STRAIGHT&LEVEL
32 | Flight International | 30 June-6 July 2015 flightglobal.com
Lt Learmount’s log, now on blog Please take note
From yuckspeak to tales of yore, send your offcuts to [email protected]
100-YEAR ARCHIVE
Every issue of Flight
from 1909 onwards
can be viewed online at
flightglobal.com/archiveLearmount’s
Great War
David Learmount, formerly of
this parish and still contributing
to Flight International as
consulting editor, has launched
a new blog (davidlearmount.
wordpress.com) with the
captivating tale of a trip to St
Omer aerodrome, near Calais,
where exactly 100 years earlier
his grandfather, Second Lt
Leonard Wright Learmount
reported for active service with
the Royal Flying Corps.
St Omer was the main RFC
frontline base on the Western
Front and is still active as an
airfield. A British Air Services
Memorial has recently been
opened there.
David has unearthed some
fascinating archives from his
family history. His grandfather
later became commander of his
squadron and survived the
conflict, unlike so many of his
contemporaries. In 1916 he
wrote a dispatch for a London
newspaper, detailing in
breathless, derring-do Biggles
style some of his exploits at the
front. “You can hear the zip of
the Hun’s bullets when they get
close,” reads one passage.
“LW Learmount was
wounded twice, but his account
is written in such a casual way
that it is difficult to feel the
danger, the fear, and to imagine
the horrors he saw each day
when he flew over battlegrounds
like Passchendaele,” notes
D Learmount.
The blog entry includes
photographs of his grandfather
in Royal Air Force service after
the war, and a copy of his log
book, and makes for a very
interesting read.
Un-appy ending
The above (we presume) typo
was spotted towards the end of
the exhibitors’ new products
and innovations list on the Paris
air show app. We have no idea
what it’s meant to say either.Not Sir Tim-id
We appreciate Sir Tim Clark
probably likes to fly, especially
on his own airline.
This week he is making the
case for open skies in
Washington DC – lair of the
troika of airline bosses and their
political allies, who would love
to banish Emirates and its Gulf
rivals from the Land of the Free- by hosting a live webcast.
A webcast? Er... couldn’t he
have done that from Dubai?
Qatar’s cash
On the subject of the Gulf-US
spat, the Doha-based carrier is
usually accused of being handed
lots of free money rather than
the other way round (see right).BillyPixSir Tim: dropping into enemy territoryThe best fuselage
In some notes written on the
10th September, 1913, I drew
attention to the
advantages of a
short fuselage,
having
experimented exhaustively in
this direction, and I pointed
out that the chief advantage is
quickness of recovery in the
event of a dive.Relief operation
Squadrons of Westland
Lysanders, flying with great
daring, added to
the epics of the
defence of Calais
by dropping water,
ammunition and hand
grenades to the heroic
garrison of Allied troops and
marines. As they passed over
the Citadel the pilots came
down to as low as 50ft to
make sure of their aim.Down to Earth
The Gemini 4 mission came
to a safe conclusion at 5.13
p.m. GMT on
Monday, June 7,
when the
spacecraft
containing the two astronauts
descended by parachute into
the Atlantic some 400 miles
south-west of Bermuda.MiG-21s in action
The Cambodian Government
has employed air power for
the first time
against the
resistance... led
by Prince
Norodom Sihanouk. A MiG-21
dropped a single bomb on
guerilla forces near the town
of Staung, 160km north of
Phnom Penh, according to the
National Army of Independent
Cambodia.Recorder streamer Times shit
VODEA
Top Dollar
The Lord may move in
mysterious ways, but some of
his servants, it seems, move in
rather comfortable ways.
Remember Creflo Dollar, the
US televangelist whose bid to
raise $65 million from his
congregation to buy a new
Gulfstream G650 was halted
after a social media storm?
Dollar – it’s his real name –
who had released a video asking
200,000 followers to donate
$300, is going to get his jet after
all. His ministry has raised the
money and approved the
purchase. Praise be!