BRISTOW HISTORY. THE SIXTIES.

BERMUDA.

In 1958 Alan Bristow was served with a Surtax Direction Order this being caused by the company ploughing back all its profit and therefore escaping any tax liability. Bristow accompanied by George Fry sought Counsel's advice and they were recommended to take part in one of the many schemes then in existence to deal with such situations and after consulting Special Commissioners he was advised unofficially to be absent from the company before the following April. It was already February and after much discussion it was decided that Alan Bristow would move to Bermuda choosing it because he had lived there as a child and gone to school there.

It was not quite as radical a move as it now seems as the company at that time had no operations in Britain just the offices at Henstridge which consisted of a few nissen huts. Once in Bermuda Bristow used it as a base from which to tour the major oil company offices in the USA telling them of the virtues of using helicopters for offshore support and land based operations where access was difficult for road based transportation. It is believed that this selling exercise laid down the foundations for the growth of the company in the sixties and seventies.

FREDDIE LAKER.

It was while he was in Bermuda that Bristow met the legendary Freddie Laker who was in the country to see Harold Bamberg on the subject of acquiring Eagle Airways. During an informal meeting Laker told Bristow that he wanted to buy the business to which Bristow replied, " Freddie, you haven't got enough money."
Bristow informed George Fry of the offer who in turn went to visit Laker on his return to the UK. He also visited Sir Miles Wyatt who was trying to put together a grouping of airline businesses which was to become British United Airways, and at that time had already acquired several companies in his Air Holdings group. Bristow flew over to England and he and Fry worked out what they thought the company was worth but after several meetings with Laker and Sir Miles they could not agree on a price and Bristow resigned himself to returning to his exile in Bermuda. However at a final lunch meeting between Bristow and Laker a deal was struck - over the toss of a coin!

So Bristow signed a service agreement with Air Holdings and went on the board of United Airways. Bristow relocated the helicopter operations from Henstridge down in the West Country to Redhill Aerodrome in Surrey whilst moving himself from Bermuda to Cranleigh in Surrey. He also persuaded George Fry to leave the accountants, Andrew Barr, where he had worked since the war and come to work for Bristow Helicopters as full time General Manger.

The Air Holdings group was large and complicated and at 1959 Airwork had acquired companies such as Transair, Aviation Traders, Air Charter, Channel Air Bridge and Morton/Olley Air Services. Even after these mergers there was much needed rationalisation within the UK air transport industry and to this end, in 1960, Airwork merged with Hunting-Clan to form British United Airways. Sir Nicholas Cayzer ( now Lord Cayzer ) of British and Commonwealth Shipping stepped in as Vice Chairman due to the fact that B&C were now the largest single shareholder in the new group.

THE MERGER OF BRISTOWS AND FISON-AIRWORK.

In 1960, Sir Miles Wyatt asked Alan Bristow if he would take over the running of Fison Airwork and effectively merge it with Bristow Helicopters. Fascine Airwork had originally been the aviation section of a company called Pest Control, later Fison/Pest Control. Fison Airwork by the end of the fifties was engaged in crop-spraying particularly in the Caribbean and Central America. It was also engaged in spraying cotton crops in Sudan and potatoes throughout the UK.

The oil related work in Nigeria developed as a spin-off from crop-spraying work in the Cameroon when in 1954 work was obtained with the Shell D'Arcy Development Company of Nigeria, soon to be renamed the Shell BP Development Company of Nigeria. For Fascine Pest Control this was its first entry into the oil market and it soon expanded rapidly. Originally engaged to help with geophysical surveying the contract got bigger and bigger as the oil companies found oil in commercial quantities.

Fison Pest Control soon took the view that they knew little about the oil world and should have a partner who did. They therefore approached Airwork Ltd and the two agreed to set up a joint venture company into which the aviation interests and assets of Fison Pest Control would be placed. This joint company was named Fison Airwork and continued to develop its interests in Nigeria, entering into larger fixed wing services with Twin Pioneers and operating helicopters such as the Hiller 12As up to the larger Westland Whirlwinds. The company expanded its Caribbean activities into Jamaica, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador.This was the company that Sir Miles Wyatt wanted Alan Bristow to run.

Bristow set off round the world to see what they were doing and was disturbed to see in certain locations what the pilots were being asked to do. He had the view that crop-spraying was a dangerous occupation and as it was seasonal it was also not very profitable. Competition was starting to appear in the form of specialist fixed wing crop sprayers and as part of Alan Bristows reorganisation of Fison Aiwork he soon disposed of the crop spraying activities.

Bristow Helicopters acquired many able people from Fison Airwork who reached senior positions within the company - Bryan Collins (Managing Director)
John Odlin (Director), Bryan Shaw (Director), senior pilots - Peter Gray, Bob Brewster and John Waddington, senior engineers - Don Strange and Cliff Saffron.

In 1967 as well as being Chairman of Bristow Helicopters Alan Bristow took on the roles of Managing Director and Deputy Chairman of British United Airways but as he pointed out this was only possible due to the fact that he had an excellent team in place at Redhill.

