When I joined the Tiger Club in the ‘60s the Duke
and his R.A.F.
equerry, John Severne, were already members. The Club, with some
justification, considered itself to be the UK’s premier sporting flying
club. It not only promoted competitive aerobatics, air racing, long
distance flying including the annual ‘Dawn-to-Dusk’ competition, but
mounted its own Air Shows which, if you were selected for one of the
teams, would subsidise the cost of some of the flying involved;
essential for an impecunious Hawker employee!
Having earned his RAF ‘wings’ on a Harvard the Duke
was thereafter
supposed never to fly solo again, but it is an open secret in
aeronautical circles that in October 1960, having no doubt instructed
his ‘minders’ to look the other way, John Severne had arranged with the
Tiger Club for the Duke to visit White Waltham to have an enjoyable fly
in a little Turbulent single-seater. What is far less well known is
that the very next time G- APNZ left the ground the engine failed and
the startled pilot managed a successful forced landing. Had this
happened on the previous flight I think there would have been quite a
rumpus! ‘PNZ redeemed the Tiger Club’s reputation when the following
year it won the King’s Cup air race in the hands of John Severne
himself. I subsequently flew it many times and always thought it a fun
little aeroplane.The only time I came across the Duke was when he was
guest at our Annual Dinner, a black-tie affair held on that occasion at
the Naval and Military Club in Town. In his speech I remember him
describing most Tiger Club pilots as ‘amiable lunatics’ with that
amusing twinkle in his eyes!