A flight fit for a King
QUESTION Who was the first member of the British Royal Family to travel by plane?
THE connection between flying and the Royal Family goes back almost to the dawn of aviation. In 1909, on a visit to Paris, King Edward VII met the Wright brothers and watched them demonstrate the Wright Flyer aeroplane.
The first Royal family member to fly was Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1917. He was taken up in a Royal Aircraft Factory RE8, a British World War I biplane reconnaissance and bomber aircraft.
He flew again, with Major William Barker VC, in Italy during 1918. Barker had flown with one arm in a sling, and when King George V heard of this, he prohibited his son from flying.
Prince Albert (later George VI) transferred to the RAF in 1919 and became the first Royal to gain his RAF wings after a course flying Avro 504s.
The Prince of Wales resumed his flying in the Twenties and bought a de Havilland Gipsy Moth G-AALG in 1929. He had this finished in the red and blue of the Brigade of Guards, which has been the colour scheme of various royal aircraft ever since.
Edward Hedley ‘Mouse’ Fielden, a serving flight lieutenant, became his personal pilot and looked after the Prince’s aircraft. Over the next few years the Prince bought a number of light aircraft, including a Rapide G-ADDD. In 1936 this was designated the one and only aircraft of The King’s Flight, the world’s first head of state aircraft unit.
When King George V died in 1936, the Prince became Edward VIII. To attend the Accession Council in London the next day, Mouse Fielden flew him to Hendon from Bircham Newton in Norfolk, and this was the first time a British monarch had taken to the air.
Poet John Betjeman captured this ‘final putting to death of the Victorian age’ in the Death Of King George V: ‘Old men who never cheated, never doubted, / Communicated monthly, sit and stare / At the new suburb stretched beyond the runway / Where a young man lands hatless from the air.’ His hatless arrival was seen as a shocking departure from his father’s rigorous standards. Jonathan Cummings, Stowe, Bucks.
QUESTION Did U.S Presidential Green Party candidate Jill Stein get her recount?
JILL STEIN’S attempts to recount the election results in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania ended last December. She only secured a complete recount in Wisconsin. Michigan never finished its recount, and in Pennsylvania a federal judge denied Stein’s request for a recount and an investigation of vote tampering.
Stein’s greatest service appears to have been to validate the Wisconsin results and thus demonstrate voting irregularities did not tip the election in Donald Trump’s favour. Wisconsin completed a ten-day recount, resulting in an increase in Trump’s lead over Hillary Clinton by 131 votes, from 22,617 to 22,748 votes.
J. B. Lamb, Worcester.
QUESTION What is the origin of the surname Halfpenny, such as that of the Welsh rugby player Leigh Halfpenny?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, the book Irish Families, Their Names, Arms And Origins by Dr Edward MacLysaght offers another origin for Halfpenny.
He places it in a list of Gaelic Irish surnames which have an English appearance but are rarely found in indigenous Britain.
In another of his books, More Irish Families, under the family name ‘(O) Halpin, Halpeny’, he states ‘as long ago as 1602 Halpeny was alternatively written Halfpenny in English’.
He says the sept (family branch) originated in Co Monaghan, ‘being called O h Ailpin in Irish, an older form of which was O h Ailpene, whence came the pronunciation “halfpenny”. Halpin is usually found in Limerick and Clare.’
A distinction between Halpin and Halpenny existed since the Anglicisation of Irish surnames in the 16th century. This was also when it was decreed that ‘O’ and ‘Mac’ should not be used to precede surnames.