MEANWHILE AT BRISTOW HELICOPTERS.

While Alan Bristow was involved at BUA, Bristow Helicopters continued to grow and by early 1968 owned 86 helicopters and employed well over a hundred pilots. By then seventy five per cent of the company's flying was connected with supplying oil rigs at sea, whether in the North Sea, the Persian Gulf, Morocco, Mauritania or off the north west coast of Australia.

In 1961 Bristows had secured a contract to train thirty two naval pilots after the Royal Navy had decided to form two new helicopter squadrons for their new Commando Carriers. The success of this operation encouraged the Army to take the plunge into civil training and again Bristows won the contract commencing at Middle Wallop on 1st April 1963 and after numerous rebids it is still running today (2001).

In 1967 Bryan Shaw was brought back from running the training school at Middle Wallop and given the task of expanding overseas operations.He was soon involved in the company's first operation in the Far East when they were awarded a contract for a heli-rig operation in conjunction with Caltex Pacific Indonesia under the banner Bristow-Masayu.
Many problems had to be overcome in the early days of operating in Indonesia but perseverance paid off and soon the company had secured further contracts - from Mobil, Kennicot, Rio Tinto Zinc and Total - all in Sumatra. They also won two contracts on Netuna Besar, an island in the South China Sea, one with AGIP utilising an S61N and one with CONOCO operating two Wessex.
Contracts were also being secured in Sulawasi, Phillipines, Burma, India and Pakistan.

In Australia, oil companies were beginning to explore off the West Coast and in 1967 Bristows put the Wessex 60 into operation to service the offshore installations.( see anecdote number 4.)

I have minimal information about the level of Nigerian operations in the sixties and the same can be said for Trinidad so if anybody can fill me in about their progress can you e-mail me.

Of course back in the UK things here were also beginning to liven up as in September 1964 the British Government announced the awards of the offshore concessions on the United Kingdom continental shelf and out of the eleven original tenders to operate offshore services Bristows succeeded in winning ten of them despite some tough competition from the other British helicopter operators.
On a stormy February day in 1965, a Bristow's Whirlwind took off from Sunderland Airport to fly 164 miles to the "Mister Cap" rig positioned on the Dogger Bank ( NorthSea). This was the first flight to carry passengers to a North Sea drilling rig from a UK base and began a new chapter in the history of Bristow Helicopters. Having won so many contracts they now faced the giant task of setting up their first major UK operation as most of the oil industry experience up to now had been gained overseas.

When the concession awards were announced it was not known where the majority of the oil companies intended to drill. The concession areas extended from the North of Scotland to just North of the Thames Estuary and it was obvious from the start that many of the initial operations would have to be carried out from temporary bases. As has been mentioned, the first of these was based at Sunderland Airport, to service the Dogger Bank area, but it soon became apparent that as the pattern of the North sea began to develop other bases would be required further South. Eventually, heliports were established at Tetney, Scar- borough and probably the most important - Great Yarmouth. So it was that in 1966 Bristows constructed their helipad on the small grass airfield at North Denes, which was, within a very short space of time, handling one Wessex 60 and five Whirlwind IIIs.

By 1967, it was becoming increasingly obvious that the investment gamble of two years earlier was paying off as it was now evident that oil and gas exploration and production off the coast of England was here to stay and Bristows were expending more and more effort to service that industry. In 1967, some 80% of the 25,000 hours of revenue flights logged annually by the company were accounted for by offshore work and this was before the even richer bonanza that was to occur off the shores of Scotland in the early seventies.

As a result of all this North Sea activity Bristows started to gain experience in the Search and Rescue field, not as a specialised operation, but using normal line aircraft fitted with winches depending on the job at hand. In 1968 Bristow helicopters and crews took part in two major offshore rescues which grabbed media attention.

Early in 1968, when the rig Ocean Prince was being pounded by hurricane force winds, Captain Robert Balls flew out to the rig from the Bristow base at Tetney, near Grimsby - a distance of 100 miles - in a Westland Wessex 60 and, loaded with the minimum of fuel, transferred the forty five members of the crew, in three trips to another rig twenty miles away. Soon after the last men were lifted to safety the Ocean Prince collapsed and sank and for his bravery and skill Bob Balls was later made a Member of the Order of the British Empire.

In November 1968, four Bristow helicopters rescued the crew of another North Sea rig, the Hewitt A, after it had suffered a gas "blow-out" and was in danger of being wrecked by an explosion. Heavy seas were running at the time and when a supply boat attempted to take of some of the crew it was swept against the rig, holed, and capsized. As a result of the collision the crew of eight and eleven men from the rig were thrown into the sea. The four Bristow helicopters landing in turn, rescued the remaining 29 men on the rig, whilst a fifth sent out especially equipped with a winch, helped in the rescue of sixteen of the men in the sea. Alas three lives were lost.

End. (for now).