Curriculum Vitae Hugh Tyrer, CEng, MRAeS, MIM, Grad Inst NDT. 35 Southlands Close, Ash, Aldershot, Hampshire.England. GU12 6NH Academic Training Aviation Apprenticeship - Vickers Armstrong Ltd. National Certificate - Engineering, Engineering Science, Engineering Drawing. Elected an Ordinary Member of the Non-Destructive Testing Society of Great Britain (now the British Institute of Non-Destructive Testing). Elected an Associate Member of the Institution of Metallurgists (now Professional Member of the Institute of Materials). Chartered Engineer and Member of the Royal Aeronautical Society. Career Details On joining Vickers Armstrong Ltd. in August 1942, I spent the first two years training in workshop practice, firstly in the fitting shops and subsequently in the machine shop, detailed assembly, tinsmiths, pipe bending and erecting shops. In 1944, I moved to the Mechanical Testing Laboratory as one of the staff of ten dealing with all aspects of development and production control testing including the flight testing of systems developed in the laboratory and the location of structural problems in flight. During the latter part of my apprenticeship and early staff service, a number of structural failures occurred on Weybridge designed aircraft and I became involved in the analysis of fractures and fatigue testing as part of my more widely based laboratory activities. On completion of my apprenticeship in 1947, I took up permanent employment with Vickers Armstrong Ltd. as a Laboratory Assistant. Shortly after this, the Laboratory, which was expanding rapidly in the post war years, was divided into sections and I was put in charge of the Metallurgy Section. In 1947, I also took up an appointment with Surrey County Council as an evening lecturer on Welding Science and Practice and as an assistant on Engineering Science and Engineering Drawing. This continued for seventeen years until pressure of work required that I give it up. Since then, I have presented many specialist lectures on fractography, non-destructive testing and quality control. The expansion in the post war years involved the design and construction of the first Vickers designed all metal civil aircraft and the parallel introduction of the then new methods of non-destructive testing for which I was immediately responsible. These included the inspection of structures and mechanisms using X-radiation, ultrasound, penetrants etc. and as structural problems began to occur on in-service aircraft techniques were developed using these methods to resolve them. As Weybridge designed aircraft were in use worldwide, I was called upon to provide the on-site analysis of structural problems when accidents and incidents occurred as advisor to the Technical Office and started travelling extensively. These overseas activities have, in the last fifty years, involved over a million miles of travel involving every major country (except China, Russia, the Arctic and the Antarctic) and very many minor ones. In this activity I have represented my Company in Courts of Inquiry, and a Court Martial as an expert witness, and have been involved with the CAA in the UK, the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board in the USA and Civil Air Worthiness Authorities in Iceland, Central Africa, Egypt, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Columbia, Argentina, Australia, Denmark, Belgium, and Germany, directly as a result of aircraft accidents. These accidents and incidents have involved high pressure oxygen generated fires (three cases), structural break up in flight (seven cases), mercury spillage (six cases), hijacking (two cases), and an in flight explosion as well as very many more minor incidents. In addition, I was, for the last forty years of my employment in the Aircraft Industry, responsible for the fractrographical analysis of all structural and component problems that occurred on well over a thousand Weybridge designed aircraft in service as well as on the products taken over from other firms on amalgamation (e.g. Hunting Aircraft). During my employment with British Aerospace and its predecessor companies, I have served on various committees in the British Standards Institute and the Society of British Aerospace Companies involved in the preparation of specifications for metallic materials and non deductive testing including Inspection and Quality standards for both the United Kingdom and Europe. I have held a series of positions in British Aerospace and its preceding organisations commencing with Laboratory Assistant in 1949. I was then appointed Section Leader, Metallurgy followed by Group Leader of the Materials Group (at Senior Designer status followed by promotion to Management in 1966) and Chief Metallurgist and Assistant Laboratory Manager: Technical (staff approximately 130) culminating in Senior Metallurgist and Technical Consultant in the Weybridge organisation of British Aerospace advising on new materials, materials selection, joining and fabrication problems, material defects service problems etc. Throughout my career I have been called upon on various occasions to present technical papers by such organisations as the Royal Aeronautical Society, The European Advisory Group for Non-Destructive Testing etc. as well as British Aerospace and its predecessor companies. Employment with British Aerospace ceased in 1987 and since then I have been operating as a Metallurgist and Technical Consultant specialising in Fracture Analysis, Engineering Metallurgy and Non-Destructive Testing. To support this activity I run a Metallographic Laboratory and associated workshop which contain the required supporting equipment. I now have a wide range of clients including the Aircraft Accident Investigation Branch of the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions, Health and Safety organisations, aircraft operators such as British Airways and its subsiduaries, Bristow Helicopters, and such organisations as The Howden Group, as well as concerns in the general engineering field, including surgical implant manufacturers, oil extraction companies and shipping, my primary activities being fractography and accident and incident investigation. I also act as an advisor to the London insurance market. Click the arrow to return to the previous page.