15 minute read
OPs in the air
OP s in the air
For over 100 years, Old Perseans have enjoyed taking to the skies. From national service with the RAF to flying commercially, leisure flights and aeronautical engineering, OPs have many stories of flight. Here are a few stories, spanning a century in the air.
Sir Arthur marshall (1918)
Sir Arthur marshall started his
education at a small private infants’ school near his parents’ house in Milton Road before joining the Perse Prep in Bateman Street and then The Perse Upper School in 1915.
He showed his prowess at athletics at a young age and won the 100 yards race at Fenners for which he received a silver spoon engraved with The Perse’s Pelican crest. Later, when at Jesus College, he represented the University of Cambridge at athletics and was
reserve for Great Britain in its 1600 yard relay team at the 1924 Olympics in Paris.
After graduating from Jesus College with a First in Engineering, Sir Arthur joined the family business in 1926 and qualified as a pilot at the Norwich and Norfolk Flying Club. Combining his entrepreneurial flair and his engineering and flying skills along with his father’s belief that, after the First World War, there would be a sound future for aviation, he placed the company in pole position to profit from rearmament and wartime contracts in the 1930s and 1940s. Sir Arthur became Chair of Marshall of Cambridge in 1942, was appointed OBE in 1948, and knighted in 1974.
Marshall has become a major employer in Cambridge, developing its own apprentice schemes which are still in place today. Sir Arthur remained chairman of the company until 1989, when he decided to step aside and hand over the reins to his elder son, Sir Michael.
Despite leaving The Perse early to finish his education as a boarder at Tonbridge School, Sir Arthur maintained links with The Perse, in particular with Stanley Stubbs (Head 1945–1969), and was very supportive of the Air Training Corps. He was also delighted that a number of Perse pupils have been awarded Arkwright Engineering Scholarships, a scheme which Marshall has often supported.
Sir Arthur passed away in 2007, at the age of 103.
mike Payne (1951)
i attended the Perse from
1945 until 1951 and joined the school Combined Cadet Force RAF Section (previously the JTC) in the late ‘40s. The teacher in command was F/Lt V. Sederman who was my maths teacher. At the weekends I used to put on my Cadet uniform and cycle to Marshall’s Airport in Cambridge and try and scrounge a flight to anywhere. I wasn’t fussy about destinations! In those far-off days the aircraft were piston-engined, slow, reliable and always available. After collecting a parachute and buckling it on (advice; put it on at the aircraft and don’t try and walk with it “on” or you’ll resemble a pantomime horse), the types of aircraft I flew in were Chipmunks, Ansons, Oxfords, Harvards and Dakotas.
As I grew older I was allowed to fly the aircraft under supervision and on one glorious occasion I was allowed to fly, unsupervised, a Dakota with about 15 School Air Cadets while the pilot went to talk with them (no, there was no autopilot in those days!).
When I left The Perse I did research for about a year and joined the RAF in 1952 as a Cadet Pilot for my National Service. My first solo flight was in a Tiger Moth on November 5th – what a day to do a first solo! I was then promoted to Acting Pilot Officer and sent to Gimli, and then Moose Jaw, Canada to fly Harvards. After 160 hours flying I graduated and had my commission confirmed.
Little did I know it but the glory days had gone. I had an ear infection while swimming in Moose Jaw, caught a bad cold and then had problems doing aerobatics due to changes in air pressure. I was then sent back to Gimli, which had been converted to jet training. The aircraft (the T33) was being used at the time as an advanced trainer but I found that diving (at, I seem to remember, 15,000 feet per minute) and an explosive decompression didn’t exactly help.
After my time in the RAF I worked for over 40 years as a scientific photographer for Fisons, making short documentary films, aerial photography, high speed photography, electron microscopy, etc.
I also played double bass in various jazz groups with Humphrey Lyttelton, Footlights, Dudley Moore and many more.
i suppose it was inevitable, my joining the RAF. My father was in for the duration, a Boy Entrant at 16 in 1923, a senior officer when he retired in the late 1950s. Among many other duties he flew his Westland Wapiti in the Middle Eastern deserts, dropping bombs on insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 1930s; some things never seem to change.
This peripatetic lifestyle was less than ideal for education, so the late 1950s saw a small, confused and very unhappy little boy delivered to the hands of Keith Barry at the Junior Boarding House. It was not the happiest time of my life; escapism helped, so I devoured every book I could find on WW2 fighter and bomber pilots, and every book ever written about PoW camps and escaping the clutches of the enemy.
Time wore on and I moved to the Upper School. As I recall, the third form was the first year of CCF, initially the Army section, then the RAF section with Mr Billinghurst. A two-week course in gliding at RAF Swinderby (I think), gave me my first experience alone in a flying machine – I survived! An RAF Flying Scholarship saw me, along with Bruce Manning and Andy Thompson, report to Marshall’s of Cambridge where we flew Tiger Moths and gained our private pilot licences, shortly before our last term at school.
