Please send letters to the Bulletin on any topic connected with Brooklands to the Alisdair Suttie on: brooklandsbulletineditor@gmail.com


letters Wasteful Wallis


Barnes Wallis could lock himself away when working on high-level projects.


Dear Sir,


Further to my recollections of working as an apprentice at Vickers-Armstrong, I remember a former draughtsman called Reg (I don’t remember his family name). He expressed to


Wellington geodetics Dear Sir,


I liked last month’s article on ‘The Making of the Wellington’. It was really interesting and well illustrated. However, in the accompanying ‘Wellington Design’ panel, I think one design ‘hero’ has been overlooked. This is Trevor Westbrook. Westbrook was the Weybridge General Manager. As


stated, Barnes Wallis designed the geodetic structure to fulfil Rex Pierson’s design, and it was in that form that it first flew, but the Wallis fuselage had to be made as one big piece. This is nicely shown in the picture accompanying the article looking down the inside of the fuselage. However, this made it unsuitable for mass production and it fell to Westbrook to redesign the structure into a number of smaller


me his opinion that Barnes Wallis - of course a very brilliant man - could be very wasteful of resources. Whenever he was hugely preoccupied with a major problem, Barnes Wallis would turn on a light over his office door as an instruction not to disturb him. Sometimes this light was on for weeks, even months. Apparently, during one period this light was on for more than a year. After which, when someone noticed the light was off, there was a stampede and long queue to seek instructions from him. After such a long time, Wallis had developed his high- level designs on the projects in progress. The outcome was that much of the work that had been done during the previous 12 months had been superseded, therefore no longer required and was binned!


Best wishes, Malcolm Reid


Gwenda memories


Gwenda Stewart was taught how to operate machines during the war by Fred Cann.


Dear Sir, Trevor Westbrook redesigned the


Wellington’s geodetic panels to be smaller and easier to assemble.


geodetic panels (a top section of one was shown in the bottom right-hand image on page 23). These panels could then be made in the surrounding ‘shadow factories’. The panels


were then taken to the main factory where they were assembled into the Wellington. When asked to do this, Spud Boorer (Wallis’s right-hand man and founder member of the Brooklands Museum) says Westbrook replied: ‘He would get Wallis’s geodetics to work provided Wallis did not interfere.’ George Edwards (later Sir George) said had it not been for him (Westbrook) and his assistant Jack East nobody would have ever built a Wellington.


Best regards, Roger Radnedge


MG’s return Dear Sir,


Gareth Tarr’s letter in the Jan-Feb Bulletin caused me to look up John Dugdale’s book, which he referred to, and in particular John’s own racing experiences at Brooklands in his 1936 N-type MG. He shared this car with, and later sold it to, Rivers Fletcher. It was in 1990 that the car, having been ‘unearthed’ by Will Corry, MG Car Club Chairman, was brought by him to Brooklands,


The article on Gwenda Stewart makes very interesting reading. In the Montlhéry book by Bill Boddy, he mentions my father, Fred Cann, as Gwenda’s mechanic. While in France, my father was often called Jean as they found it easier to say and his name was actually Frederick John Cann. If I remember correctly, he was in France for seven years with Gwenda before returning to England. While working in France, he met and married my mother before returning to England with Gwenda before the war. He became General Manager at Brooklands Engineering and I remember him telling me that he taught Gwenda how to work the machines so that she could help the war effort. You probably know this already, but I remember my mother telling me that Gwenda used to strap up her chest when racing - obviously the track surfaces made for a very bumpy ride. Another note, although nothing to do with Gwenda, but my grandfather - another Fred Cann - was the gate man at Brooklands during the years the track was in use as they lived in Brooklands Road but sadly I never knew him as it was before my time!


Kind regards Yvette Bolton


where it was driven by both past owners. I was lucky enough to witness this historic event, since Dugdale was my wife’s stepfather and I worked at Farnborough, near enough to drive over during my lunch break.


Yours sincerely, Tim Maitland


MARCH - APRIL 2020 | BROOKLANDS BULLETIN 19


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