Hawks Flight Farm

Deposit (c) 2009 Michael Ogden

In 1934, the commission of my father in the army of the British air finished, and it joined the Bristol & Wessex Flies Club to Whitchurch as an instructor having been flight instructor in the army of the British air. His first student was the White Lady Douglas, the sister of the Duke of Beaufort and the widow of the last George scott-douglas. She wanted to learn to fly if she could fly to the India in a new Hawk of Major Miles that she was in the process to buy and wanted my father, Micky, be his copilot.

She thought to fly would be more inexpensive than to hunt. She was the custodian of the son of the Maharajah of cooch-behar that attended the private school in United Kingdom and wanted to take an invitation to visit his father.

The intention was to follow the road of the 1934 race of as removed Australia as Calcutta as the fuel had been furnished by the Shell.

On time that it is, White of Lady had taken the delivery of a Hawk of Major Miles as new, g-acwy of number of recording, on fourth September 1934 that she possessed to 27E March 1942. She kept the airplane to his personal address - the Farm of Manoir, Sherston, Cracks although it was maintained to Whitchurch by the Club. Apparently she had his own track of landing in one of its fields and did not use the biggest track of grass to the west of Lobby of Badminton on the Duke of earth of Beaufort. This last track of landing has now a system to land lights and can check the airplanes of motor twins rather artificial, or belonging to the local important owners or flew of the members of the Royal Family on the visits to the Duke of Beaufort.

They release with moderate visibility of Bristol November twentieth to 8AM and crossed the Chain through Lympne. There they flew in the mist and were forced to land to St Englevert, to the north of Boulogne. After 2 hours, they continued to Abbeville where they were forced to stop as the road to Paris was blocked by fog.

The next day that they continued to Paris where they had it nightstopped to oil boredom. The next day that they tried to fly on to Lyon but there were forced to mi-chemin to land in a field near that they discovered later to be Paray-Le-Monial. They were very close to the airfield there and they have left then again to the first tree height and found finally the airfield after the Custodian had lit a signal on the ground.

After awaiting there for an hour or two, they continued on to Lyon where the time was better and then on to Marseilles having flown across the clouds and the mountains. Nevertheless my father obtained a frost a bitten face. They left the next day morning of Marseilles, rekindled to Nice and then crossed to Corsican and flew alongside the rocky coast and then to Sardinia to Elmos, a distance of 147 miles, while bitterly cold.

There they found the heats and then crossed to Tunis, then on Cairo, following African coast to the North it. Here they spent some days do the tourism and see the pyramids to Giza.

Then on by the Palestine, and on the following Rutbah Well the pipe line Arabic to the Freezes to Baghdad and then to Basra and to Bushire.

While climbing Bushire and almost 60 miles south of Bushire, White of Lady retrieved through the voice tube this oil gushed in the front cockpit. The oil pressure descended and Micky counseled that they climb higher to 8000 feet but finally to Micky had to cut the motor otherwise it would seize.

They had hoped to be able to glide to the next place but that was of not to be. Micky began looking for a site of forced landing and in some minutes had found a site of perfect landing and did a perfect landing. Here they were somewhere between Bushire and Bandar Abbas in which is now Iran marooned. ......