Alan Bristow

by Alan Bristow

  ‘Who could that be?’ mused Bader. ‘I broke the straps on one of my legs,’ he told the secretary. ‘I’m very sorry if it’s inconvenienced any of your members.’

  Douglas had a lemonade and I had a beer, and they let us have an early table for lunch because the Group Captain had to get back to London quickly. The legs were reclaimed, but our lunch was constantly interrupted by well-wishers seeking his autograph and, bizarrely, wanting to sign the old pair of legs. He allowed it, but afterwards we got hold of some ink remover and rubbed the names off.

  Later it transpired that someone had photographed the legs standing beside the green and had given the picture to the local paper. A reporter called the club secretary to ask questions. The secretary told him politely that publication of the picture would be a great embarrassment to Group Captain Bader, and that he hoped the newspaper would have the good taste to refrain from doing so. And they never did. Would any newspaper today consider the embarrassment of its victim when deciding whether to publish a photograph? I doubt it.

  Some months afterwards I described the incident to one of Bader’s regular golf partners. He sounded sceptical.

  ‘Were you winning?’ he asked.

  ‘I was about to go one up at the sixteenth,’ I said.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘You never know with Douglas. He’s just so competitive that he’d stop at nothing to win, or at least to avoid losing.’

  I prefer to think it was an unfortunate equipment failure.

  Not all my times with Douglas were sheer pleasure. Some years later I was having dinner with him.

  ‘Thelma and I are off on Monday or Tuesday,’ he said. ‘We’re taking the Dove through the Middle East. Would you like to come?’

  ‘Of course I would,’ I said. ‘But I can’t join you straight away – I have business in Cairo.’

  In due course I flew on from Cairo to Tripoli in Lebanon where I joined Douglas and Thelma in their de Havilland Dove. We flew down the pipeline to Kirkuk and on to the Gulf, following the route I had flown many times with helicopters, stopping at Shell’s outposts along the way. At each one I was introduced as a helicopter contractor to Shell. I carefully wrote the name of every manager I met in my notebook, because the lifeblood of my industry was not oil, but contacts.

  It was early June when we got to Kuwait, and it started to get stinking hot. Next morning we flew on to Bahrain, and it was even stinking hotter. I flew all round the Gulf with Douglas and his wife, stopping at every single place where Shell had a connection. Thelma never complained, but it can’t have been fun for her either. It was not an enjoyable experience for me, nor indeed for Douglas, whose legs chafed terribly in hot weather. I don’t know why he did it, particularly at that time of year. It was just something he felt he had to do. We ended up in Doha where I jumped ship on some flimsy excuse and flew home BOAC.

  Douglas was absolutely straight, and a Shell man through and through. As a Christmas present I once sent him six golf balls; he sent them back with a note saying he could not accept gifts from contractors. He wasn’t joking, either. Years later, after he’d retired, his attitude softened slightly. Shell had given him a Piper Apache aircraft as a leaving present, and very soon he found he couldn’t afford to run it on his pension. One day he rang me up. ‘Alan, do you think you could look after my Apache for me?’

  ‘Of course I can, Douglas.’

  ‘Can you keep it in a hangar?’

  Not only did we keep it in a hangar, but for the rest of his life BHL serviced it for him without cost, and as far as I’m aware he only ever paid for the fuel when he flew it. It was the very least I could do for a good friend who was in large measure responsible for the success of Bristow Helicopters Ltd. Without that Shell contract in Doha, we might never have got off the ground.

  All the rest, of course, was up to me. I made sure I kept my ear to the ground to get early warning of new oil finds. One day in 1958 I was discussing exploration with a group of Amoco executives in Tehran. Where, I asked, were the most promising prospects for the future?

  They mentioned the South China Sea, perhaps Alaska. Then one of them ventured: ‘Don’t be surprised if Great Britain becomes a producer. There’s gas there, probably. Oil possibly, too.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Under the North Sea. Nothing proven yet, but the signs are good. It’s down pretty deep. The price of oil would have to be a lot higher to make it worthwhile. It may never be economical to develop, even if we could get to it.’

