Reuben
Aspinall entered the service on 5th July 1940 and worked at Worth Matravers on
metric Air to Surface Vessel radar (ASV). He spent time in (Lord) B V Bowden's team working on Mk III IFF
in the USA. Post war he led one of my teams working on Guided Weapons research. They
achieved, with RAE providing the missile hardware, the first supersonic
controlled flights with a small test vehicle named CTV1. He remained mainly in
this field carrying out important work on coherent systems for Ground to Air
missiles and became the Director of Guided Weapons Research on 24th February 1964, in
which post he remained until his retirement in 1977.
An associated project he led, whilst still at the Royal Radar Establishment
(RRE), was the attempt to
develop a balloon borne radar (Blue Joker) to give better detection of low
level attacking aircraft for defence against atomic attacks before the
ballistic missile threat to our deterrent had been fully developed.
He also played an important part in studies and work on airborne coherent
radar systems to enable fighters to operate effectively at all altitudes. More
extensive detailed information he provided has already been passed to CHiDE
for separate storage as listed in letter dated 9th April 1997.
Bill Penley, Jan 2011
