RECALLING THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF BLUE MAX PILOT AND HIS FERMOY VISIT

Derek Piggott was the pilot who performed the daring aerial stunts on the film ‘The Blue Max’, some of which was filmed in Fermoy in 1965. In one of the most spectacular scenes in the film he had to fly a tri-plane through a narrow span of Fermoy Viaduct over the river Blackwater. Derek enjoyed his time filming The Blue Max and struck up lifelong friendships with many of the Irish Air Corps pilots who also worked on the film.

Derek died on January 6th, 2019 at the age of 96. Only a few months before his death he had still been flying gliders. Flying was his life ever since he had joined the Royal Air Force in 1943. He flew Dakotas with No. 267 Squadron over the front lines in Burma; in 1947 he went to the RAF gliding school in Detling in Kent and in 1953 he became the chief flying instructor at Lasham Airfield where tests were being carried out on a 1910 Bristol Boxkite to be used in the film ‘Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines’. Derek became involved and ended up doing stunt piloting for the film which led to him being very much in demand for aerial films of the 1960s and also of the early 1970s. One of the most successful of these was ‘The Blue Max’.

It had long been Derek’s ambition to return to Fermoy to see the railway bridge he had flown under all those years ago, and ten years ago, and around fifteen years ago that ambition was realised when, thanks to the efforts of former Air Corps pilots, Paddy O’Meara and Peter McMahon, Derek Pigott returned to Fermoy. Accompanied by his partner, Maria Boyd, Derek was flown by helicopter pilot, P.J. Mansfield of the Mansfield Group, from

Dublin to the grounds of Rathealy House just outside Fermoy on the north side of the river Blackwater. There he was met by a group of Fermoy people, who walked through the fields with him to the viaduct.

It was an emotional return for Derek who, after the filming of ‘The Blue Max’, went on to be the most in-demand pilot for the many aerial films which were being made in Ireland in the 1960s and in the early 1970s. Among these were ‘Darling Lil’ and ‘Von Richthoven and Brown’. Standing under the viaduct, Derek told of how director, John Guillermin asked for a volunteer to step forward to fly a Fokker Dr I tri-plane under the viaduct in the climatic scene in ‘The Blue Max’. The only volunteer was Derek, who actually took the role of both German pilots, standing in for the star of the film, George Peppard and also for Jeremy Kemp. He ended up flying under the wide span of the viaduct fifteen times, and seventeen times under the narrower span.

Telling of how he accomplished this feat, Derek said that he had two scaffold poles, one in the river and one on the south bank, aligned to guide him and that when he flew under the narrow span, he had only two feet to spare on each side. John Guillermin had arranged for a flock of sheep to be placed near the Viaduct, so that they would scatter as the plane approached, in order to demonstrate that the stunt was real and that models were not being used. The sheep however, became so used to the planes, that in the finish they had to be scattered by a local farmer.

Nine fighter planes were featured in ‘The Blue Max’, they were exact duplicates of World War 1 aircraft flown by both the Germans and the Allies. The plane flown by Derek was an exact replica of the Fokker Dr. 1 Tri-Plane which was flown by the German air ace, Manfred Von Richthoven, nicknamed ‘The Red Baron’ in the First World War. Experts on aviation films reckon that ‘The Blue Max’ is one of the most realistic films ever made about aerial warfare, putting it on a par with the Oscar-winning film, ‘Wings’.

Derek Piggott set several gliding records, including one for flying a glider, solo, at 25,000 feet during a thunderstorm. He has written several books on aviation and he is the inventor of the Piggott-Hook, a system which is now a feature of many modem gliders. In 1987, he was appointed a member of the Order of the British Empire and in 2007 he was awarded The Royal Aero Club Medal, the highest award for aviation in the UK.

Derek was delighted with the reception he received in Fermoy. He had very fond memories of his stay in Cork during the shooting of ‘The Blue Max’ and he delighted those present with many stories about the scenes which were shot in Fermoy. One man who was happy to meet him was Fermoy native, Paudie McGrath who, as a very young schoolboy, took some time off his studies to see the scenes which were filmed at the Viaduct. Derek made a very big impression on everyone who met him with his wonderful warm personality and a man who made very light of his daring flying exploits in the film.

As the helicopter with Derek and Maria on board left Fermoy soon after noon on that Friday, the pilot made one last swoop over the viaduct.