Aviator

  1916, when a Sub-Lieut in the RNVR

born in Durban, S Africa; in charge of the High Speed Flight in 1927; later Air Marshall Sir Leonard, C-in-C Coastal Command 1945; died 1961

Full story here: Leonard Slatter - Wikipedia

Here is a contemporary video of his flight to South Africa in 1929, (which includes footage of Adelaide Cleaver and Donald Drew's flight (see Cleaver, Adelaide Franklin)  and that of Owen and Muir's accident in their Vickers Vellox on their way to Australia - see England-Australia Flights) 

If your connection is too slow to stream it without stuttering, you can download it here (it's 265 Mb):

  Download VTS_01_1

Photo: 1914, aged 17

b. 22 Feb 1897 in Boston, USA

© The Royal Aero Club [0738-0021]

 1928, aged 39

born Burton-on-Trent; later an Air Commodore

  1936, aged 23

  2000, aged 86

Made several flights through Africa in record-breaking attempts, but his "pluck... exceeded his luck".

For example; in 1932, aged 19, he took off from Cape Town in a DH Moth, to try to break the record to London. He missed breaking the record by a few days, having been delayed by a 'run-in' with some fierce members of the Toureg tribe in the Sahara. He got out a cup of water and a packet of liver salts and drank the foaming liquid; such a man, they thought, must have supernatural powers, so they let him go.

Reaching London eventually, he then swapped the Moth for a Comper Swift and tried to fly back, but suffered engine failure; this time he had to walk 80 km through the Sahara. You'd think that would be it, but no: he found another aeroplane and continued south, only to run out of fuel just short of Cape Town.

In all, he made 21 forced landings during his flying career, all without serious injury. He wrote a book of his experiences, called 'Open Cockpit over Africa'.

In 1936, "Victor Smith was the most enthusiastic person at Portsmouth, and was obviously deeply in love with his Sparrowhawk". Aaaah.

Became a flying instructor after the race, then in WWII flew Beaufighters in Yugoslavia.

  1916, when a Lieutenant in the 8th South Staffordshire Regiment, aged 21

b. 3 Nov 1895, Petitcodiac NB, Canada

British Army 1914-16; RAF 1916-1945; WWI ace (27 victories)

Founding Member of the British Parachute Association in 1926

Author of 'Parachutes' (RAeS), Oct 1927

2nd place (Moth G-EBOU, 95½ mph) in Wakefield Light Aeroplane Handicap (£15) & 2nd place (Moth G-EBOU, 95 mph) in President's Cup Race (£15), Hants Air Pageant, Avro Aerodrome, Hamble, 28 May 1928

Station Commander at Biggin Hill in WWII

Later emigrated to Kenya

d. 12 Feb 1961 - London

Research: thanks to Steve Brew

b. Mar 1902

Imperial Airways from 1928

Address in 1932: 'Braeside', The Chase, Stafford Rd, Wallington, Surrey

Awarded Master Pilot's Certificate in 1934

  1936

"'Sparks', (or 'Sparkie'), the chief flying instructor of the London Aero Club from 1925. "One of the best-known flying instructors in England".

In 1927, "The leading spirit in the daily routine of flying is the Chief Instructor, Captain Sparks. He has an incurable and infectious optimism which immediately calms and assures the most diffident of pupils. He is possessed with an almost whirlwind energy, and this, together with his fluent and arresting conversation, makes all who come in contact with him unusually alert and active. It is impossible to have the slightest lack of confidence in him as an instructor or imagine him in any difficulty in the air. He is, perhaps, an unconventional pilot instructor, for so many of them are very taciturn and almost dour, due, no doubt, to the long strain of instructional flying.

He is a pilot of long experience, having been flying since December, 1915, when he joined the RFC. After the war he took up joy-ride flying, and he continued with that to the time he joined the London Club in 1925; flying for the Welsh Aviation Co., the Berkshire Aviation Co and also forming a company himself. He has taken up 57,000 people in his varied career."

His pupils included Lady Bailey, Winifred Spooner, Lady Heath, Dorothy Brewster Fletcher and Sicele O'Brien.

He emigrated to Canada and "held Canadian Commercial Pilot's Certificate #269. He flew for McCall Aero Corp, Calgary AB and London Flying Club, London Ontario.

