Ray Creasey

While working full time at Vickers he studied for the Royal Aeronautical Society's Associate Fellowship Examinations, taking first place in all three subjects of Aerodynamics, Applied Mathematics, and Design (Aircraft) in 1942 at age 20.

In an account of Ray Creasey's contributions to the company written by Ron Dickson and Frank Roe, who are themselves also described as "founding fathers of BAE" in the BAE publication of that name,[2] they describe the importance of his ideas for wing design and his contribution to supersonic fighter planes: Even before Canberra first flew, Ray was seeking to design a supersonic aircraft.

His knowledge of compressibility effects, due to shock waves appearing in the flow, showed that there were no insuperable obstacles, so long as great care was taken at just below the speed of sound.

[3] These ideas led to the concept of the Lightning as a supersonic fighter plane: We believe that the initiative came from Ray Creasey to think that supersonic flight was feasible (...) the personal contributions of Ray Creasey to the concept of the Lightning, and the importance of this story to the emergence of Warton as a leading design group can not be overstated.

[4]A BAE Heritage Department booklet describes Ray Creasey's contribution to the aerodynamic design of the Lightning in some detail[5]

[8] An account by A T F Simmons of the early stages of design, and Ray Creasey's involvement, is included in the proceedings of the seminar held at Filton in April 1997 to consider the history and lessons of the TSR2 project, published by the Royal Air Force Historical Society.

[9] Frank Dickson, who later became Managing Director of BAE Military Aircraft Division, described Ray Creasey as "an aerodynamic genius".

Many of the patents issued in his name were classified at the time, for reasons of national security, and it is unclear whether all of them were eventually de-classified and/or publicly published, and therefore whether the list above is complete.