Geoff Cooper, wartime engineer Farnborough for FAA

[DavidIsby]

FROM FACEBOOK:
My Unoffical FAA History Page
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My thanks to Martin Westwood for sending me Geoff Cooper's obituary, following his death at the age of 104 on 6 May 2024.
Geoff was certainly 'one of the unsung heroes of naval aviation'. Born in March 1920, in 1936 he began a five-year long apprenticeship at RAE Farnborough. In 1941 he was offered a post as a laboratory assistant and joined the team developing catrapult launch systems for aircraft carriers. "Cooper was at the heart of later developments which enabled carrier aviation to come of age.
Though he never joined the service, he flew as a passenger and observer in several catapult launches and arrested landings... logging nearly six months at sea in ships during WWII. Cooper was there for the 'wheels-up' trials on arubber flight deck and the first landing of an aircraft with a tricycle undercarriage... and the forst landing of a Sea Vampire onboard HMS Ocean.
After the war Geoff became priciople engineer at the National gas Turbine Establishment at Pyestock, and tested the Olympus engines fitted to Concorde. In 1967 he transferred to the Institute of Aviation Medicine, where he was put in charge of the infamous 'centrifuge'. He retired in 1985. His book "Farnborough and the Fleet Air Arm' was published in 2008.