Geoffrey de Havilland and the Race to Australia

By far Geoffrey de Havilland's most important pre-war aircraft design concept was the DH88 Comet twin-engined racing monoplane, not only because this machine won the 1934 MacRobertson England to Australia air race but also because it was the inspiration for the Mosquito.

In 1934 the Lord Mayor of Melbourne proposed organizing an air race from England to Australia as part of the centenary celebrations marking the founding of the State of Victoria. Australian confectionery magnate Sir MacPherson Robertson agreed to offer a prize fund of $75,000 AUD providing that the race was named after his company. The race was organized by the Royal Aero Club and the course covered some 11,300 miles from RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk to the Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Victoria.

de Havilland was determined to win the race and set about designing a revolutionary new aircraft. The result was the de Havilland DH88 Comet racing plane. In just nine months on 9 October 1934 the new plane received its certificate of airworthiness.

A total of three machines of this type were manufactured and all three competed in the race. The first was Comet G-ACSR, which was built for Bernard Rubin and painted green. It was piloted by Owen Cathcart-Jones and Ken Waller. The second Comet was G-ACSP, which was named Black Magic and was painted black and gold. It was piloted by its owners Amy and Jim Mollison. The third was Comet G-ACSS, which was ordered by Mr AO Edwards, the managing director of the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane, London. It was painted a distinctive scarlet and was aptly named Grosvenor House. The pilots were Charles Scott, the former record holder for the route, and Tom Campbell-Black.

The race included five compulsory stops at Baghdad, Allahabad, Singapore, Darwin and Charleville. In addition to these the organizers had prepared a further twenty-two refuelling stops. By the time the race was due to start on 20 October 1934 an ambitious array of some sixty entrants had been cut to a mere twenty.

Despite their engine problems Scott and Campbell-Black developed a commanding lead and crossed the finish line at Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne, at 3.33 p.m. on 23 October 1934, with a total elapsed time of 71 hours, some 18 hours 47 minutes ahead of the DC-2. G-ACSS Grosvenor House qualified for both the fastest time and handicap prizes. Unfortunately, the race rules only allowed one prize per aircraft and so G-ACSS was only awarded the fastest time.

Owen Cathcart-Jones and Ken Waller in G-ACSR arrived safely, crossing the finish line in fourth place. Shortly after touching down they were loaded with newsreel footage of the race and took off again for RAF Mildenhall. Their return journey set a new record for a round-trip, completing the whole journey in a little over thirteen days.

G-ACSS was restored for the Festival of Great Britain in 1951 by de Havilland apprentices, where it was put on display hanging from the roof. The aircraft was given to the Shuttleworth Collection in 1965 and following an appeal for funds it was restored to full flying condition. It flew for the first time in forty-nine years on Sunday 17 May 1987.

Captain Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, OM, CBE, AFC, RDI, FRAeS was born on 27 July 1882, near High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, the second son of Alice and Reverend Charles de Havilland. His elder brother, Ivon was born three years earlier. The family moved to a parish in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, where de Havilland’s sisters Ione and Gladys and younger brother, Hereward were born.

The de Havilland Engine Company was established in 1944 and was based at Leavesden, near Watford in Hertfordshire. Originally the company was the engine division of the de Havilland Aircraft Company and was responsible for the de Havilland Gipsy engines. The company was merged into Bristol Siddeley Engines in 1961, which was sold to Rolls-Royce in 1966. The factory is now the location of Leavesden Film Studios, home to many major film productions, including the Harry Potter series of films.

For more information on the DH88 and other aviation heroes and landmarks take a look at Heroes and Landmarks of British Aviation by Richard and Peter Edwards.

The book is published by Pen and Sword Books (Aviation) and is currently available in hardback, priced at £19.99. The ISBN reference number is 9781848846456. Click here to order your copy.

 

Remarkable War Hero Related to British Airways and Sherlock Holmes

The Second World War fighter ace Wing Commander Alan Geoffrey Page DSO, OBE, DFC and Bar is without doubt a remarkable man.

After being shot down during the Battle of Britain in 1940 he became the founding member of the infamous Guinea Pig Club, made up of severely burnt servicemen who benefited from pioneering reconstructive surgery during the Second World War.

He was also the nephew of Frederick Handley Page, the aviation pioneer whose company Handley Page Transport established a scheduled passenger service from Radlett Aerodrome to Paris in 1919. The company merged with four others in 1929 to establish Imperial Airways, which subsequently evolved into today's British Airways.

In 1946, Page married Pauline Bruce, the daughter of the British actor Nigel Bruce, who co-starred with Basil Rathbone in numerous Sherlock Holmes films as well as the classic 1938 film Dawn Patrol with Errol Flynn and David Niven. The Hollywood legend, actor C. Aubrey Smith, was Page’s best man at the wedding.

During 1940 Page was posted to 56 Squadron of the RAF as a Hurricane pilot. He was shot down during the Battle of Britain on 12 August 1940, while attacking a formation of Dornier Do 17 bombers.

During the attack the fuel tank in front of Page was hit and it sprayed burning aircraft fuel into the cockpit. He received horrific burns to most of his front side, in particular his hands and face. Despite his appalling injuries he managed to bale out and was later picked up from the English Channel.

