Derek Piggott
Record-breaking gliding instructor and stunt pilot who made Britain’s first human-powered flight
DEREK PIGGOTT, who has died aged 96, was recognised worldwide as an outstanding gliding instructor who established a number of altitude records. He also made numerous film appearances as a stunt pilot.
In 1955, few glider pilots had flown above 20,000ft. Piggott had flown a basic, open-cockpit two-seat glider in 1953, when his passenger was an Air Training Corps cadet, to a great height in a large cumulus cloud. Flying without oxygen and frozen stiff, Piggott abandoned the climb when he came out of the cloud at 17,000ft over Derbyshire.
Two years later, on July 14 1955, thunderstorms were forecast over the gliding site at Lasham in Hampshire where Piggott was the chief flying instructor. He took off in a single-seat Skylark glider hoping to reach 16,000ft, which would qualify him for the International Diamond Certificate.
After releasing from a tug aircraft, he entered a large thundercloud and climbed rapidly in his plywood glider, which soon became covered in ice. To prevent the glider’s controls freezing up, he had to make frequent, harsh movements of the of the control column in the cockpit. Hail battered the glider, and he received a number of electric shocks, but the up-draughts took him higher.
Flying without oxygen, he decided to abandon the climb at 20,000ft, but by the time he was clear of the thundercloud, he had reached nearly 23,000ft to establish a new British record for a single-seat glider, one which stood for a number of years. Suffering from anoxia, Piggott recognised that he had also enjoyed some good fortune.
Alan Derek Piggott was born on December 27 1922 at Chadwell Heath, Essex. He attended Sutton County School and became a trainee scientific instrument maker. Flying soon became a lifelong passion, and during his teenage years he became a very active aero modeller.
He joined the RAF in 1942 and trained as a pilot in Canada. By the time he had completed a period as a flying instructor there was less demand for pilots and he volunteered to train on military gliders before a posting to Burma. The war against Japan ended before the glider force could be used and Piggott remained in India to train student pilots of the Indian Air Force.
After returning to England he became an instructor at the Central Flying School, where he achieved the highest rating as an A1 instructor. In 1953 he left the RAF to become chief flying instructor for the Lasham Gliding Society, a post he held until 1989. He had recently been awarded a Queen’s Commendation for Valuable Service in the Air.
Piggott became renowned as a gliding instructor and he was in constant demand to attend conventions and advise on gliding operations. His book Gliding: A Handbook on Soaring Flight (1958) is still in use in its eighth edition.
Piggott was also in great demand to fly experimental aircraft and to appear in films. In November 1961 he made the first British unaided take-off and human-powered flight in the Southampton University Man Powered Aircraft, designed and built by students. He made 40 flights in all, the longest being 650 yards, but it could not make the necessary figure-of-eight turns to win the prize on offer.
Piggott took time off from gliding duties to fly stunts in films. In The Blue Max, the story of the rivalry between two German pilots in the First World War, Piggott was the only pilot to agree to fly the Fokker Dr. 1 replica in the final sequence, where the two Germans challenge each other to fly under a low bridge.
He also flew vintage and replica aircraft in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Red Baron and Darling Lili, among others. For the film Villa Rides he deliberately crashed a Tiger Moth for a war scene.
Piggott’s passion for flying never ceased. He established innovative measures for the safe control of gliding, made a major contribution to the development of motor gliders and devised structured courses for gliding instructors.
He was the author of eight books including his autobiography Delta Papa: A Life of Flying (1977). He flew 177 different types of glider and more than 130 types of powered aircraft, and was still flying regularly into his nineties.
In 1987 he was appointed MBE for services to gliding and in 2007 received the Royal Aero Club Gold Medal. A year later he was awarded the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) Lilienthal Medal. He was elected an Honorary Companion of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
Derek Piggott married Myfanwy Joy Rowlands in 1949. They later separated and he is survived by their son and his long-term partner, Maria Boyd. A daughter predeceased him.