His fatal accident on 16th March 1934 was as a result of taking-off in Curtiss-Reid Rambler I CF-AUO with the starboard upper wing not locked, it folded after take-off. The Rambler wings could be folded for storage."

Source: Canadian Aviation Historical Society publications THE FIRST 500 CANADIAN CIVIL PILOTS (Molson) and CANADIAN CIVIL AIRCRAFT REGISTER (Ellis).

His younger son, Wing Commander Bryan Sparks DSO, was killed in WWII, on August 11 1945.

  RAeC 9126

The 'tall and charming blonde friend' of Pauline Gower.

b. 31 July 1908 in Hadley Wood, Middlesex.

"Miss Spicer, however, holds a very high engineering diploma - the difficult 'B' licence for engines. A man holding this licence would have many excellent jobs at his command, but I doubt very much whether Miss Spicer will find her licence of any practical use."

Amy Mollison, writing in 1934

Amy was being a little too pessimistic; in 1936, Dorothy was appointed Chief Engineer to the 'British Empire Air Displays', which toured the country with 12 light aeroplanes.

She married Richard Courtney Pearse in April 1938 and they had a daughter, Patricia, in November 1939. Served at RAE Farnborough during WWII, eventually being promoted to Wing Commander.

d. 23 December 1946 in the crash of a London-Buenos Aires flight near Rio de Janeiro. Her husband was also killed.

Pauline Gower (only three months before her own death) wrote that "Dorothy is a great loss to civil aviation but even more so to her many friends".

 Miss Winifred Evelyn Spooner

'Bad luck Wimpey' was one of the best-known women aviators of the time, and the one generally regarded as the best. She was awarded the International League of Aviation's Trophy for women aviators in 1929, and in 1930 Capt C D Barnard described her as 'the finest woman pilot in the world' (He went on to say that Lady Bailey was regarded as the 'second finest airwoman in the world', and we don't know what she thought about that...)

Learnt to fly in 1926 and took it 'more seriously than most' - in her first race in April 1928, she won the Suffolk Handicap (21 miles at 78mph), ahead of Neville Stack and four other male rivals; she won the 'heavy' category in the Round Europe Contest for Touring Aircraft in 1930 - covering 4,700 miles at 102mph, ("a very fine performance indeed", said The Times) and also competed in the Ladies event at Reading (May, 1931) -  the other competitors were Amy Johnson, Grace Aitken, Pauline Gower, Dorothy Spicer, Susan Slade, Gabrielle Burr, Christina Young, and Fidelia Crossley - a historic gathering indeed.

Photo here

She soon took her 'B' (Commercial) Licence, and at one stage was the only professional woman pilot in the country.

In September 1927 her first flight abroad was to Venice to support the British Team in the Schneider Cup in Venice. Alan Butler (with Peter Hoare as passenger), and Hubert Broad, who took Maia Carberry, also went and, in case you were wondering, "Mrs. Carberry wore a pale blue leather flying helmet to match the colour of her Moth aeroplane."

She soon became regarded as 'one of the few women who matter in the air world'; in March 1928, when King Amanullah of Afghanistan was on a state visit to London, he inspected "the latest types of Imperial Airways passenger machines and a number of small Moth machines in private ownership. He carried on, through an interpreter, an animated conversation with Miss Winifred Brown, of Manchester, and Miss Spooner, of London, both of whom own and fly small two-seater machines."

In the 'Woman's World' section of the Inverness Courier of April 1928, this description of Winifred appeared: "[she] has not flown for very long, for it was only about three years ago that I knew her in Cologne, when she then drove, instead of an aeroplane, a two-seater car, through the crowded streets of Cologne, at a speed which most people would have been terrified to attempt. She was always, however, extremely cool and composed, and though her passengers were sometimes nervous she never seemed so. She was always very sporting, and played an excellent game of tennis. A good-looking, typically English girl, she made many friends among the British army in Cologne when doing voluntary work with the Y.M.C.A. there. [Winifred was with the 'Army of Occupation' in Germany at the time]"

She did have what she later described as her 'greatest air thrill' on Marlborough Common in May 1929; "she had been taking passengers up all day when, after one flight, she said she was not quite satisfied with the controls, and refused to take the next man until she had attended to the aeroplane. After doing so she started the propeller, and as she walked away from it the machine suddenly moved forward. Pluckily, Miss Spooner jumped and caught hold of the wing, her idea being to clamber into the cockpit and stop the engine. The machine quickly gathered speed, and she was dragged 40 or 50 yards [she later reckoned it was about 30 yards], when to the horror of the crowd the plane turned and buried its nose in the ground, hurling Miss Spooner some distance. She was unconscious. Doctors were sent for and she was taken to hospital. 'We thought she must have been killed,' an eye-witness told our representative."

