Tom Bunting

A Naval Man -An Engineer

At one stage in his naval career he was a member of a gun crew and used his ingenuity to bring his crew to be one of the leading crews in the fleet.

The greatest asset of any gun crew is speed. speed in preparing the gun for firing and clearing the shell casing and reloading the gun ready to fire again, the officer in charge of the gun determines the accuracy, using instruments like range finders, radar and other instruments to help him to determine the range and trajectory of the shell to enable it to hit the target.

The gun crew were enclosed within the gun turret and worked in semi-darkness all the time.The shell was transferred from the magazine to the gun loading platform in a wicker basket attached to a hoist. This was a hit and miss method as there was no way of ensuring that the basket carrying the shell aligned itself with the loading platform The basket was usually too high or too low and precious seconds were lost in trying to re-align the basket and the platform.

Tom became very frustrated with this and made two large arrows which he painted silver so that they could be seen in the semi-darkness. One he fixed to the loading platform and the other to the hoist so that when the arrows were aligned, the basket and the loading platform were also aligned.

This was so successful that Tom's crew became the fastest in the fleet. As a little twist to the story, some time later, Tom was walking down Union Street in Plymouth when he saw an officer. Tom saluted and was surprised when the officer said " Hello Tom" Tom then recogmised him as one of his ex mates from the gun crew. "Sorry". Tom said, " I didn't recognise you in officer's uniform".

The officer said that he got his commission because of Tom's brainwave. Apparently he took Tom's idea ( of the silver arrows) and substituted lights triggered when the loading plaform and magazine were aligned. He submiited this idea formally and it was adopted throughout the navy, brought him recognition and he was promoted.....A good example of the difference between a creator and an entrepreneur!