He received treatment at the Burns Unit at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, West Sussex, from the noted plastic surgeon Sir Archibald McIndoe. It was during his recuperation in hospital that Page established the Guinea Pig Club, with other badly burnt servicemen. Sir Archibald was elected the club’s life president, while Page was the first to take the role of chairman.

Despite his injuries, and fifteen operations, Page was determined to return to active service. Astonishingly, by 1942 he had regained full operational status with the RAF.

On 29 June 1943 Page, along with Wing Commander James MacLachlan, who had lost an arm two years earlier, brought down six enemy aircraft in just ten minutes, while flying south of Paris. Sadly, MacLachlan was killed in action the following month.

 

New book promotional video on YouTube

Take a look at the latest book promotional video for Heroes and Landmarks of British Aviation

With Nick Coffer, BBC Three Counties Radio

With presenter Nick Coffer at BBC Three Counties Radio, which broadcasts to Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire.

Nick kindly invited me to be the midday guest on his show on Friday 14 September to talk about Heroes and Landmarks of British Aviation.

You can listen to the programme for up to seven days from the date of broadcast by clicking this link http://t.co/qppny3dx and accessing the BBC's i-Player.

 

Books to Die For - Launch at Foyles, London

As the title page has it, Books to Die For is "The World's Greatest Mystery Writers on the World's Greatest Mystery Novels".

The book is a wonderfully in-depth look at some of the world's greatest mystery writing, which includes contributions that range from an appreciation by J Wallis Martin of Edgar Allan Poe's The Dupin Stories, published in 1841, to Mark Gimenez's 2008 book The Perk, contributed by Anne Perry.

This new anthology is edited by Irish crime writers John Connolly and Declan Burke. It presents more than 120 individual, personal essays written by authors from twenty countries.

The book goes beyond the incredibly important, yet inevitable, Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle titles to provide an indispensable guide to the genre, its writers and their extensive, diverse work.

This week's book launch at Foyles, London's leading bookstore, saw John Connolly, author of the internationally best-selling Charlie Parker novels, joined by (L-R) journalist and crime writer Ruth Dudley Edwards, Laura Wilson, award-winning author of A Willing Victim, and crime reviewer for the Guardian; Martyn Waites, who writes as Tania Carver, Natasha Cooper author of Vengeance in Mind, shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger and Meg Gardiner author of The Liar's Lullaby.

John Connolly has recently released in the UK The Wrath of Angels, the eleventh in his series of Charlie Parker novels, which are set against the wonderfully evocative landscape of Maine in the United States of America. The title will be released in the USA in January 2013.

John's website describes summarises the story as:

"In the depths of the Maine woods, the wreckage of a plane is discovered. There are no bodies, and no such plane has ever been reported missing, but men both good and evil have been seeking it for a long, long time. What the wreckage conceals is more important than money. It is power: a list of names, a record of those who have struck a deal with the Devil..."

Recently I managed to pick up a near perfect first edition hardback of the first Charlie Parker novel, Every Dead Thing, which has now gone to the top of my reading list.

 

Britain's Flying Heroes Celebrated in New Book

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
31 August 2012

LONDON: This week Pen and Sword Books published Heroes and Landmarks of British Aviation by Sussex authors Richard and Peter Edwards. The book tells the dramatic stories of Britain’s aviation pioneers, the men and women who often risked everything to be the first into the skies, to fly the furthest, the highest and the fastest.

The book, which was written by Richard Edwards, uses some of Peter Edwards’ previously unpublished material and is published virtually twenty years to the day after Peter died in 1992. Richard said, “I’ve shared with my late father a lifelong passion for military history and it’s heart-warming to be able to share an author credit with him.”

The book celebrates the people, aircraft and achievements of Britain’s aviation history, from humble airship developments to the demise of Concorde and supersonic passenger flights. Many famous names and aircraft are documented, including Amy Johnson and her around-the-world-flight, Geoffrey de Havilland and the Mosquito, RJ Mitchell and the Spitfire, Frederick Handley Page and the birth of Imperial Airways and Frank Whittle, the inventor of the jet engine.

This year sees many notable aviation anniversaries, including the centenary of the creation of the Sopwith Aviation Company in 1912, the first operational sortie of the Avro Lancaster in 1942 and the introduction of the de Havilland Comet in 1952, the world’s first jet airliner, all of which are chronicled in detail in Heroes and Landmarks of British Aviation.

The book is published in hardback by Pen and Sword Books, September 2012, retail price £25.00, ISBN 9781848846456.

About the Authors

Richard Edwards lives in Horsham, West Sussex and has worked in the media for many years. He has produced a wide range of radio documentaries and features and has contributed to numerous newspapers and magazines.

Peter Edwards wrote The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Imperial Naval Air Service (Pen and Sword Books, 2010) in the late 1980s, but passed away before he was able to see it in print. Richard published the book posthumously in November 2010. Peter was born in London and moved to Worthing, West Sussex with his family in the 1980s. He served in the RAF from 1945 before becoming a school teacher. He died in 1992 at the age of 63.

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For more information:

Contact either Laura Lawton, 01226 734267, publicity@pen-and-sword.co.uk or Richard Edwards at richardedwards.info.