Arthur Marshall (engineer)

Sir Arthur Gregory George Marshall , OBE (born December 4, 1903 in Cambridge , England - † March 16, 2007 in Linton , Cambridgeshire ) was a British aircraft designer , flight instructor and test pilot . From 1942 to 1989 he was Chairman of the Board of Marshall Aerospace in Cambridge. From 1969 to 1970 he was also High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely

Early life

Arthur Marshall was born in Cambridge, England in 1903 as the eldest of eight children of David Gregory Marshall and his wife Maud Edmunds (née Wing). He first went to The Perse School in Cambridge, then to the Tonbridge School in Kent .

Arthur Marshall's father started out as a kitchen boy at Trinity College, Cambridge University at the age of 14 , then became a steward at the university's Pitt Club . In 1909 he founded a small auto repair shop with car rental - the Brunswick Motor Car Company . When the First World War broke out in 1914 , David Marshall feared that this name would sound too German for the English and would provoke aversions, and he renamed the small business Marshall's Garage .

Arthur Marshall's enthusiasm for aviation was sparked when his father returned from the war with a Handley Page bomber "in his luggage", which he had bought for a small sum, and the plane on the property of his company - which he sold in "Aviation Hall " ( " Aviation Hall " ) renamed - erected. In 1919 Arthur and his father took his very first flight - a sightseeing flight over Brighton - in a Fairey III A. After that, it was clear to David Marshall where the future of his small business lay. Arthur now went to Tonbridge School , then moved to Jesus College in Cambridge , where he not only had good school grades but also shone through his skills as a track and field athlete. In 1924 he was a member of the British team for the Olympic Games in Paris , but was not used as a substitute for the 4 × 400 meter relay. He graduated with honors as an engineer and joined his parents' company in 1926. In 1928 Arthur Marshall learned to fly at the Norwich and Norfolk Flying Club . A little later he bought a De Havilland Gipsy Moth for £ 740 , built a small runway next to his parents' business, and took on courier jobs with his plane. After he had passed the exam as a flight instructor at the Guild of Air Pilots in 1931 after only 70 flying hours, he began to give flight lessons. Among his students were the later test pilots Bill Humble and HG Barrington . In the same year he married Rosemary Dimsdale († June 24, 1988) (daughter of the 6th Lord Dimsdale ). The couple had two sons and a daughter - Michael, David and Judy. With his father David, Arthur Marshall then bought the land on which Cambridge Airport is currently located and together they founded Marshall Aerospace .

The Marshall Ab-Initio Flying Instructor Scheme

During the Second World War, Arthur Marshall was a key role in the formation of the Royal Air Force to pilots. Up until the beginning of the Second World War, the training of the Royal Air Force pilots took a lot of time: the pilot candidates first completed a basic course, followed by an advanced course. Then they were used in a flight squadron, where they should gain experience. After four to five years in such a squadron - most of them were already 25 to 27 years old at the time - those who could be assumed to be suitable as instructors for pilots were filtered out. These were sent to a pilot-instructor course at the RAF Central Flying School . With regard to the Battle of Britain , this lengthy training meant that the urgently needed instructors for pilots of bomber and fighter planes were not available in sufficient numbers.

As early as 1937, Arthur Marshall had founded the "No.22 Elementary & Reserve Flying Training School" (22 E & RFTS) in Cambridge and a training program - the so-called Ab-Initio Flying Instructor Scheme (translate as an introductory program for pilots) Trainer ) - developed. A program that was intended to completely change the lengthy training of RAF pilots. In the intensive training developed by Marshall, young men aged 18 and over completed basic and advanced flight training as well as a pilot instructor course in no more than 175 flight hours. They then moved to the Central Flying School of the Royal Air Force (RAF), which they left - after further training - as advanced pilot instructors. This was of decisive importance for the RAF: The training of a fully qualified pilot-trainer was drastically shortened and could now take place in only three to four months. Under the impression of the collapse of France and the expected German attack on England, the Royal Air Force introduced the “Marshall scheme” as the standard for the training of its pilots at the end of 1940 . In the course of the Second World War, Arthur Marshall and his team trained around 20,000 RAF pilots - including numerous flying aces such as Johnnie Johnson , who shot down 38 German aircraft during the war, and Leonard Cheshire , who carried out over 100 bombing missions over Germany flew. For his services Arthur Marshall was honored in 1948 as Officer of the Order of the British Empire and in 1974 knighted as a Knight Bachelor ("Sir").

His daily workload was legendary. Until he retired from active business in 1989, at the age of 86, he still worked around 65 hours a week every day. In 1993, at the age of 90, he published his autobiography The Marshall Story - a Century of Wheels and Wings. He held his pilot's license continuously from 1928 to 1988. And even then the license only expired because Marshall was too busy to complete the flight hours required to maintain it.

Web links

• Homepage of Marshall Aerospace , Cambridge
• Obituary in The Daily Telegraph
• Obituary in The Times
• Obituary in The Independent
• Obituary in The Guardian

predecessor	Office	successor
Alfred Francis Colenso Gray	High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely 1969 to 1970	James Crowden