It’ll never take off
As we mark 110 years since the very first pilot’s licence was issued, ushering in a brand new aeronautical age, MARION McMULLEN focuses on memorable aviators
YOU know the old saying about swine and flying? Well, Colonel John Theodore Cuthbert Moore-Brabazon was not telling porkies when he informed everyone he was taking to the air with a pig in 1911.
The hog took its seat in a basket emblazoned with a sign declaring “I’m the first pig to fly”. The pioneering Moore-Brabazon won a £1,000 prize for being the first pilot to fly a one-mile circular flight.
The Colonel, who later became Lord Brabazon of Tara, notched up many other flight firsts. He was the first resident Englishman to complete a solo plane flight in England when he flew in a Voisin biplane fitted with an eight-cylinder engine at Leysdown, Isle of Sheppey, in 1909. He reached heights of 450ft, 600ft and 1,500ft and the future statesman, who served as Minister of Transport and Minister of
Aircraft Production during the Second World War, was also issued with the very first pilot’s licence by the
Royal Aero Club on March, 8, 1910. He even drove a Jaguar in the 1950s which bore the personalised number plate FLY 1.
The high-flyer continued to be closely involved with aviation until his death in 1964 at the age of 80. He was involved in the production of the Bristol Brabazon in the 1940s, then the world’s largest aeroplane.
It was designed to bring luxury to transatlantic routes offering passengers a cinema, cocktail bar and lounge and sleeper berths. The wingspan measured a massive 230 ft, but the plane failed to make it into production.
When it came to thinking big, billionaire American businessman and Hollywood film mogul Howard Hughes was of a like mind. He broke several world air speed records in the 1930s and designed, built and flew his own aircraft.
His wooden-structured plane Hercules – which acquired the nickname the Spruce Goose – made its appearance in 1947 and was designed to carry up to 750 people. Hughes flew the 219 ft flying boat on its first and only flight, managing a distance of one mile.
Hughes said of the project. “It is the largest aircraft ever built. It is over five stories tall with a wingspan longer than a football field. That’s more than a city block.”
The skies also opened up for women with the birth of flight. The Duchess of Bedford became known as The Flying Duchess in the 1920s after taking up aviation at the age of 60.
She took part in many recordbreaking flights and flew in a monoplane initially called Princess Xenia. The adventurous aristocrat sadly perished at the age of 71 when she set off on a solo flight from Woburn Abbey and was never seen again. Parts of the plane later washed up on the coast, but her body was never recovered.
American flyer Harriet Quimby was the first woman to gain a pilot’s licence and the first to fly across the English Channel solo. However, her achievement was pushed off the front pages of the newspapers in 1912 by details of the sinking of Titanic. Celebrities are not immune to the lure of the skies. Only Fools And Horses star Sir David Jason qualified as a helicopter pilot 15 years ago and once said: “I always wanted to fly. When I was in theatre, I used to go on Dunstable Downs on my day off to watch the gliders, to get away from it all.”
Electro-pop singer Gary Numan was a member of the Air Training Corps as a teenager and obtained his private pilot’s licence in 1980, while TV presenter Carol Vorderman got her wings in 2013 and has hopes of flying solo around the world.
Grease and Saturday Night Fever star John Travolta is an experienced pilot and holds 11 jet licences. He ferried urgently needed supplies to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and to Haiti following the 2010 earthquake.
Harrison Ford is a private pilot and first began flight training in the 1960s. The Star Wars and Indiana Jones actor has helped out with emergency helicopter flights and rescued one hiker who became dehydrated on a trek.
He survived a crash himself in 2015 when a vintage Second World War plane he was piloting crash landed on a Californian golf course.
“Bikes and planes aren’t about going fast or having fun,” the 77-year-old actor once said: “They’re toys ... but serious ones.”