Kings Lynn, Mary sends "requiring them to apprehend the Lord Robert and also to lie in wait for the like apprehension of the Duke, if it shall happen him flee, as it is suspected he will do" following Mary's proclamation for his arrest on the 18th. 1

The Earl of Oxford finally arrives at Framlingham "with a large force of men whom he had quickly been able to gather at the moment of his desertion of the duke." 2

Still wanting more men, Mary and her Council decide to "discharge all manner of gaols [...] within the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk" 3, while 500 are appointed to attend upon Mary at all times to guard her from harm. 4

In the afternoon her troops are mustered in two separate companies led by the Earl of Sussex and Lord Thomas Wentworth, where "the standards were unfurled and the military colours set up; everyone armed themselves fully as if about to meet the enemy. The infantry made ready their pikes, the cavalry brandished lances, the archer bent his bow, and girded on his quiver; the harquebusier filled his weapon with powder, inserted its leaden ball and set his match burning." 5

At 4pm, Mary rides out from Framlingham castle on a white horse, and "gave warning in an order that no harquebusier should fire his gun, nor any archer release his arrow until her majesty had inspected the army. When this order was given, such was the respect that everyone felt for their sovereign that no harquebusier nor archer fired after the command; but the soldiers bowed low to the ground and awaited their beloved mistress's arrival." 6

On foot, Mary walks around the two divisions of her army for 3 hours, "speaking to them with exceptional kindness and with an approach so wonderfully relaxed as can scarcely be described, in consideration of their esteem for their sovereign, that she completely won everyone's affections." 7

After she finishes inspecting her troops, the cavalry put on a rousing display as they "streamed forth and beat and trod the ground with such a thunderous noise and spread so widely through the field that it seemed like one enemy in pursuit of another." 8

Returning to the castle, a delighted Mary discovers the "most welcome news, scarcely to be hoped for, that Northumberland had abandoned hope of success because of the continual desertions of his supporters, and on 19th July had likewise taken flight from Bury in the middle of the night." 9

The Earl of Arundel and Marquis of Winchester arrive to confirm the news, and reveal that the Privy Council have proclaimed her Queen in London. They go to their knees with a "dagger turned towards [their] stomachs in recognition of [their] offence and submission to the penalty deserved." 10

They also bring a letter wrote by the Privy Council following their proclamation a day prior:

Our bounden duties most humbly remembered to your excellent Majesty, it may like the same to understand that we your most humble faithful and obedient subjects, having always (God we take to witness) remained your Highness’ true and humble subjects in our hearts ever since the death of our late sovereign lord and master your Highness’ brother, whom God pardon; and seeing hitherto no possibility to utter our determination herein, without great destruction and bloodshed both of our selves and others till this time, have this day proclaimed in your City of London, your Majesty to be our true natural Sovereign liege lady and Queen, most humbly beseeching your Majesty to pardon and remit our former infirmities, and most graciously to accept our meanings, which have been ever to serve your Highness truly, and so shall remain with all our powers and forces to the effusion of our blood, as these bearers our very good lords the earl of Arundel and Lord Paget can, and be ready more particularly to declare; to whom it pay please your excellent Majesty to give firm credence; and thus we do and shall daily pray to Almighty God for the preservation of your most royal person long to reign over us, from your Majesties City of London, this day of XIX July, the first year of your most prosperous reign. 11

Mary gladly accepts their submission.

While Mary was inspecting her army, Northumberland had proclaimed her queen in Cambridge and retreated to the house of Sir John Cheke. The Mayor, discovering this, "attended by a large force drawn from both town and gown, had the duke's lodging surrounded and watched on all sides to stop him leaving or escaping." 12

Now, Mary sends Henry Jerningham and Northumberland's former ally the Earl of Arundel to arrest him. 13

Meanwhile...

Jane Grey, Guildford Dudley and the Duchess of Northumberland are detained in the Tower as prisoners. 14

The Bishop of London flees the city after his sermons. 15

Sources:

1.Acts of the Privy Council, Vol 4

2. Vita Mariae Angliae Reginae of Robert Wingfield

3. Acts of the Privy Council, Vol 4

4. Acts of the Privy Council, Vol 4

5. Vita Mariae Angliae Reginae of Robert Wingfield

6. Vita Mariae Angliae Reginae of Robert Wingfield

7. Vita Mariae Angliae Reginae of Robert Wingfield

8. Vita Mariae Angliae Reginae of Robert Wingfield

9. Vita Mariae Angliae Reginae of Robert Wingfield

10. Spanish State Papers, 22nd July 1553

11. Memorials of the Most Reverend Father in God, Thomas Cranmer, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury

