Alastair Rennoldson Ross
Alastair Rennoldson Ross (c1909-1943)
1944 Obituary [1]
Captain ALASTAIR RENNOLDSON ROSS. R.E.M.E., was educated at Rugby School and King's College, Durham University, where he graduated B.Sc., with first-class honours in marine engineering, having served his apprenticeship with Messrs. Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson, by whom he was awarded a works scholarship. After completing his five years' apprenticeship in 1933 with the firm at Walker-on-Tyne, he continued there as draughtsman for a brief period. He then joined the Bristol Aeroplane Company and for six months was employed as an engine tester and designer.
During the next three years he was in the drawing office of the engine department and was associated with the design of an improved centrifugal supercharger for the Pegasus engine. In 1938 he obtained a regular army commission in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, obtaining an Honours Award in the ordnance mechanical engineers course. After attending courses at the Military College of Science he proceeded in the following year to France in charge of a light aid detachment with machine gun battalion. He served in France from September 1939 until the evacuation of Dunkirk. He was posted to the Middle East in November 1940.
Captain Ross, whose death occurred in his thirty-fourth year in September 1943 as the result of an accident, while on active service in Sicily, was elected an Associate Member of the Institution in 1942.