  ‘Probably not,’ I agreed. ‘Still, imagine that – the oil-rich Kingdom of Britain. The very thought . . .’

  I filed it away mentally for future reference.

  CHAPTER 14

  Life in the Jungle

  In business terms, proving that I owned seven helicopters that I didn’t own and didn’t have the money to buy has been one of the most interesting challenges I have ever had to face. In 1958 BHL was in a secure cash position with the Shell, BP and Amoco contracts in the Persian Gulf keeping revenues flowing. Much of this money was going to Westlands to pay for the Widgeons and Whirlwinds, and I envisaged moving into a strong cash position once BHL had discharged the leasing contracts. Against this background I began to explore market opportunities in Canada, the USA and South America. A call from Douglas Bader provided the next breakthrough.

  ‘Is that you, Alan? Would you come up and talk to Snoddy, please.’

  I drove to London next day to meet with Bader and Roy Snodgrass at Shell Mex House. Bader explained that Shell were about to start extensive seismic exploration in The Beni, a heavily forested area of Bolivia, and had a requirement for field parties to do geophysical and geological surveys in the rivers and foothills east of Cochabamba. ‘Snoddy will fill you in on the details,’ he said.

  ‘Where on earth is Cochabamba?’ I asked Snodgrass.

  Snoddy got out the maps and pointed to a valley 8,600 feet up in the Andes. It was surrounded by mountains, the highest of which, Mount Tunari, was over 18,000 feet. This contract, he said, would be for seven or eight years – unheard of in the helicopter business, where the norm was about six months to a year. A seven-year contract with Shell would be a prize of great value. But there was a big snag.

  ‘When you started with us in Doha,’ Bader said, ‘Shell provided the WS55s, you provided the spares, the engineers and the pilots. This time it’s different. Every bidder has to show ownership of the helicopters they put forward before we can accept a tender.’

  It seemed to me to be a back-to-front situation. Instead of having a contract against which I could raise capital to buy helicopters, I had to prove ownership of the helicopters before I could even enter the race. It became clear from talking to Snoddy that seven Bell 47G2s would be needed to service the initial requirement, and most of our cash was tied up in helicopters that were working in the Persian Gulf. With our existing commitments on the Westland helicopters, buying seven Bell 47G2s was beyond BHL’s means. But Shell were emphatic – to bid, you had to prove ownership of the helicopters you’d be using. It looked like I was out of the running.

  I drove back to Henstridge desperately trying to think of ways to get into the bidding. Discussing the prospects with George Fry, we agreed it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to raise the kind of cash the contract required at that time. My usual banking sources made it clear they were not interested in taking any risks, least of all one which could leave them with seven helicopters to sell if Bristows didn’t win the contract. The extent of the financial risk was underlined by the fact that there were at least eight other helicopter operators intent on bidding for the job. Needless to say the Bell factory in Fort Worth, Texas was extremely keen to get an order of this size for new aircraft. Unfortunately Bell’s finance terms were such that I couldn’t hope to beat the competition, some of whom were bidding with helicopters already well written-down in their books.

  It looked like a lost cause, but I couldn’t let go of the idea. A seven-year contract with Shel
l – some competitor with seven Bells was about to take a plum right out of my hand. I lay awake at night thinking about it. It was clear to me that I only needed to prove ownership of the helicopters for the period of the bidding. An idea slowly formed in my mind, an apparently absurd idea that depended on a third party giving me temporary ownership of seven Bell 47s for enough time for Shell to evaluate all the bids. I discussed it with Jack Woolley, and many times with George, and I’m sure my colleagues must have begun to wonder about my sanity. Nevertheless they agreed the prize was worth an unorthodox approach. The best route would be to sign a contract to acquire the helicopters through a hire-purchase company that understood the aviation business.