I blew my A Levels big time. Guidance was minimal, so for me it was a stab in the dark. So, without a scholarship to Cranwell and degreeless, I took the offer of a 20-year flying career at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. Turns out I actually had a place at St Andrews for the asking, something I only discovered a decade later – but that’s another story. After advance training in the Gnat I was set to be Biggles reincarnate, but it was not to be … Bomber Command wanted jet pilots for the V Force, and off to Vulcans I went. Turned out for the best, I flew all over the world and had more fun at taxpayers’ expense than I believed possible. A new career in offshore oil and gas beckoned on early retirement.
Well, that didn’t last long … It got me to the United States which has been home ever since. The collapse of the price of oil saw me back in aviation for the rest of my career, ending up in Philadelphia as Director of Training for the pilots and flight attendants of an Airbus A320 Charter Company flying happy tourists to the Caribbean and Central America.
Early retirement saw me back in general aviation – single engine propeller aeroplanes, flying low and slow – a whole different world. It is flying at its fundamentals – stick, rudder and a map. My wife (a Captain at a major US airline) and I have an aeroplane each – a 1946 Stinson 108 for me, and a 2004 Citabria for her. I work on them both, and can usually be found in the hangar, covered in oil and bleeding copiously, having the time of my life.
Colin Froude (1972)
i was at the Perse (Prep and
Upper School) in the ‘60s. Being an active member of the 5th Cambridge Scouts at The Perse might explain why I joined the Army section of the CCF before winning a Flying Scholarship through the Royal Navy. Both the RN and the RAF then offered me a University Cadetship – I chose the RAF on the basis I was too tall for naval bunks! There followed three years at Southampton studying biological sciences and learning to fly Chipmunk and then Bulldog aircraft with the University Air Sqn.
The training system to become a front line pilot is long and tortuous which meant that I did a French language course and adventurous activities before finally going to the RAF College at Cranwell for officer training. This led straight into basic jet training on the Jet Provost followed by more delays waiting for a Hunter slot at RAF Valley. When I finally arrived for my advanced training I was given a cockpit assessment and told I was too tall. Fortunately, there was a firemen’s strike to keep me occupied running a fire station at RAF Uxbridge. Eventually I passed through the multi-engine course on the Jetstream to arrive at the Lockheed Hercules as my operational type. There followed tours on 24 and LXX Sqns, including the Falklands
War, and then flying the air bridge to the islands for three years (with a couple of air-to-air refuellings on the way down). There was also famine relief in Ethiopia, flying around quite a bit of the world and air displays. I was then selected to be a flying instructor (QFI) on the Jet Provost which required yet another lengthy course before posting back to Cranwell as a QFI. I was short toured to become a Jetstream QFI at RAF Finningley (now Doncaster Sheffield International) where I was a Flight Commander and display pilot. Promotion then saw me at MoD in London working in flight safety. This was followed by a partial return to flying the Hercules as OC Simulator Sqn. I then became OC Hercules Training Sqn with responsibility for providing recurrent training to some 400
tom Perry (2010) & James Richardson (2007)
Tom Perry (2010) and James richardson (2007) are both pilots with british Airways.
tom: “I started at the Prep in 1999 and had always been interested in flying. Though hopeless at sport, I could just about hold my own rowing down the Cam! I spent much of my extra-curricular time with PES, and was fortunate to take part in three expeditions, eventually helping to lead and plan the trips. I went on to pursue a degree in Geography at Durham, followed by a Masters in Cambridge at the Scott Polar Research Institute. At university I got involved with gliding, an inexpensive and accessible means to learn to fly.”
James: “I had a passion for flying from an early age, which I pursued further at The Perse with the CCF’s RAF section. As well as learning about the technical aspects of aircrew. With the announcement of a brand new two-pilot glass cockpit Hercules (the original version had four crew on the flight deck), I volunteered to join the programme at its inception with responsibility for developing the new simulators. This required monthly commuting to the USA (Florida, Utah and Atlanta) and inevitably led to being directly involved in the development of the aircraft which I flew within a few months of its first flight. It was a natural progression to Heavy Aircraft Test Sqn at Boscombe Down where I became a test pilot and instructor on all models of the Hercules as well as the Andover and BAC 1-11. The Hercules flying involved clearances for the new aircraft as well as continuing equipment development to support front line operations; we had regular detachments
flying, I took part in air experience flights, and encountered the thrill of aerobatics. I also took part in expeditions to Iceland and Ladakh, and was an enthusiastic violinist and singer. I studied aeronautical engineering at Cambridge, and then worked as an aerodynamicist for the Mercedes F1 Team for three years, before embarking on flying training.”