12. Vita Mariae Angliae Reginae of Robert Wingfield

13. Vita Mariae Angliae Reginae of Robert Wingfield

14. Spanish State Papers, 22nd July 1553

15. Spanish State Papers, 22nd July 1553

#mary i #mary tudor #tudor #history #mary's fight for the throne #jane grey #edward vi

27 notes · View notes

justforbooks · 10 months ago

Text

Stephen Salter, who has died aged 85, was the inventor of the Salter’s Duck, a wave-power device that was the first of its kind and promised to provide a new source of renewable energy for the world – until it was effectively killed off by the nuclear industry.

In 1982, after eight years of development under Salter’s direction at Edinburgh University, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) was asked by the government to see if the duck might be a cost-effective way of making large quantities of electricity. To the great surprise of Salter, and others, the UKAEA came to the conclusion that it was uneconomic, and that no further government funding should be given to the project.

A decade later it emerged that thanks to a misplaced decimal point, the review had made Salter’s duck look 10 times more expensive than the experiments showed it was likely to be. The UKAEA claimed this was just a mistake, but Salter, who had never been allowed to see the results of the secret evaluation, put it another way: asking the nuclear industry to evaluate an alternative source of energy was like putting King Herod in charge of a children’s home, he suggested.

By then, however, Salter had become interested in other projects, and as a result his duck has never been tested at sea – although wave-power devices using some of his technology are now in development in the Orkneys and off the coast of Portugal.

The prototype ducks, developed in a multidirectional wave tank of Salter’s invention, are now in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where there are a number of other exhibits with links to him, including the only remaining Black Knight rocket, a UK ballistic missile from the 1950s, and Freddy the Robot, from the 60s, the first machine to have artificial intelligence that could “see” and had a sense of touch. He also invented the Dervish, a low-cost method of clearing landmines, by using a revolving three-wheeled mechanism with a constantly changing path.

Perhaps the range of those projects sums up Salter’s mind better than anything else. Colleagues who worked with him said that while other scientists concentrated for years on one subject to the exclusion of all others, Salter was fascinated by new problems.

Although it was the oil shock of 1973 that first stimulated his interest in renewable energy, he later became one of the first scientists to realise the dangers of climate change. Doubting that the slow pace of cutting fossil-fuel use would be enough to save the planet from dangerous overheating, at the turn of the 21st century he set up a scheme to develop marine cloud brightening – an idea to produce more and brighter clouds in the middle of the oceans in order to reflect sunlight back into space, thereby keeping the oceans cooler and reducing sea-level rise.

He designed a project to build a large number of automated ships spraying aerosols from sea water into the atmosphere to create and brighten clouds in the middle of the world’s oceans and – having made a considerable fortune by selling some of his inventions – was able to set up the Lothian School of Technology just outside Edinburgh for £2.4m. The centre provides premises for up to 60 of his students to work on inventions and develop them commercially beyond their time at university.

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Stephen was the son of British parents who had emigrated there, Rachel (nee Floyd) and Willoughby de Carle Salter. His father joined the Royal Navy as a meteorologist during the second world war and afterwards the family moved to Britain, where Willoughby became head of a prep school in which Rachel also taught. Stephen attended two boarding schools and then Framlingham college in Suffolk.

By that time he was designing, building and flying model aeroplanes, and his ambition was to take an engineering degree at Cambridge University. But he failed to get good enough grades, instead becoming an apprentice at Saunders-Roe, an Isle of Wight aero- and marine-engineering company, where he was involved in the Black Knight rocket project. After studying at night classes he was finally accepted at Cambridge to study natural sciences including metallurgy.

He moved to Edinburgh University in 1967, aged 29, to become a research fellow working on artificial intelligence in robots. Within six years he was also a lecturer and had begun his work on wave energy. In 1984 he became professor of engineering design.

Perhaps Salter’s left-leaning politics and his willingness to take on the London establishment prevented him from being showered with the honours he deserved, but he was elected to a fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1991, made MBE in 2004, and inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame in 2021. He never stopped working, becoming an emeritus professor at retirement age and continuing to research, advise companies and refine his inventions until the end.

He married Margaret Donaldson, a professor of development psychology at Edinburgh University, in 1973. She died in 2020. He is survived by his younger brother, Edmund.

🔔 Stephen Hugh Salter, inventor, born 7 December 1938; died 23 February 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

#just for books #Stephen Salter #in memoriam

12 notes · View notes