  Today you can lease anything from an office chair to a jumbo jet, but in the 1950s the leasing industry was embryonic. Lombard Banking was the leader in the new business of leasing aeroplanes to independent airline operators, and Freddie Laker was one of its promising new clients. Through a friend at the Royal Aero Club it was arranged that I would meet the chairman of Lombard Banking Limited, Eric Knight, at his offices in Shepherds Bush. There, I explained my idea of a hire-purchase deal with his company, which would give me ownership of seven Bell 47 helicopters long enough to meet Shell’s requirements – between the time of submitting my best offer and Shell’s selection of an operator.

  Mr Knight seemed amazed and amused at the same time. I thought he was about to show me the door, but as the conversation developed he seemed to come round to the idea of helping me, in the full knowledge that if Bristows didn’t win the Shell contract in Bolivia Lombard Banking would become the proud owners of seven helicopters that could only be disposed of at a discount. Eric Lombard Knight was a risk-taker of the type one seldom finds in business today. He had started the bank that bore his middle name in 1947 with eight staff and a relatively small tranche of capital, and he backed able entrepreneurs by putting his own money at risk in a way that banks with shareholders to account to could not do. Lombard Banking expanded a hundredfold in fifteen years, and when it was bought out by NatWest in 1969 Mr Knight was an extraordinarily wealthy man, his fortune built entirely on his own foresight, instincts and business savvy. Bristows and Lombard were destined to be further linked when my son married Knight’s daughter.

  I got the feeling that he knew more than I thought about my work with the French during the war in Indo-China, and my flying in the Antarctic. When he asked me what security Bristows could provide I was able to demonstrate that the positive cash flow generated by helicopter operations in the Persian Gulf would go a significant way towards reducing his risk. Perhaps the fact that we were already working for Shell in Doha gave Mr Knight a degree of confidence in my belief that I could win the Bolivia contract. Throughout the interview I got the feeling that he was on some kind of crusade to help entrepreneurs like Laker and me to succeed. Abruptly, towards the end of the meeting Mr Knight asked me to give him the technical specifications of the seven Bell 47G2 helicopters so that he could place an order with Bell on behalf of Bristow Helicopters. He made his decision on the spot, without reference to anyone, and I walked out of his office the effective owner of the helicopters I needed to bid for the Shell contract. In addition, I had opened up a new source of finance for BHL. Lombard’s form of underwriting was not only unique but extraordinarily generous and showed a great deal of confidence in the management team at BHL. It meant, nevertheless, that we had to scrape together every penny that we owned to make the first instalment on our four-year agreement with Lombard Banking Limited.

  The level of support from my colleagues was reassuring. They knew the extent of our financial exposure at a time when we were consolidating our position in the Persian Gulf, and thoroughly understood the potential downside to the action I was asking them to support. The spirit was intense – go for it, and damn the consequences. Every one of them knew that if we won the Shell contract we would stand a good chance of winning other work, even if the purse strings would be tight for several years to come. It was a gamble, but they were exciting times.

  By passing the cost of mobilisation on to Shell, by persuading Bell to give seven pilots familiarisation training free of charge, and by promising to start with four helicopters on the forecast contract start date followed by one a month for the next three months, I was able to put together what I considered to be a competitive bid based on a minimum guaranteed utilisation of fifty hours per helicopter per month over a four-year period. So confident was I that as soon as the deal with Lombard was signed, all efforts became focused on recruiting pilots and engineers with the sort of experience that would meet our high standards, preparing maintenance schedules and arranging air freight delivery of the first four helicopters and a spares support package. I was determined to make preparations well in advance to keep morale high and, at the same time, to be ready if our bid was accepted.

  Three tense weeks after the bid was submitted, I got a telephone call from Group Captain Bader’s secretary Pam. ‘You’d better start moving helicopters to Cochabamba as soon as possible!’ she said. The gamble had paid off. Official confirmation followed, and there was jubilation and immoderate drinking at Henstridge. The Bell factory came up trumps with four helicopters at very short notice, and we were off, on a wing and a prayer. I discovered much later that Douglas Bader was more than a little surprised when we were able to show ownership of the helicopters at the time of bidding. He hadn’t really expected us to be able to raise the wind. Ultimately we were able to pay off Lombard over four years, and those seven Bell 47s gave sterling service down the decades – one of them was still flying with Bristows in the 1990s.

