My grandfather was a fitter at BAE Broughton hs125 iirk...
What did you dad work on must have had some great stories!
Cheers James
I couldnt tell you exactly, maybe type 42 destroyers. H had a lot of drawings on the dining table as he worked long into the night and I read that in a title. Most of it was in brown files marked secret. That said it might have been the type 22 frigate, I kind of remember him saying something about Frigates, but I was young at the time so cant say for sure.
But most of it concerned the navy, subs and that ilk. He was on some of the nuclear subs during sea trials, so I think he's stuff to do with them.
We didnt actually get on, and that level its super high pressure and pretty much worked to 2 or 3am. No real time for family life.
Any stories Dad did come out with concerned serious flaws in the designs of our carriers, different systems we use and the American carriers use.
I remember once he told me that they were working with early Macintosh computers and he did the calculations, inputted the data into the computer(this was probably the 80's green screen type) and said the computer answers were wrong, so he did them again on the slide rule, input that data and again the computer was wrong, so he reprogrammed it to match his answer, he was that confident in his own abilities.
We had one funny incident about a year before he died, I was getting a lot of work done on the building, i was renting, and the builders kept getting things wrong, or would turn up at the wrong time when they'd been told constantly when they should have turned up.
So Dad contacted the project manager in charge of the works and he told Dad to quote "You must remember Mr *****, I have over a dozen people to manage here"
The only time I heard Dad ever swear was when he was telling me this and said. I deal with the work of some 50,000 people. Everything concerned with building a submarine passed over my desk, and it was at this point I knew I was dealing with a F****g I***t
Who could not liaise 12 people.
Despite us not getting on I do miss him. He knew everything about everything and no question concerning things like metallurgy, physics, mathematics, design, engineering etc was beyond his ken. I sometimes feel i've lost out on accessing that knowledge.
I suspect he was a savant. I've autism, and I believe he did too, mainly from a few things mum has said over the years. He was a member of mensa for many years, but I dont know if he or anyone put much thought into that type of thing, though its not unusual for autism to be a hereditary disorder.
