skua
15th Jun 2007, 08:02
Anybody else feel that they don't make them like this any more? What all round talent. And now we know how Oxenhope airfield was created........
from today's D Tel
Lieutenant Dave Wright
Lieutenant Dave Wright, who has died aged 85, flew highly dangerous sorties over the sea during the Second World War and wrote the Fleet Air Arm's most famous song; after the war he founded a company making gold braid for senior British and Commonwealth officers.
Having joined the Fleet Air Arm as a newly qualified pilot in 1940, Ward became one of 804 Squadron's small band of "catapilots", flying the Canadian-built Hawker Sea Hurricane XIIA fighters from catapult-armed merchant ships.
Sailing in Atlantic and Arctic convoys, he would be launched by rocket-propelled sledge to attack approaching Condor bombers. Fourteen 11ft-long missiles ignited together to send his aircraft accelerating down a 70 ft ramp in a blast of fire which would be followed by a roar like an exploding bomb; the pilot would briefly black out ahead of the sound wave.
It was only after being launched on his first sortie from the former banana boat Maplin that it dawned on the 20-year-old Wright that he was far from land with no instructions about his return.
The theory was that he should land on the water and hope to be picked up by a passing vessel; but he realised that the oil-cooler underneath the Hurricane would scoop up water, causing it to sink like a stone.
So Wright perfected a manoeuvre in which he first jettisoned the canopy; then, crouching on the seat, he would decelerate the Hurricane and roll it slowly on to its back; he would then fall away from the aircraft, kicking the control column forward to avoid being hit by the tailplane as the Hurricane plunged into the sea.
In this way Wright survived 24 launches before switching to 893 Squadron, flying Martlets and Seafires from the fleet carrier Formidable, to take part in the landings in North Africa, Sicily and Salerno.
David Wright was born on July 14 1921 at Haworth, West Yorkshire, where his father was a textile machinery designer and the inventor of the centrifugal spinning system. Dave was educated at Keighley Boys' Grammar School.
After the war he returned to Haworth, where he founded Wyedean Weaving Company to make gold braid and medal ribbons. All around the world police and armed forces wear Wyedean products, which include sashes for the Royal Family and senior officers at Trooping the Colour as well as touch cord for cannon and jute webbing for undertakers.
It even made false eyebrows for camels for the film The Mummy (1999). Wright liked to joke that he preferred clients in Africa because coups were more frequent there and the generals changed the braid on their uniforms regularly.
Wright founded the Haworth Round Table and helped open a private airfield at Black Moor, Oxenhope, where he took up flying again. As a prominent member of the Bradford Motor Club, he became a star attraction by riding a motor-cycle through flaming hoops at Haworth Gala.
He also composed sacred music, and for more than 60 years played the organ at Hall Green Baptist chapel, where his grandfather had been choirmaster. He was a talented jazz pianist, and as a wartime DJ entertained the ship's company of Formidable.
With Lieutenant Derek Stevenson, he wrote and set to music a version of the famous song Villikins and his Dinah; it lampooned the tedious A25 accident report form, beginning: They say in the Air Force a landing's OK / If the pilot gets out and can still walk away, / But in the Fleet Air Arm the prospect is grim / If the landing's piss-poor and the pilot can't swim.
The chorus (Cracking show, I'm alive / But I still have to render my A25 ) has been sung, with other scurrilous verses, in every British carrier and naval air station ever since.
Dave Wright married, in 1946, Norma Hiley, for whom he liked to compose racy poems on the occasion of her birthday. She survives him with their two daughters and a son.
from today's D Tel
Lieutenant Dave Wright
Lieutenant Dave Wright, who has died aged 85, flew highly dangerous sorties over the sea during the Second World War and wrote the Fleet Air Arm's most famous song; after the war he founded a company making gold braid for senior British and Commonwealth officers.
Having joined the Fleet Air Arm as a newly qualified pilot in 1940, Ward became one of 804 Squadron's small band of "catapilots", flying the Canadian-built Hawker Sea Hurricane XIIA fighters from catapult-armed merchant ships.
Sailing in Atlantic and Arctic convoys, he would be launched by rocket-propelled sledge to attack approaching Condor bombers. Fourteen 11ft-long missiles ignited together to send his aircraft accelerating down a 70 ft ramp in a blast of fire which would be followed by a roar like an exploding bomb; the pilot would briefly black out ahead of the sound wave.
It was only after being launched on his first sortie from the former banana boat Maplin that it dawned on the 20-year-old Wright that he was far from land with no instructions about his return.
The theory was that he should land on the water and hope to be picked up by a passing vessel; but he realised that the oil-cooler underneath the Hurricane would scoop up water, causing it to sink like a stone.
So Wright perfected a manoeuvre in which he first jettisoned the canopy; then, crouching on the seat, he would decelerate the Hurricane and roll it slowly on to its back; he would then fall away from the aircraft, kicking the control column forward to avoid being hit by the tailplane as the Hurricane plunged into the sea.
In this way Wright survived 24 launches before switching to 893 Squadron, flying Martlets and Seafires from the fleet carrier Formidable, to take part in the landings in North Africa, Sicily and Salerno.
David Wright was born on July 14 1921 at Haworth, West Yorkshire, where his father was a textile machinery designer and the inventor of the centrifugal spinning system. Dave was educated at Keighley Boys' Grammar School.
After the war he returned to Haworth, where he founded Wyedean Weaving Company to make gold braid and medal ribbons. All around the world police and armed forces wear Wyedean products, which include sashes for the Royal Family and senior officers at Trooping the Colour as well as touch cord for cannon and jute webbing for undertakers.
It even made false eyebrows for camels for the film The Mummy (1999). Wright liked to joke that he preferred clients in Africa because coups were more frequent there and the generals changed the braid on their uniforms regularly.
Wright founded the Haworth Round Table and helped open a private airfield at Black Moor, Oxenhope, where he took up flying again. As a prominent member of the Bradford Motor Club, he became a star attraction by riding a motor-cycle through flaming hoops at Haworth Gala.
He also composed sacred music, and for more than 60 years played the organ at Hall Green Baptist chapel, where his grandfather had been choirmaster. He was a talented jazz pianist, and as a wartime DJ entertained the ship's company of Formidable.
With Lieutenant Derek Stevenson, he wrote and set to music a version of the famous song Villikins and his Dinah; it lampooned the tedious A25 accident report form, beginning: They say in the Air Force a landing's OK / If the pilot gets out and can still walk away, / But in the Fleet Air Arm the prospect is grim / If the landing's piss-poor and the pilot can't swim.
The chorus (Cracking show, I'm alive / But I still have to render my A25 ) has been sung, with other scurrilous verses, in every British carrier and naval air station ever since.
Dave Wright married, in 1946, Norma Hiley, for whom he liked to compose racy poems on the occasion of her birthday. She survives him with their two daughters and a son.