Brigadier John Clemow
Mathematician,
linguist and classical scholar, John Clemow was a natural choice for the
Technical Staff during the Second World War and he solved a problem with the 6-pounder
anti-tank gun that General Bernard Montgomery had complained “could not hit a
barn door”. Later, his expertise on guided weapons took him to the US and then
into British industry.
Winning a scholarship to St
John’s College, Cambridge, in 1930, he gained a first in the mathematical
tripos to become a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics. He joined the
Territorial Army in 1934 and as an artillery officer began specialising in gun
design and manufacture.
He taught at the Military College
of Science in Bury, Lancashire, till 1944, when Montgomery demanded someone to
solve the 6-pounder problem. In 1945 he became chief design officer at the
Armament Research and Development Establishment in Fort Halstead, Kent.
He was sent to Germany in 1947 to
find out everything possible about the German wartime guided weapons programme,
with particular emphasis on the V2 rocket system. Utilising his fluent German,
he was engaged in interviewing Nazi scientists until leaving for the US Army’s
Fort Bliss in Texas and New Mexico for formal training on guided weapons
development and techniques.
His mathematical and scientific
skills soon put him in a leading position and on promotion to
lieutenant-colonel he was seconded to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at
Farnborough, Hampshire, as project manager for the six guided-weapons systems
then under development. By 1951 he was a colonel and assistant director for
guided weapon projects in the Ministry of Supply. When the air-to-air guided
missile Blue Sky ran into technical difficulties in 1953, he was seconded to
the Fairey Aviation Company and brought the project to a successful conclusion
for operations with the RAF within two years.
Promoted to brigadier in 1953, he
returned to the Ministry of Supply as Director, Guided Weapon Projects, with a
staff of some 60 officers and the substantial sum of £20 million for the
industrial development, manufacture and trials of guided weapons for all three
Armed Services. The First Sea Lord, Admiral Earl Mountbatten, made him responsible
for resolving outstanding problems with the Seaslug missile for the Royal Navy,
authorising him to use his name in the event of any obstruction in Whitehall.
Established as a leading expert
on guided weapons in Britain, in 1957 Clemow was invited to join Vickers
Armstrong as chief engineer (weapons). He left the Army and remained at Vickers
till 1961 while the successful Vigilant anti-tank missile was developed as a
Vickers private venture, resulting in the sale of 12,000 to the British Army
and 6,000 for export. In this period he also published technical books on
short-range guided weapons and on missile guidance. On the formation of the
British Aircraft Corporation, he left Vickers to join the General Electric
Company at Stanmore, Middlesex.
While he really wanted to confine
himself to civil work at GEC, he was persuaded to take the positions of
engineering and technical director. This involved bringing together six units
into a single working unit embracing underwater weapons, sonar, military communications,
digital and analogue computers, data links, servo-mechanisms, weapons guidance,
airborne radar, gun control, scientific and communications satellites and test
equipment.
From 1966 until his retirement in
1976 Clemow worked for the Science Research Council as chief physicist. In this
capacity he pursued his interest in high-energy nuclear physics. In later life
he evinced some disappointment at the bureaucracy of the council and was not
sorry to retire from it to enjoy what he regarded as a more fruitful time of
classical scholarship and reading.
The son of a Royal Navy dockyard
shipwright of Cornish origin, John Clemow was born in Sheerness, Kent, but
moved to Glasgow when his father was posted to the dockyard on the Clyde. His
interest in mathematics already manifest, he also began collecting books of
poetry and history. On his father’s transfer to Sheerness, the family returned
to England and his father bought a smallholding on the Isle of Sheppey. The
young Clemow obtained a grammar school place, using his holidays to visit
Germany and become fluent in the language. Later he became variously proficient
in Latin, Greek, Ancient Greek, Italian, French, Norwegian, Russian, Arabic,
Hebrew, Chinese and Sanskrit.
His annual “Pendulum Letters”,
originating with undergraduate colleagues from Cambridge, continued well into
his nineties, their erudite observations providing a lasting testament to the
breadth and depth of his knowledge of art, literature, music, history, law and
politics.
A convert to Roman Catholicism,
he was deeply versed in the world’s religions and worked as a volunteer for
Amnesty International for more than ten years and on indexing books for the
Royal National Institute for the Blind.
His wife, Dorothy, predeceased
him. He is survived by a daughter.
Brigadier John Clemow,
Director, Guided Weapon Projects, Ministry of Supply, 1953-57, was born on
November 9, 1911. He died on November 17, 2008, aged 97