She was taken to Savernake Hospital suffering from a sprained wrist, cuts, and slight concussion.

She does seem to have had quite a few run-ins with the local Constabulary; firstly in January 1929 for failing to keep her Alsatian dog under proper control (it had attacked another dog which "had no chance"), then in August 1929 for failing to produce a car driving licence (she said she had forgotten about it and flew to France the following day); then in 1931, she was fined £35 for leaving her motor car unattended and for failing to have lights on it. When she was told that she would be reported, she said: "I am used to it." A police-superintendent said there were no previous convictions recorded against her, as far as Reading was concerned. The Chairman then asked 'And none in the air? She replied 'There are no policemen in the air. That is why I like it.'"

I'm certainly sorry I missed her talk, given in April 1928 at Harrods in Brompton Road, on "Flying as a New Delight for Womankind".  Later, in the early thirties, she wrote for "Good Housekeeping" on, of course, "Flying for Women", alongside such luminaries as John Galsworthy, Kate O'Brien, and Hugh Walpole.

September 1929 saw her accompanying NFS's chairman Freddie Guest (q.v.) to Nairobi, to inaugurate an air taxi service and give flying lessons. They took 3 aeroplanes with them, and flew them back (via South Africa) in February 1930.

She and E C T 'Cecil' Edwards tried to fly a Desoutter to Cape Town and back in December 1930, but this expedition ended up in a forced landing in the sea off southern Italy; Cecil and Winifred had to swim a couple of miles to shore.

She regularly competed in the King's Cup - coming 3rd in 1928 - and was a guest at Amelia Earhart's reception at the Royal Aero Club in May 1932.

She was personal pilot to Leicestershire M.P. Lyndsey Everard from February 1931 - they are seen here with Nigel Norman.

And then, suddenly, on 13 January 1933, she was dead - not in an air crash, but as a result of a cold which rapidly worsened into pneumonia. Only few days before, in conversation with a friend, she had mentioned that her mother had died from influenza in 1918. "The deaths of both mother and daughter occurred with the same suddenness."

They are buried together in Hinton Parva: see http://www.earlyaviators.com/espoone5.htm

She left £1,357 0s 8d, and her brother, Capt. Frank Vivian Spooner, Indian Army (retd) was appointed administrator. She hadn't got round to writing a will.

There is a scholarship in her memory at Sherborne School for Girls.

"In the passing of Winifred Spooner the world has lost a great woman... she stood out as a woman of indomitable courage".
 

Winifred owned:

a 1926 DH.60 Moth (G-EBOT),

a 1928 DH.60G Gipsy Moth (G-AAAL, which she sold to Elise Battye);

a 1930 Desoutter IID (G-ABCU - this is the aeroplane she and E.C.T. Edwards ditched in the sea off Naples in December 1930), and later

a 1932 Breda 33 (G-ABXK), which was sold in Italy just 3 months before her death.

Winifred's brother Tony was chief flying instructor at the Montreal Flying Club in 1931. He was killed in March 1935 in Egypt when piloting a D.H. 84 Dragon, SU-ABI belonging to Misr Airwork, when it was caught up in a sandstorm and both engines failed.

  1934, aged 38

RAeC [0312-0087]

 b. 1 April 1896; universally known as 'Stacko'

RFC in WWI, then became a familiar figure in aviation circles during the 1920s - in 1926 he and Bernard Leete made the first flight from England to India in two DH. Moths, one of several record-breaking flights.

He and J R Chaplin tried to fly to Australia and back in 1931, but had to turn back at Constantinople, Turkey, with carburettor trouble; later in the year the same pair attempted a flight to India and back, but again turned back with mechanical problems.

He was appointed 'Air Superintendent' of Iraq Airwork Ltd in 1933, and flew their first machine (a Spartan Cruiser) there via Cairo in 1933. Shortly afterwards, he flew 2 doctors and a nurse out to India, to perform an urgent operation on a Nepalese princess.

