REFLECTIONS
Pathfinder
the world in 1934), and later three categories of the ground engineer’s licence, a wireless operator’s licence, a commercial pilot’s licence and a flying instructor’s certificate.
2021 celebrates the centenary of the RAAF where Old Boy Donald Clifford Bennett ’27 earned his pilot’s wings in 1931 at the age of 21 and later become one of the most highly qualified airmen in the world.
Before the war Bennett was a flying instructor and flying boat pilot with the RAF before flying with Imperial Airways from 1936-1940. He achieved two world records in 1938 by completing the first commercial, non-stop trans-Atlantic crossing and achieving the longest seaplane flight in a Mercury from Scotland to South Africa. The following year he took part in proving the concept of air-to-air refuelling, designed to make non-stop trans-Atlantic commercial flights possible.
In a 1981 interview with the National Library of Australia from his home in Buckinghamshire, Bennett credited the excellent teaching he received at BGS in Maths and Physics and RAAF training at Point Cook as contributing factors in his subsequent career. The hazards of wartime flying were reflected in Old Boy casualties – 252 were killed in WWII, 168 of them were in the air force.
Bennett was a brilliant technical airman. He wrote The Complete Air Navigator in 1936, the first comprehensive textbook ever written on air navigation in which he said, “Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Safety”.
Aside from his pilot’s qualifications, Bennett held a first-class civil navigator’s licence (one of only eight in
One could almost imagine him navigating a plane through the eye of a needle.
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