Hugh helping with the staging at St Endellion

HUGH METCALFE, who died on the eve of his 74th birthday, was a specialist in guided weapons, and a key figure in the successful development - as well as the selling - of Bloodhound and Rapier, Britain's longest-serving surface-to-air missiles. Metcalfe began his career at the Bristol Aeroplane Company in 1951, at a time when Britain was about to change the emphasis in anti-aircraft defences from conventional to guided weapons. The task of his generation was to give practical effect to the earlier research and trials carried out by the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. That was easier said than done. "Nearly everything was lacking," Metcalfe noted. "Supersonic and transonic aerodynamics and aeroelasticity were largely unexplored." Moreover, the rocket propulsion available was inadequate for the weapons - hardly sufficient, indeed, for the test vehicles. On the credit side, some valuable work had been done on pulse radars, and on heat resistant materials designed to sustain temperature changes in airframes and turbines. Metcalfe was particularly concerned with the advanced mathe matics and wind tunnel work required to design and build Bloodhound, a radar-homing surface-to-air missile. The project was codenamed Red Duster. But Metcalfe was a great deal more than a boffin. He was an exuberant and cheerful character, whose talent as a networker secured friendly and good-natured relations with civil servants and industrialists whose co-operation was essential. Fortunately, Bloodhound satisfied the demands of the White Paper which Duncan Sandys, the Minister of Defence, issued in April 1957. This document - wrongly, as it turned out - envisaged a future in which guided missiles would take the place of fighter aircraft. By 1958, when Metcalfe became Bristol's chief aerodynamicist, Bloodhound was an important element of the nation's defence. Twenty-five feet long, with a wingspan of 9 ft 3 ½ in, and propelled by two Bristol-Siddeley ramjets at a speed of Mach 2, it required four Gosling rocket-boost motors. At first Bloodhound was principally deployed in units 16 to defend V-bomber stations and bases for the Douglas Thor intermediate range surface-to-surface ballistic missile. By 1961, 352 Bloodhound weapons had been installed in Britain and East Africa. The missile was directed to target by Metropolitan-Vickers and AM Sting-Ray target-illuminating radars. Hugh Metcalfe was born on June 26 1928, and educated at Harrow County Grammar School. After serving for two years in the RAF's airborne radar service immediately after the war, he obtained an Applied Mathematics degree at Imperial College, London, and joined Bristols. After making his reputation with Bloodhound 1, in 1963 Metcalfe was designated chief project engineer at the guided weapons department of the British Aircraft Company (BAC), to which Bristols now belonged. Advancing rapidly as divisional manager for guided weapons projects, and as special director, guided weapons, Metcalfe became especially concerned with ensuring mobility for missiles. He made it possible for BAC's Swedish and Swiss customers to transport and use Bloodhound in severe wintry conditions. Bloodhound deployments in Cyprus, Malaysia and Singapore and (temporarily) in Borneo, also brought Metcalfe much satisfaction. Always happy to have several projects on hand, he worked on a range of naval weapons similar to Bloodhound. From 1971 Metcalfe was mainly preoccupied with Rapier, a ground-to-air missile primarily produced for the RAF Regiment It was designed to defend airfields against low-flying aircraft, and later employed by the Army for battlefield use. A mere 8 ft 6 in in lenqth, Rapier was highly mobile, and could be carried on a Land Rover trailer, as well as by air in small transports and helicopters. Once more Metcalfe's ability to concentrate fiercely on the matter in hand had brought a project to a speedy and successful conclusion. In 1978, after BAC's merger with Hawker Siddeley, Metcalfe was appointed group director, naval weapons, concerned, among other projects, with updating the Polaris warhead. Within two years Metcalfe had become managing director of the expanding company's Bristol division. From 1981 he was managing director at Hatfield, and the next year became chief executive of the dynamics group, as well as a director of British Aerospace, which by that time encompassed much of Britain's previously diverse aircraft industry. These appointments broadened Metcalfe's responsibilities far beyond the field of guided weapons. In 1985 his versatility was recognised by his promotion to deputy chief executive (operations) at British Aerospace, a post in which he remained until his retirement in 1988. Metcalfe's counsel had long been much in demand outside his own companies. He served on the council of the Society of British Aerospace Companies, as well as on the Confederation of British Industry's economic and financial committee. In addition he was a member of the Royal Aeronautical Society's two technical committees, and on the board of Euromissile Dynamics Group and United Satellites. In 1989 Metcalfe was elected president of the Royal Aeronautical Society, which five years earlier had awarded him its British Gold Medal. In 1985 he had delivered the Society's 74th Wilbur and Orville Wright lecture, taking as his subject tactical guided weapons in the 1990s and beyond. The lecture was subsequently published in Aerospace. In 1992, to mark the 50th anniversary of Germany's commitment to the production of an air defence missile, Metcalfe delivered and published From Rheintochter to Rapier, an outline history of the surface-to-air guided missile. Metcalfe was appointed OBE in 1969. Further honours accrued, not least his Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering and associate membership of the Royal Academy of Science. He also held an honorary engineering doctorate at Bristol University, and a science doctorate at Hatfield Polytechnic. Metcalfe was a passionately keen choral singer who performed with a variety of church and public choirs including the London Symphony Chorus and London Philharmonic Choir. He took especial satisfaction from singing in festivals at St Endellion, where he had a holiday home. He retained his links with aerospace through his directorship of the Ricardo Consultancy Group. His work on behalf of the Bristol Heritage Trust Aero Collection reflected his determination to secure recognition for the Bristol Aeroplane Company's contribution to aviation. Metcalfe married, in 1952, Pearl Allison Carter, who predeceased him. They had three sons. In 1999 he married Jennifer Reid.