I didn’t have the chance to know my Grandpa well, he died when I was a young teenager, and had been very ill well before that, however he was a remarkable man. Born 26th July 1896 he saw Bleriot in 1909 (not I believe on the actual cross channel flight but maybe at a show put on to publicise it?) and determined to learn to fly.
To this end he joined the Navy as a “boy” in 1911, and continued in the services until leaving the RAF as a Wing Commander in 1946. He was thus a “founder member” of the RFC (Naval Wing), the RNAS and the RAF and he was on active service for the whole of both World Wars. He was mentioned in dispatches on several occasions and was awarded the DSM in 1917 for rescuing a colleague from a burning aircraft during the East Africa campaign. He died on August 25th 1972.
In his own words as one of the notes he made is his copy of part 3 of H A Jones’ The War in the Air;
“I was one of a small detachment which took a captive balloon to Belgium – its object to spot for the Humber & Severn firing on advancing German Troops down the coast road – however we were shot down on the first day and were quickly embodied in infantry units during the retreat from Mons”
At the time he was sent to Belgium he was one of only 727 RNAS personnel and the balloon he was working with was one of only 2.
My mother has a number of documents, photographs and hand written annotations of the official histories which provide an outline of a remarkable service life.
My aim is to make them available here. If you can add anything please email me at webmaster @ fwilmshurst.org.uk.
A Henri Farman HF20, I cannot find a picture of the HF22, which was similar but had a slightly different and still grossly inadequate Gnome engine. The RNAS took two of these (in which my grandpa flew in addition to the Voisin’s that went there with him) and two fairly similar Caudrons to East Africa, you can see a Caudron in the RAF museum in Hendon in London.
These were soon replaced by Voisin 5s with 150HP engines, scarcely less obsolete and similarly armed with a single .303 machine gun but with the addition of a 330lb bomb load.
