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Authors: Boris Johnson
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touch. Slowly and gently he now centred the joystick—as he had been taught—to bring the machine back on an even keel. He brought it all the way back; he moved the head of the joystick about a foot. He noticed something funny.
The plane remained banked, at 45 degrees. The machine showed no sign of responding to his commands. In fact, it started to list even more to the left. The speedo was falling fast. It was instantly obvious to Winston Churchill that he and Captain Scott were in trouble.
‘She is out of control,’ said Churchill to Scott—a highly experienced and capable man, who had already endured one bad crash, and had the injuries to show for it. In that moment Churchill felt Scott overriding him, taking control of the joystick and pedals—yanking and pushing to perform the only manoeuvre that you can, in such situations: pointing the nose downwards so as to pick up enough speed to get out of the side-slip. Any higher, and it might have worked. They were only 90 feet off the ground. Disaster was at hand.
As they descended, out of control, Churchill saw the sunlit aerodrome beneath him, and had the impression that it was bathed in a baleful yellowish glare. In a flash—and he didn’t have much longerthan a flash—the thought formed in his head: ‘This is very likely death.’ And so, very likely, it was.
Let us leave our hero there for a second or two, hurtling headlong towards the packed earth of Croydon. Let us look back at the risks he had already run. Consider the way he had loaded the statistical dice against himself—not just in his career as an aviator, but in his exhibitionist lust for glory of all kinds.
Churchill had begun his obsession with flying before the First War, when he was still First Lord of the Admiralty. At the beginning of 1913 he went to visit the naval air station at Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey. He was captivated by the atmosphere: young Biggles-like characters nervelessly hurling themselves about the ether as they tested the world’s first seaplane (a word that Churchill was credited with coining). Apart from the moustaches, it must have been like the early days of the US space programme: the Right Stuff exuding from every pore.
Churchill immediately saw the potential of what they were doing. He wanted a proper division, with its own identity and esprit de corps : and so began what was to become the Royal Air Force. ‘We are in the Stephenson age of flying,’ he proclaimed, referring to the inventor of the steam locomotive. ‘Now our machines are frail. One day they will be robust, and of value to our country.’ He was so excited, in fact, that he wanted to take off himself—and to learn how to fly.
To see how bonkers this was, remember that it was then just ten years since the very dawn of flight. It was only in 1903 that Orville and Wilbur Wright had finally taken off at Kitty Hawk, in their bizarre contraption. Here was Churchill, a not-especially-fit thirty-nine-year-old, asking for tuition in flying these objects that—to modern eyes—are barely recognisable as planes. They look like weird giant canvas box kites mounted on pram wheels with a lawn-mowerengine shoved on one end, and the whole thing lashed together with ropes or leather straps.
They look lethal. They were. It has been calculated that in 1912one flight in five thousand ended in death. By modern standards, that is insanely dangerous. Compare another mode of transport that is sometimes—irrationally—held to be dangerous, such as cycling in London, where one journey in about 14 million ends in a fatality; and you see the risk that Churchill was running.
These days no one would be allowed aloft in one of those planes, let alone a senior government minister. One of Churchill’s first instructors was a twenty-three-year-old sprig of the aristocracy called Spenser Grey—until Spenser had to bow out, after having a serious prang and suffering life-changing injuries.
Churchill’s friends begged
The plane remained banked, at 45 degrees. The machine showed no sign of responding to his commands. In fact, it started to list even more to the left. The speedo was falling fast. It was instantly obvious to Winston Churchill that he and Captain Scott were in trouble.
‘She is out of control,’ said Churchill to Scott—a highly experienced and capable man, who had already endured one bad crash, and had the injuries to show for it. In that moment Churchill felt Scott overriding him, taking control of the joystick and pedals—yanking and pushing to perform the only manoeuvre that you can, in such situations: pointing the nose downwards so as to pick up enough speed to get out of the side-slip. Any higher, and it might have worked. They were only 90 feet off the ground. Disaster was at hand.
As they descended, out of control, Churchill saw the sunlit aerodrome beneath him, and had the impression that it was bathed in a baleful yellowish glare. In a flash—and he didn’t have much longerthan a flash—the thought formed in his head: ‘This is very likely death.’ And so, very likely, it was.
Let us leave our hero there for a second or two, hurtling headlong towards the packed earth of Croydon. Let us look back at the risks he had already run. Consider the way he had loaded the statistical dice against himself—not just in his career as an aviator, but in his exhibitionist lust for glory of all kinds.
Churchill had begun his obsession with flying before the First War, when he was still First Lord of the Admiralty. At the beginning of 1913 he went to visit the naval air station at Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey. He was captivated by the atmosphere: young Biggles-like characters nervelessly hurling themselves about the ether as they tested the world’s first seaplane (a word that Churchill was credited with coining). Apart from the moustaches, it must have been like the early days of the US space programme: the Right Stuff exuding from every pore.
Churchill immediately saw the potential of what they were doing. He wanted a proper division, with its own identity and esprit de corps : and so began what was to become the Royal Air Force. ‘We are in the Stephenson age of flying,’ he proclaimed, referring to the inventor of the steam locomotive. ‘Now our machines are frail. One day they will be robust, and of value to our country.’ He was so excited, in fact, that he wanted to take off himself—and to learn how to fly.
To see how bonkers this was, remember that it was then just ten years since the very dawn of flight. It was only in 1903 that Orville and Wilbur Wright had finally taken off at Kitty Hawk, in their bizarre contraption. Here was Churchill, a not-especially-fit thirty-nine-year-old, asking for tuition in flying these objects that—to modern eyes—are barely recognisable as planes. They look like weird giant canvas box kites mounted on pram wheels with a lawn-mowerengine shoved on one end, and the whole thing lashed together with ropes or leather straps.
They look lethal. They were. It has been calculated that in 1912one flight in five thousand ended in death. By modern standards, that is insanely dangerous. Compare another mode of transport that is sometimes—irrationally—held to be dangerous, such as cycling in London, where one journey in about 14 million ends in a fatality; and you see the risk that Churchill was running.
These days no one would be allowed aloft in one of those planes, let alone a senior government minister. One of Churchill’s first instructors was a twenty-three-year-old sprig of the aristocracy called Spenser Grey—until Spenser had to bow out, after having a serious prang and suffering life-changing injuries.
Churchill’s friends begged
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