Raymond Frederick ''Ray'' Creasey OBE (18 December 1921 – 16 July 1976) was a British

aerodynamicist Aerodynamics, from grc, ἀήρ ''aero'' (air) + grc, δυναμική (dynamics), is the study of the motion of air, particularly when affected by a solid object, such as an airplane wing. It involves topics covered in the field of fluid dyn ...

with British Aircraft Corporation, previously English Electric, from 1948 until his death in 1976. He was responsible for the aerodynamics of the

Lightning Lightning is a naturally occurring electrostatic discharge during which two electrically charged regions, both in the atmosphere or with one on the ground, temporarily neutralize themselves, causing the instantaneous release of an avera ...

interceptor aircraft.

Early life and education

Ray Creasey was born in

Barnes, London Barnes () is a district in south London, part of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, England. It takes up the extreme north-east of the borough, and as such is the closest part of the borough to central London. It is centred west south ...

on 18 December 1921. He won a scholarship to Hampton Grammar School. He had contracted polio as a child and this resulted in his rejection for military service at the outbreak of war. Wanting to contribute to the war effort, he joined a special projects team at

Vickers-Armstrongs Vickers-Armstrongs Limited was a British engineering conglomerate formed by the merger of the assets of Vickers Limited and Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Company in 1927. The majority of the company was nationalised in the 1960s and 1970s, w ...

, rather than accepting a university place. While working full time at Vickers he studied for the

Royal Aeronautical Society The Royal Aeronautical Society, also known as the RAeS, is a British multi-disciplinary professional institution dedicated to the global aerospace community. Founded in 1866, it is the oldest aeronautical society in the world. Members, Fellows, ...

's Associate Fellowship Examinations, taking first place in all three subjects of Aerodynamics, Applied Mathematics, and Design (Aircraft) in 1942 at age 20. He was also awarded the Baden Powell Memorial Prize. He then took his degree at night school, graduating from the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

with a first class honours degree in Science (Engineering) in 1944.

Career

Vickers-Armstrongs

The early years of his working life were with

, where he joined Barnes Wallis's special projects team, working on projects which included the Dam Busters'

bouncing bomb A bouncing bomb is a bomb designed to bounce to a target across water in a calculated manner to avoid obstacles such as torpedo nets, and to allow both the bomb's speed on arrival at the target and the timing of its detonation to be pre-deter ...

, also known as

Operation Chastise Operation Chastise or commonly known as the Dambusters Raid was an attack on Nazi Germany, German dams carried out on the night of 16/17 May 1943 by No. 617 Squadron RAF, 617 Squadron RAF Bomber Command, later called the Dam Busters, using sp ...

English Electric

In 1946 he moved to Preston to join the aeronautical design department at English Electric, which had been set up in 1944-1945 in an expansion from aircraft manufacturing to include design. In 1960 English Electric merged with Vickers-Armstrongs and Bristol Aeroplane Company to become BAC (British Aerospace Company). Further expansion and mergers created the formation, in turn, of

British Aerospace British Aerospace plc (BAe) was a British aircraft, munitions and defence-systems manufacturer. Its head office was at Warwick House in the Farnborough Aerospace Centre in Farnborough, Hampshire. Formed in 1977, in 1999 it purchased Marcon ...

and the current BAE Systems. Ray Creasey joined English Electric as an aerodynamicist, becoming Chief Aerodynamicist for the P1 project in 1950, when Teddy Petter left the company. He provided 'a major input to the aerodynamic design of the A1 bomber (Canberra) and particularly the P1 (Lightning)'. In 1959 he became Director of Engineering. In an account of Ray Creasey's contributions to the company written by Ron Dickson and Frank Roe (who are themselves also described as 'founding fathers of BAE' in the BAE publication of that name ) they describe the importance of his ideas for wing design and his contribution to supersonic fighter planes: 'even before Canberra first flew, Ray was seeking to design a supersonic aircraft. His knowledge of compressibility effects, due to shock waves appearing in the flow, showed that there were no insuperable obstacles, so long as great care was taken at just below the speed of sound. Slim profiles would generate only weak shock waves, and the boundary layers would not be slowed down too rapidly, to produce the dreaded 'shock stall'.' These ideas led to the concept of the Lightning as a supersonic fighter plane: 'we believe that the initiative came from Ray Creasey to think that supersonic flight was feasible .... the personal contributions of Ray Creasey to the concept of the Lightning, and the importance of this story to the emergence of Warton as a leading design group can not be overstated.' Ollie Heath, who was a member of the Lightning design team and later rose to the role of Director of Advanced Engineering, also believed that Ray Creasey had made the greatest contribution to the design of the Lightning: 'who was responsible for the Lightning? Many of the concepts were those of the late Ray Creasey, who was a brilliant aerodynamicist'. A BAE Heritage Department booklet describes Ray Creasey's contribution to the aerodynamic design of the Lightning in some detail

