ARMAMENTS: Lord Mechanic

When Ernest Walter Hives was made chairman of the board of Rolls-Royce Ltd. last month, it was a fine compliment to his engineering skill. It was the first time a man who had come up from the ranks had sat in a chair heretofore reserved for eminent public figures. Last week, just before the retreat in Korea, Lord Hives was paid the kind of compliment he likes even better. The British Commonwealth 29th Brigade went into action with what some experts call the West’s best heavy tank, the low-slung, 52-ton Centurion. It is powered by a 635-h.p. Rolls-Royce Meteor engine that Hives helped develop.

At 64, the new chairman of Rolls-Royce, who became a baron seven months ago, still considers himself “only a mechanic.” When he came to Rolls 42 years ago, fresh from secondary school and an apprenticeship in a machine shop, Hives was put to work at a bench in the Rolls plant. He showed such a talent for engineering that he quickly climbed the ladder to become head of Rolls’s auto and air experimental station, later chief experimental engineer. Always one for seeing projects through from drafting board to trial run, Hives tested new engines by driving them in racing cars. During World War II, as Rolls’s managing director, he supervised the design and production of the famed Merlin engine that powered Mustang, Hurricane and Spitfire fighter planes.

With his hands full of plane engine production, Hives got an urgent request from Minister of Supply Lord Beaverbrook: Would Rolls make a new high-powered tank engine? Hives said no. When the Beaver persisted, Hives said yes, if the government would give him a credit of £1,000,000 and let him strictly alone. Hives adapted the Merlin for tanks, made it the forerunner of the power plant in the Centurion.

Last week Hives put his hand to another new project. He reopened Rolls’s huge Glasgow plant to mass-produce the new Avon jet engine (7,500-lb. thrust), successor to the Derwent and Nene (TIME, Oct. 16). The engines made there will go into the sleek Canberra twin-engine bomber, now being built in England for the R.A.F. and a bright possibility for the U.S. Air Force.