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Old 19th March 2011 | 09:39
  #436 (permalink)  
Ahh de Havilland
 
Joined: Oct 2007
Posts: 37
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From: London
Ben Turner

Ben Turner was a firm of agricultural engineers and tractor distributors, however when I googled them an interesting report from 1972 came up:

"Ben Turner & Son (Helicopters) is 45 per cent owned and last year was appointed sole UK distributor for “Agusta” one of Europe’s largest helicopter manufacturers. Earlier last year Lieut-Col Robert Smith, managing director of Ferranti Helicopters was appointed a non-executive director of Ben Turner (Helicopters)."

Quite interesting in the context of this thread.

I didn't know BT had been the Agusta distributor. I thought it had always been Alan Mann. Wonder who the other owners of BT were?

Finally the account mentions that the Chairman and MD of the parent company was John Wakeham - wasn't he later a minister in one of the Thatcher governments? But more interesting, didn't he also own helicopters via a company called Patgrove? I seem to recall a JetRanger & a Hughes 500 in the seventies followed later by B206 G-BKCM in the '80s.

Perhaps another of Dennis Kenyon's customers?
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