Stanley George Hooker was born 30th September 1907 at Sheerness, Kent and educated at Borden Grammar School. He won a scholarship for Imperial College London to study mathematics and in particular, hydrodynamics. This was followed by a post-graduate course at Brasenose College, Oxford. Hooker left Oxford with his Doctor of Philosophy degree and joined the Admiralty’s scientific research and development department in 1935.
In late 1937 Hooker was invited to apply for a job with Rolls-Royce and he took up his position in January 1938. He was initially left to his own devices and eventually stumbled into the supercharger design department. He had no experience of any types of engines, let alone superchargers but he was an aerodynamicist so he took an interest in the way they worked. He asked for and was given the design data for the Merlin engine supercharger as fitted to the Hurricane and Spitfire. Although the supercharger fitted to the Merlin engine was considered to be the best in the business, Hooker calculated that large improvements could be made to its efficiency. Rolls Royce gave the go ahead for the supercharger to be modified in accordance with Hookers recommendations and as a result, the performance of the Merlin engine was improved considerably.
In 1940 Hooker was introduced to Frank Whittle who by this time had his jet engine up and running but who was lacking the resources to proceed at a decent pace. Hooker persuaded Rolls-Royce chairman Ernest Hives to visit Whittle’s factory. Hives noted that Whittle didn’t have many engines. Whittle explained that he had trouble getting some parts manufactured. Hives told Whittle to send the drawings to Derby and Rolls Royce would make the parts for him. Rolls-Royce’s acquisition of Whittle’s engine program from Rover is documented elsewhere in this web site but the outcome was a healthier future for Whittle, his engine and the British jet engine industry in general. Hooker was sent to the former Rover factory at Barnoldswick as chief engineer (jet engines). Hooker carried on developing Whittle’s W2B/23 and this was subsequently known as the RR Welland. The Rover produced B.26 variant was developed and became the RR Derwent.
In 1944 the Barnoldswick team started the design of the 5000lb Nene engine which was a great success and was subsequently copied by the Russians for their Mig 15 fighter. In 1946 Hooker and his engineers were instructed to take over the AJ65 Avon project. This was Rolls-Royce’s first attempt at an axial flow compressor based engine and was the design of A.A. Griffith. It was not a success initially and Hooker felt that he was being held responsible for its poor performance, even though it wasn’t his own design. At about that time, the writing was on the wall for the piston aero engine. Jets were definitely the way forward and Hives began to see Derby’s status fall at the expense of Barnoldswick. He ordered that jet engine production should be transferred to Derby. The move to Derby meant a diminishing of Hookers own position within the company and he fell out with Hives over the matter and left the company.
In January 1949 Hooker started work with the Bristol Aero Engine company. His first task was to sort out the problems with the Proteus engine which was intended to power several aircraft including the Bristol Britannia. The design for the Olympus had already been completed by the time Hooker joined Bristol but he helped to develop later marks of the engine for use in the Vulcan, TSR2 and Concorde. In 1952 Hooker was approached by the Folland aircraft company and asked if he could produce an engine in the 5000lb thrust category to power their new lightweight fighter, the Gnat.
Up to now, Hooker had been involved in developing other people’s designs. This time he was in at the beginning with a new engine that was to become the Bristol Orpheus. The Orpheus was a successful engine in its own right, finding a home in the widely produced Fiat G91 but it had a bigger role to play in the development of the ground breaking Pegasus VTOL engine. Many companies in the 50’s were looking at ways of producing a vertical take off and landing aircraft. Frenchman Michel Wibault had the idea of using a turboshaft engine to drive four large centrifugal blowers which could be swivelled to vector the thrust. The concept was good but mechanics would have been difficult to implement. Hookers engineers decided on using the Orpheus to drive a large fan that would supply air to a pair of rotating nozzles while the exhaust flow from the Orpheus was slit into two and would supply another pair of nozzles at the rear of the engine. Thus the Pegasus and the Harrier were born.
In 1958 Bristol had merged with Armstrong Siddeley to become Bristol Siddeley. In 1966 Bristol Siddeley was acquired by Rolls-Royce and Hooker found himself working for his old company again. He decided that this was not for him and he retired on September 1967. Hooker was persuaded to stay on as a consultant to the Bristol Siddeley division of Rolls-Royce engines. Hooker’s retirement was short lived however because when the RB211 project ran into trouble in the early 70’s (bankrupting Rolls-Royce in the process) he was called in to rescue the ailing engine. He grasped the nettle and implemented the changes that turned the RB199 into the world beater it later became. In 1978 Hooker retired for a second and final time.