BAC

In his role as Director of Engineering at BAC and his later role as Director of Advanced Systems and Technology, Ray Creasey initiated many other projects and produced the early design for many other aircraft and systems: 'during the second phase of English Electric's history, that is from mid 1945, most project work was the responsibility of R F Creasey. In addition, he often had responsibility for many other departments.' Projects included the TSR2 (notoriously cancelled); the

Tornado A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, altho ...

; and the

Typhoon A typhoon is a mature tropical cyclone that develops between 180° and 100°E in the Northern Hemisphere. This region is referred to as the Northwestern Pacific Basin, and is the most active tropical cyclone basin on Earth, accounting for a ...

. ' TSR2 grew from Ray's ideas, a short-span wing with heavy wing loading, for low-level ground attack, then with a blown flap to give a reasonable landing run'. The patent relating to the early design work of the TSR2, patent no. 873,679, was not published until July 1961, because of security restrictions and 'the application was made on behalf of the configuration's earliest inventors, R.F. Creasey, B.O. Heath and G.F. Sharples. An account by A T F Simmons of the early stages of design, and Ray Creasey's involvement, is included in the proceedings of the seminar held at Filton in April 1997 to consider the history and lessons of the TSR2 project, published by the Royal Air Force Historical Society. Frank Dickson, who later became Managing Director of BAE Military Aircraft Division, described Ray Creasey as 'an aerodynamic genius'. Before his early death in 1976 he had received a significant number of awards (see below) and a significant number of patents had been published in his name, as inventor (see below). His knowledge of design and aerodynamics had been recognized in the UK and also abroad. He had regularly been asked to comment on, and contribute to, various projects in the USA and elsewhere, including involvement in NASA's Space Shuttle Program.

Personal life

He was married to Lily Aileen Parker on 28 December 1946, in Hersham, Surrey. They had one daughter, born in 1948. He did not live to see the births of a granddaughter, who became a psychiatrist working for the NHS, and a grandson, who became a barrister in Middle Temple, born in 1979 and 1983 respectively. One of his uncles was the prolific crime writer

John Creasey John Creasey (17 September 1908 – 9 June 1973) was an English crime writer, also writing science fiction, romance and western novels, who wrote more than six hundred novels using twenty-eight different pseudonyms. He created several charac ...

Awards

* 1968 appointed OBE * 1970 Fellow of the

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is a professional society for the field of aerospace engineering. The AIAA is the U.S. representative on the International Astronautical Federation and the International Council of ...

for his long and distinguished career as a leading aeronautical engineer and his work in the field of variable geometry'. * 1974

's Silver Medal 'for his work on future military aircraft assessment, including the broader aspects of operational analysis'. * 1976

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

Award 'for services rendered'.

Patents published in the UK

Most of the patents listed above were applied for and published in a number of other countries, notably the US, Canada and Germany. Many of the patents issued in his name were classified at the time, for reasons of national security, and it is unclear whether all of them were eventually de-classified and/or publicly published, and therefore whether the list above is complete. See also an article published in the New Scientist in respect of UK patents and secrecy orders.} Most of the papers he wrote were also classified for reasons of national security.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Creasey, Ray 1921 births 1976 deaths Aerodynamicists British Aircraft Corporation English aerospace engineers Fellows of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Officers of the Order of the British Empire People from Lytham St Annes Vickers people