Rear-Admiral Nicholas Goodhart CB

REAR-ADMIRAL NICHOLAS GOODHART

Although he achieved flag rank in the Royal Navy as a marine engineer and latterly a weapons systems engineer, it was as a glider pilot that Nicholas Goodhart made his world-wide reputation. His spectacular career in aviation, during which he flew well over fifty types of military aircraft, British and American, included service as a fighter pilot in the Burma campaign, as a Boscombe Down Empire test pilot, aerodynamicist, aircraft designer and inventor.
His interest in gliding was sparked by the Cambridge Gliding Club in 1938, obtaining his ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ certificates before the outbreak of war. In 1945 with the celebrated Lt-Commander John Sproule RNVR, gliding enthusiast and later inventor of the ‘Sproule Net’ for rescuing ditched aircrew by helicopter, Goodhart helped to exact reparations from Germany in the shape of four high-performance gliders, although the RAF had given orders for them all to be destroyed. These became the basis of the Naval Gliding Flight. Air experience for naval cadets was interspersed with soaring and record attempts.
In 1949 he bought an Auster light aircraft for £625 and with his brother visited many European gliding sites, often towing a glider. They made rapid progress and by 1950 were entering competitions. Goodhart flew in nine British National Championships gaining three firsts and three seconds. As a member of the British team, he flew in all seven of the World Championships between 1957 and 1972 gaining one first, one runner-up and two fourths. Eleven British records have at one time or another been in his name. He won the American National Championship in 1955 and the next year won the World Two-Seater Gliding Championship. As this was the last of its class he remains World Two-Seater champion. He was awarded the Royal Aero Club silver medal for services to gliding and the Federation Aeronautique Internationale Paul Tissandier Diploma in 1972 for contributions to the technical aspects of gliding. When asked what made a champion glider pilot, his reply was quite short: “Knowledge”.
Goodhart emerged from conventional naval training and his engineering degree course at Keyham, Plymouth, in December 1940 “dressed as a lieutenant with much book learning but no experience in handling men”. He was appointed as an engine room watchkeeper to the carrier Formidable in early 1941. Formidable was badly damaged by Stuka dive bombers during the costly evacuation from Crete, returning slowly to Alexandria with a huge hole in her side just above the waterline and, after patching, went to America for repair.
Goodhart was transferred to the cruiser Dido, also under repair at Brooklyn Navy Yard, in October 1941 and served in her for two years, taking part in operations in support of the Eighth Army in north Africa, convoys to Malta and assaults on Sicily and Italy.
Selected for flying training, he went to Canada and was awarded his ‘wings’ in June 1944. After learning to deck-land Wildcats, he was flown out to Trincomalee, Sri Lanka. Operations to clear the remnants of the Japanese occupation of Burma and Malaysia by the escort carriers Emperor, Ameer and Empress followed. Goodhart, who was flying Hellcats in 896 Squadron, was forced to ditch on one occasion into the Malacca Straits because of engine failure.
In early 1946 he joined the Empire Test Pilot School at Cranfield and thereafter as senior pilot of 700 Squadron at Yeovilton taught naval pilots maintenance test flying. At the Donibristle aircraft repair yard and again at Boscombe Down, Goodhart amassed flying hours in a large number of aircraft types including several prototypes. In 1949 he was selected for an ‘exchange’ tour as a test pilot at the US Naval Air Test Centre, Patuxent River, where he became familiar with a variety of American naval front-line and experimental types.
On return, he was appointed technical secretary to the chief naval representative in the Ministry of Supply and was promoted to Commander in 1953. A most enjoyable tour as staff aviator to the British Joint Services Mission in Washington followed, where amongst his pleasant duties was flying the ambassador around the US in the Mission’s Sea Prince aircraft as well as leisure flights in numerous glider and private aircraft types.
The year 1954 saw the introduction into service of what Goodhart and many others consider to be his greatest contribution to the navy – the invention of the Mirror Deck Landing Sight. The story has it that the idea came to him while watching his WRNS secretary applying her lipstick. At that time the hallowed method of guiding aircraft onto the correct line and glide path to a landing, arrested by hooking wires hydraulically stretched across the carrier’s deck, was achieved by the Landing Signals Officer (LSO) gesticulating with a pair of ‘bats’ – suitable for propeller-driven aircraft and moderate landing speeds. The advent of faster and heavier jet-propelled aircraft and the ‘angled deck’ made this unsuitable, given the reaction delay in the information feed-back loop between pilot and LSO and the visibility at the remote end of longer and faster approach paths. Accident rates amongst even the modern propeller driven types were increasing. Goodhart’s invention consisted of a large stabilised mirror, slightly concave about its vertical axis, facing aft with a bar of bright lights shining into it. The pilot had to fly so that the reflected lights appeared central in the mirror, the mirror being angled to three degrees, the appropriate glide path. Provided that he kept the light line in proper relation, he would be guided right down on to the deck, effectively halving the element of human error while, amongst other advantages, maintaining a constant descent rate tolerable to the aircraft’s landing gear. Goodhart was awarded an undisclosed sum from the Admiralty for this invention which was swiftly adopted by all those navies with high performance carrier aircraft..
After a tour at the naval air station at Yeovilton, Goodhart went to the naval air warfare department at the Admiralty in early 1958 and thence to sea as staff aviation officer to the Flag Officer Aircraft Carriers. Promoted to captain in 1962, he was appointed project manager for the Sea Dart missile, for many years the navy’s premier anti-aircraft system. He was a student at the Imperial Defence College in 1965 and director of aircraft maintenance and repair in the Admiralty until 1968.
Promoted to commodore and then rear-admiral, he was director of defence operational requirements and, finally, military deputy to the Head of Defence Sales. He was appointed CB in 1972 and retired in 1973. During his naval career, his superiors consistently remarked his zeal, his outstandingly quick and inventive mind, his good French and his versatility but sometimes that his ‘angular personality’ ‘lacked tact’. He was noted for his wide circle of friends and for his exceptional physical and mental fitness in advanced old age.
He was made a member of the US Legion of Merit in 1958 and was a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society
In addition to various minor directorships during his second career, Goodhart was consultant to the Boeing Aircraft Company and concerned with the sale of the hydrofoil vessel Speedy to the navy and the Chinook helicopter for the RAF. He was master of the Worshipful Company of Grocers in 1981-2.
His inventiveness continued with the aerodynamic design of the advanced Sigma glider which incorporated a variable geometry wing but which ran out of money upon the liquidation of the Slingsby glider manufacturing company. In the mid-1970s he designed the Newbury Manflier, a two-man-powered aircraft of novel layout with a 42 metre wing and two separate pods for the ‘cyclists’. It first flew in 1979 but never won any of the man-powered aircraft prizes and the project was terminated when their gratis hangar at Greenham Common was taken over for cruise missiles.
He is survived by his wife Molly Copsey whom he married in 1975.

Rear-Admiral Nicholas Goodhart CB,
engineer, aviator, inventor and world class
glider pilot was born on September 28 1919. He died
on April 9 aged 91