Late 1933 found him testing the Airspeed Courier - which is probably where he met Sydney Turner - and was widely expected to fly it in the MacRobertson Race. A month before the race, he broke (his own) London-Copenhagen record in a Miles Hawk, which is perhaps why he was too busy to inspect the Viceroy properly....

He turned up for the MacRobertson Race looking very tired and drawn - Alan Goodfellow described him as looking 'over-trained, physically', and Neville Shute Norway said he was "an exhausted and a worried man".

Shortly after the race, he was appointed Air Superintendent and Manager of Hillman's Airways; after that became part of British Airways he spent time in Turkey, advising them on civil aviation.

He was killed when run over by a lorry in Karachi, India on  22^nd February 1949, aged 52. At first, the Karachi Police said he had committed suicide but, while agreeing that he was 'on the verge of a nervous breakdown', the inquiry decided that the cause of death was actually an aneurism of the aorta, and he would have died anyway.

Neville was "always very good company. He was never happier than when singing a song and strumming on his banjo."

 1929, aged 30

 from Worthing, Sussex. A man "so quiet and withdrawn that some thought he was dim". He was certainly a big, humorous man who was "mentally slow to grasp a technical point" but he had immense tenacity and would keep working away at it until he understood it. He was  hopeless with money, and relied on his wife to look after it for him.

Schneider Pilot in 1929 and 1931; first man in the world to exceed 400mph, in 1931.

He was a test pilot at Farnborough in 1933, and flew the Airspeed Courier on its first test flights - Airspeed's Neville Shute Norway said that "in the air he was masterly, of course". He certainly gave George the credit for saving the aeroplane on one occasion when the engine cut out.

Killed in WWII: 27th September 1942 when a Wing Commander (pilot), 89 Sqn RAF; buried Ismailia, Egypt

Reading Aero Club Member; a solicitor

d. 1972

 1938

A Schneider Trophy pilot, in 1928.

Fairey's chief test pilot from 1936; 'His real love is motor racing' (well, thanks very much). bailed out from the same aircraft twice in one day.

Killed in WWII:  26 June 1942 in a Fairey Firefly; buried Keddington, Lincs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Staniland

 ' 1915, when a 2nd Lieutenant, RAC, aged 25

 September 1937, aged 47

 A retired RAF officer'.

d. 28 Jun 1938 in the Miles M.11C (G-AEYI) which crashed at Harefield, Berkshire.

photo: 1916, when a 2nd Lieutenant in the RFC, aged 23

  1934

  1912

 Born 31^st July 1882, in Gobur, Victoria, Australia, eldest of seven children.

Went to Edinburgh to study medicine; a very early aviator (RAeC Certificate No 321, in 1912); pre-WWI racer in England as 'Dr Edmund'. Mentioned in dispatches three times during WWI, promoted eventually to Major, he was awarded the DFC and later the DSO.

Post-WWI,  RAF Squadron Leader in the Middle East:

"Cobham to go on

Successor to Shot Airman Chosen

 Airmen have been searching for two days to trace the Arab sniper who shot Mr. A. B. Elliot, the air mechanic, who was accompanying Mr. Alan Cobharn on his flight to Australia and back.

Accompanied by Squadron-Leader David E. Stodart, D.S.0., of the Shaibah Iraq Bombing Squadron, Mr. Cobham flew back to Nasiryah yesterday.

Mr. Cobham is to continue his flight. The Havilland Aircraft Company is sending Mr. Moore, of the Armstrong Siddeley firm, to take the place of Mr. Elliot" - Daily Herald - Friday 09 July 1926

...then back to Middlesex Hospital as a physician in the dermatology department.

Oldest and 'most casual' competitor in the MacRobertson Race, but the first Australian to reach Melbourne. He and Kenneth should have won one of the handicap prizes - possibly even the First Prize - but mistakes in the handicapping system robbed them of the glory they deserved, not to mention the cash.

After the Race, he stayed on in Australia for a while, mostly working as a flying instructor, then finally came back to England, where he died 26^th February 1938 in Brighton, aged 55:

"LONDON. February 28

p.s. the £2,000 for the Handicap Race prize would be worth about £400,000 today...might have been useful, considering that David's estate when he died was £157.