UP AND AWAY: DARING PRINCE SOARS INTO HISTORY BOOKS
PRiNCe PHiLiP went gliding for the first time yesterday — on the ‘best day for soaring for 20 years’.
so good, that his sailplane had to be brought down in a hurry, before it was blown out of reach of the landing field.
He ended his maiden glider trip with a ‘complaint’. Taking off his dark glasses, he said, regretfully: ‘i wish we could have gone 1,000 ft higher at least.’
The Prince had been brought to Bristol Gliding Club’s headquarters on the edge of the Cotswold hills by Peter scott — painter, birdwatcher, TV celebrity and now glider enthusiast.
Turning to scott, who had arranged the flight, the Prince added: ‘Thanks, it was great fun. seemed to last for ever.’
in fact, the flying Prince was gliding for just eight minutes. For five of those minutes he was at the controls, as scott’s new £2,000 two-seater slingsby T.42 bucked and Twisted 2,000 ft about the River severn. Prince Philip, in sports jacket and dark slacks, was strapped in the glider’s nose-seat.
Behind him sat Bristol Gliding Club’s most seasoned flyer, 31-year-old touslehaired Peter Collier.
i stood with Peter scott and Douglas Bader as they were winched off. exclaimed Bader as the glider shot upwards: ‘it’s a terrific crosswind.’ it certainly was. They went skywards so quickly that the variometer, used to measure altitude, failed to work.
Then the glider caught a thermal current and soared on at 20 ft a second to 2,000 ft. The Prince took over the stick.
Later, Mr Collier said he ‘had to cut the flight short because we were soaring so well’.
‘we could have gone an immense distance — perhaps even to scotland.’
Thursday, may 16, 1957