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July 23, 2002
Tuesday
 
 
The passing of a great pilot
Tom Burroughes (London)  Aerospace

de Havilland Mosquito

I am a near-religious reader of the Daily Telegraph obituary page, full of larger-than-life aristocrats, obscure explorers and dozens of extroardinary men and women who served during the Second World War. A classic of the genre is in today's paper about the late Group Capt John "Cat's Eyes" Cunningham, a famous night-fighter pilot and post-war civilian test pilot who was associated for many years with the de Havilland aircraft company, and no doubt Perry has heard all about his exploits*. I met him several years ago in Hatfield to see the restoration of a 1950s British fighter plane called the Venom, which my father worked on as a navigator around the time of the Suez Crisis of 1956. Anyway, give it a read. A must for aircraft nuts like yours truly.

* [Note from Perry: I also met John Cunningham many years ago]

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