Capt Ernest Robert Bristow White

 

 

 

from Flight, August 1941: "Capt. White joined the R.A.F. in 1921 as Boy Mechanic and left the service in December, 1930, with the rank of Sergeant Pilot. He joined Imperial Airways the following year, and in 1933 he was seconded as pilot to the Iraq Petroleum Company, which at that time were laying a 1,200 mile long oil pipe line from Haifa, in Palestine, to Kirkuk, Iraq.

He was transferred to the European Division of Imperial Airways in 1935, and operated the London-Budapest route. It may be remembered that in 1936 Capt. White established a record by flying the 2,970 miles from London to Brindisi, via Marseilles, and back to London in 18 hours.

On the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937 he piloted pressmen from Alexandria to Penang, one of the longest charter flights on record. In the same year Capt. White represented Imperial Airways in Berlin at the international conference on ice formation, a subject on which he was an authority.

He was seconded to Atfero in the spring of this year and had flown something like one million miles. On the first Atlantic flight in 1940 he acted as navigator. 

He was amongst those killed when Liberator AM261 crashed into Goat Fell mountain on Isle of Arran after take-off from Heathfield Ayr on the 10 Aug 1941 (22 killed - 5 crew and 17 travelling as passengers)

 

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