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Who Was the Best British Competition Pilot Flying Wooden Gliders?

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Who Was the Best British Competition Pilot Flying Wooden Gliders? GLIDING HERITAGE CENTRE Who was the best British competition pilot flying wooden gliders? Author Glyn Bradney Description Analysis of the top British competition glider pilots who flew wood Date 8th December 2015 INTRODUCTION This is obviously a somewhat “subjective” topic though I’m going to try my best to add a good amount of objectivity! If I asked the question “Who was the best British competition glider pilot of all time” I’m pretty sure a large majority would name George Lee. George won 3 consecutive Open class world championships – 1976, Rayskala, Finland, flying an ASW17; 1978, Chateauroux, France, again flying an ASW17; and 1981, Paderborn, Germany, flying a Nimbus 3. However, George definitely belongs to the “glass” era and I want to look back to the era of pilots competing in wooden gliders. One of the things I’ve done is to bring together in Appendices 1 and 2 all of the competition results for the British Nationals and the World Championships in the wooden era from the end of WW2. I suspect this will be readily used as a source of reference. Please note there are many other reference documents available from the Gliding Heritage Centre website – http://www.glidingheritage.org.uk/articles.htm There obviously has to be an arbitrary cut-off date as “glass” inevitably gained the ascendancy. This is 1969 for the British Nationals and 1968 for the Worlds. This reference guide is made up of 6 parts: A.) This Introduction. B.) Criteria for identifying the eligible pilots and rating their performances. C.) The pilots themselves and their competition results. D.) Conclusions, a comparison of the pilots using two different methods. E.) Appendix 1 – all the British Nationals results from 1947 up to and including 1970. F.) Appendix 2 – all the Worlds results from 1948 up to and including 1968. As always if you have new and interesting information and/or photos, else you believe there are mistakes, please contact the author at [email protected] Glyn Bradney, 8th December 2015 All rights Reserved | The Gliding Heritage Centre, Lasham Airfield, Alton, Hampshire, GU34 5SS| GLIDING HERITAGE CENTRE CRITERIA This is obviously massively subjective on my part! However, here goes! To qualify you have to have been placed in the top three of a British Nationals (That’s League 1 only when League 2 was run alongside) and also competed in a Worlds. Interestingly if I’d have said you had to have won a British NationaIs to qualify it would have made two changes to the eligible list – David Innes and Lorne Welch wouldn’t have been included. To get a rating score for a competition you have to have flown a “wooden” glider. Note the last wooden glider to win a British Nationals was the SHK in the Open class in 1969 (and the K6e for the 1969 Sport/Standard class). I’ve made the decision to start with the 1947 Nationals held at RNAS Bramcote. So as said in the Introduction this analysis is post the end of WW2. Not including pre WW2 Nationals results will not please everyone I’m aware. A consequence of this is that Kit Nicholson is excluded from the eligible pilot’s list. Team entries are not allowed. This for example eliminates Nick Goodhart from where he and his brother Tony did very well in the 1951 Camphill Nationals flying as a team. Jock Forbes won that comp flying as an individual, and in working out his rating score I have taken into account all the entries both individual and team. After mulling it over I decided to accept Nick Goodhart winning the 2 seater World Championships in 1956 at St Yan in France as a valid input. No question he was P1 for the whole of the competition. Where do you start accepting early Nationals entries into the calculations when the pilot was “Learning his trade”? Arbitrarily I’ve decided only from the starting competition when they got more than 50% of the winner’s points – in fact this has turned out to be irrelevant as there are no instances. Worlds I’ve decided should be scored at 150% of Nationals. The first rating calculation for a competition is to express our pilot’s total score as a percentage of the winners. Obviously if our pilot was the winner then that scores 100. The second factor is to take into account the number of competing pilots by applying a weighting factor. I’ve decided to do this as if you came 5th in a competition with 50 competing gliders that’s much more impressive than if there were just 20. There’s a sting in the tail here, however, in that a poor overall finish place-wise downgrades appreciably the