COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

CHAPTER NINE A KIND OF APPRENTICESHIP
taunting me, and I allowed my anger to show 'No Thaundeth,
thertainly not, you're here to fly hith Majethy's aeroplaneth, not to
take advantage of thermalth.' It certainly shut him up! Ha... Ha... Ha..."
Once Sandy was caught in the air when a sudden squall swept down
on the site, blotting everything out in mist and rain. When the cloud
finally lifted there he was, in the club Olympia, sitting on the bungy
point. He looked up from under his beaver hat, with its RAF cap
badge, and stroked his flowing moustache:
"Did you thee my blind landing?" he asked with an angelic smile.
Pride of place amongst our visitors that year were Philip Wills and
Kit Nicholson with their new Slingsby Gull IVs. They had come up to
the Mynd to join Charles Wingfield, the club's top soaring pilot, for
a practice weekend shortly before the three of them, and Donald
Greig, were due to leave for the Championships in Switzerland. It was
a tragic event for the British team - Greig and Nicholson were killed
in separate accidents - and Alpine soaring became a non starter at
World Championships level for almost 40 years.
Later, when the news came through about Kit's fatal accident, it
seemed such a dreadful waste. A brilliant architect at the height of his
powers. His prewar clubhouse and hanger at Dunstable - simple,
functional, and still pleasing to the eye after more than half a century
- remains evidence enough of that. And the man himself. Charming
and modest. Lost to us all on a mist shrouded mountain top.
Philip came back from the double tragedy and wrote a moving
almost lyrical story about the death of his friends. He wrote something
else too, which was totally different, about those same Championships.
A word painting full of the wonders of race flying through the Alps
on a superb summer's day. You knew instinctively that both came
from the heart and, whether the writer realised it or not, that each
gained immeasurably from the other.
The fact is that Philip could write quite beautifully about his
experiences in the air - and it is through his writings that I have tried
to understand him better. Yet he remains an enigma - even though he
did so much for the gliding movement - leading from the front by
competitive example - and in the political arena too, battling single
mindedly for his sport. He had risen high in the ranks of the wartime
ATA 1 and had served for a short time on the board of British
European Airways. As Chairman of the BGA 2 Council and its inner
management committee, subject to re-election but with no limit to his
tenure of office, he held all the levers of power.
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