Ken Fulton, 25 February 2008

With much regret, we have accepted Ken's wish to retire from the Committee. He joined the Committee when it was first formed in 1950, as the Engine Company representative when he was in the final year of his engineering apprenticeship. This was also the year he joined the RAFVR, having undergone training at Panshanger. After completing his apprenticeship, he worked for DHE, Rolls-Royce and Bristol Siddeley until 1965, with a break between 1952 and 1957 when he was with ‘The Aeroplane’ as their engines expert.

From his initial appointment with DHE as a technical assistant in the Chief Engineer's Dept. at Stag Lane, Ken gravitated towards Public Relations, gaining his Graduate Membership of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, Associate Membership of the British Institute of Management and Member of the Institute of Public Relations along the way. He then worked in PR from 1965 until 1977, when he returned to the aviation world, joining Fokker in Holland where he remained until his retirement in 1993. Throughout, Ken worked as a freelance aviation journalist, indeed he was the amongst first aviation journalists from the west to visit the former USSR after 1989, interviewing jet engine designers for various UK and US press. These days, Ken’s focus is writing a biography of Sir Frank Whittle. In 2000, he was awarded an Archival Bi-Fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge to undertake research on the Whittle papers held there. More recently, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

During all this, Ken remained a steadfast member of our Committee, in 1987 taking on the job of Treasurer, a role which he has fulfilled admirably since that time. Now, however, health reasons oblige him, much against his will, to hand on the baton.

On February 25th 2008, prior to our committee meeting at the Long Arm and Short Arm in Lemsford, Ken was presented with an engraved tankard and a bottle of champagne as tokens of appreciation by the committee. Ken is pictured above with the tankard, which bears the DHAeTSA wings.