A Short History of a Nearly Nobody

  I was not having a particularly special educational experience at Hardy's Grammar School, Dorchester. Having missed most of term due to glandular fever did not help, but academic I was not. Agricultural science was a great subject for me but the specialist teacher left and the subject was dropped by the school, so the end of my ambition to become a farm manager with it; Becoming a policeman was another dream, but a minimum height requirement of five foot ten inches certainly blocked that too (I maxed out at 5 ft 4in). I think my parents realised that the RAF might offer me a career, so I set off to RAF Cosford for assessment sometime in early 1957. This was my first time away from home and so armed with a Rail pass I was dropped at Dorchester railway station to start what was an "eye opening" experience for a 15 year old country boy. Changing train at Bristol Temple Mead station was interesting then the next leg to Birmingham was mostly through beautiful Engli...

Uncle Sid (Sidney Martin) was my aviation hero. An aircraft engineer who started on "Wood and String" aircraft and finished his career signing off on "VC10 and Boeing 707" aircraft. He was part of aviation history. He qualified as an aircraft engineer in about 1932 and was then employed by Imperial Airways and posted to Africa. Getting there was quite and adventure as it took five days and included spending one night in an Egyptian jail! The crashed aircraft "Hanno" was one of those in his care and the photos are those that he took while surveying it in preparation for its recovery and repair. I will add a few more including the aircraft successfully flying off once the job had been done. In his file I found a few historically interesting photos that I thought you might like to see. I will comment on them later. Here is a link to wikipedia giving details of this aircraft. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handley_Page_H.P.42