WWII – Heated cockpits

My mother’s sister, now 80+, remembers that her father, Frederick Fairbrother, an electrical engineer, was asked during WWII (possibly autumn 1941, if my mother’s sister’s recollection is correct) to join a team of engineers and designers at Welwyn Garden City, working to overcome the problem of low temperatures at high altitude in fighter aeroplane cockpits in.

As a contribution to my family history I would like to find out a little more about this work. Can anybody advise me whether there is any archive documentation on this kind of thing and if so where I might expect to find that documentation?