John Findlater

John Findlater (19 May 1926 – 28 March 2013)

Findlater was born in Motherwell, Scotland, in May 1926, the son of a railway superintendent.^[1] He moved to Inverness at a young age, and was educated at Inverness Royal Academy, where he developed a fascination with aircraft.^[1]

Second World War

During the

After the war, Findlater joined the Met Office, beginning his career as a teacher of meteorology in Nairobi, Kenya.^[1] While in Kenya, he began studying the monsoon winds that develop around the Horn of Africa, conducting hundreds of research flights over the Indian Ocean to gather data.^[1] During this period, he discovered a previously unknown wind system that blows diagonally across the Indian Ocean parallel to the Somalian coast; the phenomenon was named the Findlater jet in his honour.^[1] Findlater furthermore received the LG Groves Memorial Prize for his research.

He then returned to the United Kingdom, where he served as a Principal Scientific Officer and air crash investigator for the Met Office.^[2] In 1987, two years before his retirement from the Met Office, Findlater investigated the haar, or coastal fog, that affected operations at RAF bases in Scotland. He received a second LG Groves Memorial Prize for this work.^[1]

Findlater retired from the Met Office in 1989, receiving the Imperial Service Medal for his distinguished service. He continued to offer expert advice on aviation policy in his later years, advocating for the conservation of aircraft such as the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod maritime patrol jet.^[2] He died in March 2013 at the age of 86.

Personal life

Findlater was survived by his wife, Mary, and daughter, Fiona.^[2] He was a proficient glider pilot, at one point working as a glider flight instructor at Lasham Airfield in Hampshire.^[1]

References