Archibald Russell
(1904 –1995)
Archibald Edward Russell was born on 30 May 1904 in Wotton Under Edge, Gloucestershire, the son of Arthur Hallett Russell and Edith Russell (née Richards). He attended East Dean Grammar School, then when he was fifteen the family moved to Bristol and his education continued at Fairfield Grammar School, and then the Engineering faculty of Bristol University where he gained a BSc in automotive engineering. His first job was maintaining buses for the Bristol Tramways and Carriage Company.
Russell joined the Bristol Aeroplane Company in May 1925 as an assistant in the stress office. One of his first efforts at the company were stress calculations for the Type 99 Badminton. Another early design was the Type 95 Bagshot, a twin-engine monoplane fighter. Russell was invited to take a flight in the Bagshot, and was alarmed to see the wings twisting during control use, a problem that led to the abandoning of the design. He developed a new method of separately calculating bending and torsional stresses, which later led to a new single-spar monoplane wing design that was granted a patent.
Over a short period of time, Chief Designer Frank Barnwell drew Russell closer into the primary design team, where he was chief technician from 1931-38. In 1935 the first of the RAF Expansion Schemes was launched, and Bristol won two contracts for monoplanes, the Bombay troop-carrier and the Blenheim bomber. Barnwell and his two chief assistants, Leslie Frise and Russell, looked to address the Bagshot's wing problems in the Bombay, and over-designed it to ensure flexing would not be an issue. The design suffered as a result, both overweight and extremely difficult to manufacture. The Blenheim was based on newer designs and was originally built for speed, not utility.
In August 1938 Barnwell had been killed flying a small aeroplane of his own design. Leslie Frise took over the Chief Designer role, with Russell becoming deputy. They were immediately put to work on a variety of development of the Blenheim, including the Type 152 Beaufort and Type 156 Beaufighter. More than 5,500 Beaufighters were built before the war ended. A final development, the Type 164 Brigand.
In 1941 the Air Staff placed a development contract for a long-range, 100-ton, 300 mph heavy bomber with a bomb load of 80,000 lbs. In February 1944 this work was able to be re-used when the Brabazon Committee ordered a very large transatlantic airliner to carry 90 passengers for 5,000 miles in 17 hours, all with sleeping accommodation. Frise and Russell had just started work on this adaptation when Frise quit to become Technical Director of Hunting Aircraft. Russell was promoted to Chief Designer in his place. The new design emerged as the Brabazon, but proved to be a commercial failure.
While the Brabazon was turning from design to prototype, the company directors asked Russell to start development of a much more modest freighter design. This emerged as the Bristol Freighter in 1945. A small number were sold to a variety of users, and the design was a modest success.
In 1947 Bristol won a design competition for an airliner required to carry thirty-six passengers on routes to South Africa, Australia and the Far East. The number of passengers, 36, had been set by the capacity of the standard BOAC airport bus. Russell redesigned the plane for 68 passengers instead, producing the Britannia. As development continued, BOAC decided the Proteus was ready for airline use, and asked for development to be switched to this engine. With some additional wing area, this allowed the passenger capacity to be increased to 96 without altering the fuselage.
In the late 1950s Russell led the design of the Bristol Type 200, a concept that competed with the de Havilland Trident. Russell felt that British European Airways' (BEA) specification was too small, so the Type 200 was closer in size and range to the Boeing 727, which later sold almost 10 times as well as the Trident. In 1958 BEA selected the Trident and the Type 200 was cancelled.
Russell was appointed Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1954 and Technical Director of Bristol in 1960. Through the 1950s he became increasingly interested in supersonic flight, and was particularly interested in the slender delta wing, which gave good lift at high angle of attack due to the phenomenon of vortex lift. Russell and his team proposed a number of designs using the new wing, eventually leading a number of paper studies for a supersonic transport, starting with the Type 198 in 1961.
The team, led by Bill Strang, Mick Wilde, Doug Thorn and Douglas Vickery, had produced a number of designs when they learned of similar efforts at Sud Aviation under the Super-Caravelle project. Russell developed a friendship with his counterpart at Sud, Louis Giusta, which aided the eventual formation of the Concorde project. Russell became the joint chairman of the Concorde Executive Committee of Directors between 1965 and 1969. Russell was appointed chairman, Filton Division of the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) in 1968 and retired in 1969. He was also vice-chairman, BAC-Sud Aviation Concorde Committee 1969 to 1970. Russel was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1970 and Knighted in 1972.
Sir Archibald Edward Russell, CBE, FRS died in Angarrack, Cornwall on 29 May 1995.