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1958: Air Marshal Sir Robert Owen Jones
Robert Owen Jones (1901-1972)
73rd President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers
Robert Owen Jones was born in 1901 at Ashbourne, Derbyshire, England. He studied engineering at the Manchester College of Technology, combining the course with a short apprenticeship in instrument making. He then undertook the Mechanical Sciences Tripos at Cambridge, followed by the post-graduate course in aeronautics at Imperial College, London. Here he specialized in research into high-compression aircraft engines.
He began a career with the Royal Air Force in 1924, from which time he alternated flying duty with technical duty, which included command of station workshops on aircraft maintenance and overhaul, technical instruction of officers and airmen, and several years spent at Farnborough on instrument design. During these years he also graduated from the RAF staff college at Andover.
Immediately prior to the Second World War, he was appointed Air Ministry Overseer at Armstrong Whitworth and Armstrong Siddeley, with particular responsibility for overseeing the production of the Whitley bomber. He spent much of the Second World War with the Ministry of Aircraft Production, initially on the layout of instruments and equipment in new types of aircraft. He later spent two years in the United States on technical work on the procurement of aircraft and equipment to suit RAF requirements. He also worked on the exchange of technical information.
Following the war he took part in the evaluation of the aeronautical research and development which had taken place in Germany during the war.
He then commanded the RAF group which controlled the technical training of apprentices and airmen of the RAF Mechanical Engineering trades. His final position before retiring from the RAF in 1956 was that of Controller of Engineering and Equipment at the Air Ministry.
After retirement from the RAF, Jones took up consultancy work. He was President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1958. He was President of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1961.
He died in 1972.
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