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Photo: PA

One of the more memorable afternoons of my young life was being rocketed out to sea from Plymouth in a sea rescue launch, powered by aircraft engines, when my father, Tim, was involved in air-sea rescue. I became more aware of the intense battle fought across the Channel by MTBs and E-boats thanks to the wartime involvement of Sir Peter Scott, who I first came across as a judge when I was going for a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship in 1981.

Two boats of the era – MGB 81 and High Speed Launch 102 – were in the news yesterday having been bought for the nation with £580,000 of taxpayers’ money. And a worthwhile investment, I think, aside from the sheer beauty of their lines.  These craft played saved a total of some 10,000 airmen of all nationalities. If Flt Sgt Berry hadn’t blown Tim (unconscious in his parachute) back over land with his slipstream in 1940, he might just have been one of them.

And then there was the courage of the young men who crewed what some called the “Spitfires of the sea” – riding on top of thousands of gallons of high octane fuel, which tended to vaporise the boats when hit by incoming fire. Hats off to their memory.

Park bench, Barnes Summer Storm

Have long loved and collected my sister Caroline’s paintings, but two of the latest – painted for an exhibition in Dulwich – simply took my breath away. The first is based on a photograph I took one evening as I worked home from work by Barnes Pond, just after a downpour, but has been elaborated with detailing that appeals to my deep love of the weirder sides of stained glass. The exhibition will be held on Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th May, as part of the Dulwich Artists’ Open House Festival.  The address: 4 Beauval Road, Dulwich, SE22 8UQ. More paintings here.  

The final painting, here at least, is based on a photograph I took at Steve and Sandar Warshal’s house a while back – and I love it, too.

Warshal lemons

Later this month, I’m involved in a Study Mission to California and Silicon Valley, with 20 entrepreneurs and/or CEOs of leading UK cleantech companies. A filmed interview of principals of the three supporting organisations – Polecat, the UK Technology Strategy Board and Volans – is now available on YouTube, here.

Volans has won a major grant from the Tellus Mater Foundation to help fund our Pathways to Scale work, led by Alejandro Litovsky. The support goes to our work on ecosystem services through 2010.

In parallel, we are working on several other projects exploring pathways to scale: (1) a project for the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) on the future of market transparency, traceability, accountability and reporting; (2) a Clean & Cool study mission to San Francisco and Silicon Valley this month, with 20 CEOs from UK cleantech companies, this initiative being developed with Polecat and the Technology Strategy Board; and (3) a project on the overlaps between ageing, entrepreneurship and sustainability, this one with Professor David Grayson of Cranfield University, Dr David Metz – previously Chief Scientist at the UK Department of Transport, and Accenture.

And there’s another project in the pipeline, too, which I’ll report on later.

Tim on CAM ship, 1942 – with whistle

I intercepted the following email from Tim, my father, to a Polish WWII historian a couple of days ago – and was interested by the glimpse that it gave into one of the less-known aspects of the RAF’s history at the time, the CAM ships, or Catapult Aircraft Merchant ships.

“It was 1942. We had only recently returned from Vaenga in Northern Russia, where we left our Hurricane IIBs for the Russians, and were enjoying the conversion to Spitfire VBs in Northern Ireland. Then, to spoil the euphoria, I was posted to MSFU, the Merchant Ship Fighter Unit at RAF Speke, which provided the pilots for the CAM Ships. And so back to old Hurricane Is, modified to Sea Hurricanes by the addition of lugs for catapult connection.

“Someone must have misread my Service record, because the requirement for the task was ‘… it is of paramount importance that pilots in MSFU must be first class chaps in combat, because they operate on their own and on them, and them alone, may depend the safety of many hundreds of thousands of tons of merchant shipping and cargo, which form the life-line of this country. They must be reliable and keen, have tact and initiative, and be able to engage the enemy after long periods of inactivity.’

“I’m very glad that I failed to realise the enormity of this responsibility! Added was: ‘They must also be good sailors.’ I was never happy in a large, heaving vessel!

“The RAF pilots, and Royal Naval Fighter Direction Officers with whom we sailed and who were our operational controllers made up a truly vibrant, at times eccentric unit. For years afterwards, we received Christmas cards from one, John Robarts, who was by then Ontario’s PM!

“Looking back on the statistics, I see that of 35 (some say 36) CAM ships, 12 were sunk. A fairly high attrition rate. Furthermore, any launch would end in a ditching or bale-out and it was our hope that some unit of the escort force would be able to disengage for long enough to pull us out of the ocean. This they achieved with aplomb, the slowest rescue taking 7 minutes.

“Strangely, the full nature of a defensive launch, especially on the Arctic route, never dawned on me. Our training included 3 launches from a ground catapult, air to air firing, dinghy drills in the local pool, radio control by the FDO and range tests on our allotted aircraft. I found that I could get 400 miles out of mine. Necessary to know when considering a possible destination airfield, and obviating the need for off-loading by crane – as in Dartmouth (see photo). This was in deference to those who remembered the terrible explosion of a munition ship in earlier years.

“Looking back in my log, I note that my ground catapult launch speeds were only around 58 mph, but enough to allow a safe climb away. In later trials, a Spitfire reached 70 mph. In one second! We hoped, of course, that our ship’s speed would assist our launch.

“I was extremely fortunate in that I only completed one round trip to Canada – and that I was not called upon to launch other than on return to the UK to save unloading time in harbour. The main discomfort was boredom. Thankfully, our ship’s crew (MV Eastern City) were great company, although we found our Captain a bit dour in running a dry ship even when out of attack range.

“We filled in time playing darts, card games, whittling model aircraft, eating remarkably good food and talking by Aldis Lamp with the other CAM ship pilot. Our two ships kept a bit ahead of the outer columns so that we could quickly turn into wind for launching, and so had direct line of sight between us. I cannot understand how we have let the Morse Code fade out of our lives. It can be life-saving. An example: I believed that I saw a mine ahead of the escort cruiser. I flashed a warning and the ship swerved out of line, coming back with ‘TU’, or Thank You!

“As to food, the gourmet dish was a sandwich of the two ends of a freshly baked bread loaf, smothered in butter, eaten on duty on the bridge. In Canada, we were hugely well received, despite the over-enthusiastic behaviour of some of our predecessors. The local Council in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, allowed us alcohol in the Club at a very favourable rate. But the greatest thrill was nights without the blackout that we had been subjected to for two years.

“Nothing to do with Sea Hurricanes, but the nicest gesture was from a member of Eaton’s store, who took me out BBQing on the beach – etc. Only as I left did I find out that she was using her boyfriend’s car! But I was able to thank him at a final get-together supper with their whole family.

“Soon after, I was very grateful for a posting back to my old squadron, No 1, on Typhoons, shortly before I was due to sail on the fateful PQ 17 convoy to Russia. A colourful history of the unit can be found in Hurricats by Ralph Barker and full details of ships, launches and successes can be found in Wikipedia.”