| Reuben Aspinall entered the Service on 5th July 1940 and worked at Worth Matravers on metric 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 GW 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 GW Research on 24th February 1964, in which post he remained until his retirement in 1977.
An associated project he led, whilst still at 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. |
