Fraser, an M-V director and the manager of the aircraft factory, had fortythree years' service. His early days as chief of dynamo test provided for many ex-apprentices their most thrilling reminiscences. In 1919 he became superintendent of the plant department, and later his field was extended to transformer and insulation manufacture. He was put in charge of the projected aircraft factory in February 1939, and his personal enthusiasm and drive, which penetrated to every part of the shops, did much to inspire the factory's notable contribution to the war effort. He joined the Board in 1944.

A. E. L. Scanes, manager of main production and formerly of detail, retired at the end of 1946 after forty years' service. He had been chairman of the suggestions committee since the early twenties. A year later came the retirement ofJ. Billington, the purchasing agent and storekeeper, after forty-five years, for thirty of which he was primarily responsible for the supply of material to the works.

REORGANIZATION
The expanding range and scale of the Company's business in the post-war period necessitated a number of changes in the organization, which, flexible enough to meet the temporary demands of war work, required modification to suit the new and more permanent conditions of peace. Even before the end of the war the growth of jet engine and gas turbine work and the increasing complexity of feed heating circuits for steam plant had resulted in splitting the mechanical engineers into three separate departments dealing with steam turbines, gas turbines, and condensers respectively under L. S. Robson, D. M. Smith, and E. V. Winstanley as chief engineers. At the same time N. Eice was appointed assistant to the chief mechanical engineer, taking charge of development work, and in 1948 he became assistant chief mechanical engineer.

Electronic design, having expanded rapidly during the war, was handed over in June 1945 to a quasi-independent section of industrial control engineers under G. L. Newman; later a separate electronic control committee was formed on the lines of the departmental groups to coordinate the engineering, manufacturing, and sales sides. The radiolocation section became a new radio engineering department under A. K. Nuttall in December 1945, and a radio sales department was set up under L. H. J. Phillips. Manufacture of electronic control and radio apparatus remained under the detail and transmitter department. Early in 1949, however, 'detail', which from early days had been the largest employer of labour in the Company, ceased to exist, being replaced by separate departments for switchgear, control, and radio manufacture.