adjusted rating score. So the overall formula works out to be:- (S * (T – P + 1)) / T where S = Our pilot’s overall score as a percentage of the winner T = number of competing gliders P = our pilot’s placing So if you got 80% of the winner’s overall score and came 5th in a 50 glider comp the rating score calculation gives 73.6, if it was a 20 glider comp 64.0. All rights Reserved | The Gliding Heritage Centre, Lasham Airfield, Alton, Hampshire, GU34 5SS| GLIDING HERITAGE CENTRE THE ELIGIBLE PILOTS If you really want to dig deep and confirm my results then you can comb through all of the Nationals and Worlds results posted to Appendices 1 & 2. The pilots below are listed in alphabetical order as per their surnames. Besides showing their individual results in tabular form I’ll also include a bit of bibliography. Some really great British competition pilots haven’t made the list because a.) Whilst coming close they never came in the first three of a Nationals, and/or b.) They never competed in a World championships. David Ince is a name here that immediately comes to mind. To answer in advance a couple of other possible queries. Firstly Peter Mallett is not included as whilst he flew in both the 1948 and 1950 Worlds the best he came in a British Nationals was 4th. Secondly whilst Con Greaves came 3rd in the British 1969 Opens flying a SHK, when he represented Great Britain at Marfa in 1970 in the Standard class he was flying a Libelle (“glass”). GEORGE BURTON On the podium at Rayskala for third in the 1976 Standard class Worlds. George Burton who was born in 1932 is still alive and we see him occasionally at Lasham. He first started gliding as an ATC cadet in 1948 but didn’t get really involved until 1952 with the Imperial College GC. After flying club gliders he bought into a Petrel syndicate in 1957 All rights Reserved | The Gliding Heritage Centre, Lasham Airfield, Alton, Hampshire, GU34 5SS| GLIDING HERITAGE CENTRE which he flew on a couple of days in the 1957 League 2 Nationals, doing very well on one of the days in what was a hopelessly outclassed glider. A pointer as to what was to come! Above picture taken in May 1965 at the Lasham Nationals. 8 Nationals and 2 Worlds giving an overall rating score of 863.3, average 86.3. This shows fantastic high quality competitive flying consistency. It should be noted that George Burton came fourth (out of 39) in the 1970 Worlds held at Marfa, Texas, flying a Kestrel 19. However, I can’t include that in his ratings as he was flying “glass”. 6th, out of 38, in the 1972 Vrsac, Yugoslavia, worlds again flying a Kestrel 19. 12th out of 28 (Kestrel 19) at the 1974 Waikerie, Australia, worlds. Even better in 1976 when he came third in the Standard class flying a Pik 20B in the Rayskala, Finland, worlds. 1976 was his last Worlds He was also very successful in many Open Nationals during the 1970s. Flying a Kestrel 19 2nd out of 17 in 1971, 5/18 1972, 7/23 1973, 11/21 1974, 4/23 1975, and in his final Nationals 4th out of 21 flying a Kestrel 22 in 1977. As said above, quite astonishing consistency. All rights Reserved | The Gliding Heritage Centre, Lasham Airfield, Alton, Hampshire, GU34 5SS| GLIDING HERITAGE CENTRE TONY DEANE-DRUMMOND The team for the 1958 Leszno Worlds at Buckingham Palace. Left to right Tony Goodhart, Tony Deane-Drummond, Philip Wills, and Nick Goodhart. Tony Deane-Drummond CB DSO MC & Bar, born 23rd June 1917 had a distinguished career in the army retiring as Major General in 1971. He participated in the failed Operation Colossus in Italy in February1941, the first airborne mission undertaken by the British, was captured, escaped, recaptured, and then escaped again this time managing to return to England 16 months after he’d first been captured. Part of Operation Market Garden in September 1944 he was again captured at Arnhem but again escaped. He first started gliding in May 1937 He founded the Army GC in 1948 which first flew at Odiham before moving to Lasham in 1950. He died aged 95 on 4th December 2012.Not surprisingly doing a “Google” on Tony Deane-Drummond brings up a great deal of material. One of many obituaries is to be found in the Spring 2013 edition of VGC News. All rights Reserved | The Gliding Heritage Centre, Lasham Airfield, Alton, Hampshire, GU34 5SS| GLIDING HERITAGE CENTRE 9 Nationals and 4 Worlds giving an overall rating score of 867.2, average 66.7. All rights Reserved | The Gliding Heritage Centre, Lasham Airfield, Alton, Hampshire, GU34 5SS| GLIDING HERITAGE CENTRE JOCK FORBES Taken in 1948 either at or prior to the Samedan worlds Jock Forbes was recognised as one of two RAF “gliding aces” immediately after the end of WW2, the other was Peter Mallett.
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