By chance, we ended up on the same course at Oxford Aviation Academy, starting in September 2015. Many of our fellow course mates joined straight from school; however, our own feeling is that having higher education qualifications to fall back on is valuable, given the strict proficiency and medical assessments that follow us throughout our career.
The first six months were spent entirely in the classroom – we counted 42 exams in total! After that we went to the US for five months, learning basic flying and navigation skills in the Arizona desert. Back in the UK, we finished to California and Arizona for high altitude parachuting. The Andover and BAC 1-11 flying was mostly ‘flying laboratory’ scientific development, in particular radar and electronic intelligence systems. I also flew the Open Skies Andover as part of the UK contribution to Joint Arms Control Implementation. The latter meant that I had come full circle from learning about Cold War threats when I joined to now flying low level over Russia to verify the status of the weapons that had been the threat! A memorable and enjoyable 39 years in the RAF was followed by part time working as a professional photographer and being elected as a Salisbury City Councillor.
our training at Oxford in busy London airspace, more challenging weather and more sophisticated aircraft. Finally, we started at BA in November 2017 – Tom now flies the Airbus 320 out of Heathrow, whilst James flies out of London City on the Embraer 170/190.
Luckily we don’t just have to fly the same route every day. We’re both fortunate that our fleets service a wide variety of European destinations, so there’s a lot of variability. We do a mixture of day-trips, where we’re back at
base each night, and longer tours, spending several nights away, usually finishing in a different city every evening. The hours we work in a week can be variable, but are heavily regulated by flight time limitation legislation.
Much like our passengers, we don’t like turbulence! We use sophisticated tools to try and avoid the worst, but sometimes it’s just not possible. While it can feel unpleasant, the aircraft we fly have been designed to cope with more severe turbulence than we ever encounter, and is an entirely safe and natural part of flying.
People may think that the autopilot does most of the flying, but that’s not quite true. Admittedly, gone are the days of pilots manually flying the aircraft for hours on end – these days, the job is about managing a constantly changing environment. We consider fuel and weather, think ahead to the what-ifs, and make countless risk assessments in real time. And the autopilot can only do what we tell it to do…
Every six months we go into the simulator for two days of intensive training to learn how to deal with things that might go wrong. Rather than analysing every possible failure, we focus on how to manage the bigger picture: fly the aircraft, navigate safely and communicate our intentions. Only then do we dive into the specifics. By doing this, we keep the aircraft in a safe state, and avoid impulsive (and often incorrect) actions.
Alex toff (2018)
i thoroughly enjoyed my time at The Perse. During my time at the Prep, my love of programming and design was nurtured through study of design & technology and computing, and by the time I came to start at the Upper I was hooked on both.
I took maths, physics and design & technology all the way through to A Level, and some of my most memorable moments and achievements have been in design & technology, be it my Pet Water Fountain or “Gutter Bug” Gutter Cleaning Robot. By no coincidence, I ended up leaving The Perse with an offer to study Engineering Design at the University of Bristol, which is where I currently find myself.
Aviation is in my blood; one grandfather served with the RAF and the other with the Fleet Air Arm during WW2, and my dad has enjoyed a varied career which has included flying as a captain with easyJet. My own first memorable encounter with aviation was through Microsoft Flight Simulator as a child. It allowed me to explore a world that I hadn’t really considered up to that point, and for good portion of my time growing up I believed it would be my career path.
As I grew older, I began to take the concept a bit more seriously and, after seeing flying advertised in the Year 11 enrichment programme, I decided to take a shot at doing it for real. My training started with 10 hours flying the classic Cessna 172 training aircraft from Cambridge Airport alongside a few others from my year. I was positively shocked when, 10 minutes after climbing into the aircraft, I was behind the controls performing what would be my first take-off; by the end of our training I had achieved ‘solo-readiness’.
I ended up transferring my flight training to the historic Duxford Airfield, host to the impressive Imperial War Museum where I also worked during the summer to fund my flying, and by the start of Lower Sixth had flown solo. Over the next two years, I flew whenever possible. It was difficult balancing my academic commitments with flight training, having to complete 10 self-taught exams and progress my flying proficiency, all the while interrupted by academic exams and bad weather. Despite this, I completed the course by the spring of 2017, and passed my final skills test in August 2018.
Now, a little over three years from my first flight, I am qualified to fly as captain and carry passengers, and I continue to fly, alongside my dad, when I return from university. Perhaps what attracts me the most about flying is seeing the world from a different perspective and the freedom to explore, and I find that doing this thing that humans are so inherently unsuited to gives me that opportunity.
Recently, I have become more interested in aeronautical engineering and the air traffic control side of the aviation world. I am looking forward to gaining some more interesting experiences and insights when I spend part of my summer this year on placement at Babcock.
