The story of Essex & Suffolk - Lakes Gliding Club

Chapter 1. Founding FatherIn the local paper, "Essex County Standard" of 5th August 1960,Tony Sutton describes Wing Commander Percy Hatfield as "Father of theGliding Club".Percy Hatfield had a extraordinary wartime flying career, as hismedals confirm. I choose only one illustrative incident in 1941 when he wasordered to 'Find the Bismark' in his Catalina flying boat. At midnight, hiscrew spotted a huge naval force, so he sought cloud cover and took theCatalina in for a closer identification. On breaking cover, he wasimmediately above Germany's most powerful battleship and was met by abarrage of multi-coloured tracer. He took violent evasive action that threwthe aircraft's fitter out of the rest bunk, which was just as well, as bullet holesappeared along the full length of the bunk. Hatfield got clear to relayconfirmation of the sighting from a shadowing position and waited until theRoyal Navy arrived to commence its final epic duel. The Bismark had beensunk by the time Percy alighted back in Scotland after flying 27 hours, anendurance record to this day for a Catalina and crew. He flew anti-submarinepatrols, VIP flights to Russia, survived 240 operational sorties, test flew!6types of flying boats and floatplane Spitfires. Throughout his 20 years in theRAF he flew over 5000 hours taking every opportunity to fly almost everytype of flying boat in addition to fighters and the early jets.