  Years later I asked Bader about the clause in the tender document that specified that bidders had to prove ownership of helicopters before their bids would be accepted. Was it inserted in order to prove that he was not helping me unduly? ‘The world and his wife know that you staked me in Doha in 1955,’ I said. ‘Were you trying to make it obvious to everyone that you were doing me no favours in Bolivia?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Douglas. ‘It wasn’t anything to do with me. They were swarming for the Bolivia contract. There were ten or more bidders, American, Colombian, French, everybody in the world. Our people in New York suggested to me that bidders ought to be required to prove ownership because there were a lot of cowboys going around claiming they could do this and that, and some of them didn’t have any assets at all. That’s why it was done.’

  Alan Green volunteered along with Bill Petrie, an experienced Bell-qualified engineer, to fly to Bolivia to organise facilities for maintenance and housing for the pilots and engineers in Cochabamba in time for the arrival of the first four helicopters, which were being delivered in a DC-6 out of Fort Worth. The timetable was tight. Two French pilots, Marcel Avon and Yves Le Roy, joined Jacques Castaigne on the payroll – all three had excellent flying experience on the Bell 47, and all three spent the next thirty years with Bristows in various parts of the world. Earl Milburn, Alastair Gordon and Tony English were WS55 pilots who transferred from Persian Gulf operations to Cochabamba as the backbone of the new team. Luckily Shell didn’t need more than four helicopters for the first six months, and this gave us time to consolidate the engineering team with people like Robbie Robinson, Neil Leppard and Vic Wiltshire and to build up a significant stock of spares suitable for maintenance under primitive conditions in the field.

  There isn’t much in Cochabamba today and there was even less in 1958. The town dates from the sixteenth century and has a beautiful colonial section with 400-year-old buildings, but beyond that it’s entirely nondescript. Students of cinema may recall the South American bank robbery scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which was filmed in ‘El Banco de Cochabamba.’ It’s that kind of place. Three of us were drinking in a taverna one afternoon near the village of Todos Santos when a man dressed in black clothes, topped off by a black sombrero, came in just like in a Western, walked up to a chap sitting on his own at a table, pulled a gun and shot him dea
d. We rather sensibly ran out of the door, but nobody else in the bar turned a hair – it transpired that the dead man had seduced the other’s wife, and in Cochabamba it was par for the course to resolve one’s marital difficulties in this way. Bolivia was fairly lawless, a place where strong men made fortunes at the expense of the weak. Murder, extortion and dictatorship were the pillars on which society rested. I was meeting a Shell representative over lunch in La Paz when an angry crowd of coal miners arrived in the main street, shouting and firing their guns. The ricochets were bouncing around, so the fellow from Shell and I moved to the back of the café and stayed low. The miners were making a claim on the government for more wages. They were controlled like a private army by a particularly ruthless operator called Jaime Ortiz-Patiñ o. Many years later when I ran into him again, he was described as a ‘Bolivian tin billionaire’ and had just bought the golf course at Valderrama in Spain. I was blackballed when I applied for membership – I knew where the bodies were buried, literally.

  To keep costs as low as possible while at the same time providing good living quarters, Alan Green rented a six-bedroomed house with large dining and recreational areas, including a beautiful swimming pool. This was indeed a facility of a much higher standard than I had expected, so much so that it attracted a lot of attention from the young female population of Cochabamba, who were encouraged by the exuberance of the expats and their expertise in barbecues. Every time that I stayed at the company house there was a barbecue of gargantuan proportions, almost like a Roman orgy, with eager young ladies dancing and skinny-dipping in the pool. Curiously, the marriages that ensued have stood the test of time. We almost lost Alan Green there. Some bright spark, in his attempts to top up the water in the swimming pool, achieved the opposite and ended up emptying the pool. As the party moved on to the dancing and swimming stage, Alan Green decided to show his talents as a swimmer by diving into the pool, not knowing that it was virtually empty. The combination of his natural athleticism and his alcohol intake ensured that he suffered only a sore head and a bruised shoulder – but similar incidents have been known to kill.