Sowing the seed
Headset review
Sowing the seed…
Duncan Campbell recalls the factors in his early life that led to him learning to fly…
I
am sure that, without too much difficulty, we could all recall the experiences that led us from childhood to exercising our flying privileges. When, with retirement not too far over the horizon, I told my mother, rather apprehensively, that I had started learning to fly, she said, “I don’t know why you didn’t do it years ago, it’s obviously in the blood!” She was alluding to the fact that her first husband, her second husband, and my younger brother had all been aviators. Two had died flying. Hank had been killed when colliding with his squadron leader in combat in 1942, the squadron leader parachuting to relative safety, and three years developing tunnel carpentry skills in Stalag Luft Three. On his return home, he had visited Hank’s widow, married her, and was my father. His death certificate noted that injuries received in aerial combat had contributed to his end. Mark, my younger brother, had died some years before in a Harvard with his friend Ted, crashing after an air race in Malta. The stuff of a major new mini-series this may be, and one day I may commit it to print but, fear not, dear reader, not here and not now! In the 1950s, when my age was still measured in single figures, my father was posted to RAF Negombo in Ceylon, as the Officer Commanding Flying. My brother and I grew up in a tropical paradise, only half a day of schooling, our playground being the beach, the jungle, the monsoon storm ditches and the aircraft dump on the edge of the airfield. The margins of my schoolbooks from that era are adorned with my simple representations of the then current aircraft, witness to an early obsession with flying. Yet it was my younger brother who moved into the world of aviation at an early age. I liked school. Mark did not and, aged 14, started truanting. At 15, he had fixed up an old Vespa and, without tax or insurance, was making his way to Biggin Hill where, courtesy of his appallingly lax school, he started cleaning and valeting flying club aircraft, and laid the foundation of what was to be a lifelong career in aviation. My father, much to my puzzlement, had not continued flying after his Air Force career. He maintained a passionate interest in aviation, and delivered frequent presentations about life in Stalag Luft Three and escape attempts to RAF Associations and any other organisations that might invite him, but he rarely left the ground. He was also heavily involved in the development and running of the Biggin Hill Air Fair over the years. I well remember one occasion at Biggin Hill when he
22 | LIGHT AVIATION | March 2021
Above The author with his group operated Luscombe, comes from a family of aviators.
went up in a Tiger Moth with an instructor, and I watched from the ground while another pilot explained, in great detail, how the extremely steep side slip on late final and perfect three-point landing with a ground roll of little more than the length of the aircraft, was witness to the incredible flying skills of the instructor. As they got out of the aircraft, he congratulated his colleague, who said, “That wasn’t me, it was Ken”. My father was grinning from ear to ear, a dog with two tails. It had been about 25 years since he had last flown anything. His last ever fight was in the aircraft then known as the Charles Church Spitfire. My youngest sister had orchestrated my father appearing in an episode of Noel’s Christmas Presents. By then, Ken was very disabled, his war injuries having eroded his mobility to the point where he could no longer even swim, which had been the sole
