ALEX HENSHAW REMEMBERED.
One former friend and acquaintance of the legendary record-breaker and test pilot summed it up perfectly.
"One couldn’t have had a better way of celebrating Alex’s achievements. I’m sure he would have fully approved."
Alex Henshaw MBE, former vice-president of the HAA, was without doubt one of Britain’s greatest aviators. It is seventy years this year, that he completed one of the greatest feats of pre-war flying and navigation.
In early 1939, Henshaw flew the diminutive Percival Mew Gull racer from Gravesend in Essex to Cape Town in South Africa in 40 hours.
He spent 28 hours in Cape Town, then retraced his route back to the UK. He completed the whole 12,754-mile round trip in 4 days, 10 hours and 16 minutes, breaking the record for each leg and setting a solo record for the round trip which still stands.
A year earlier, he had at the age of 25, become the youngest-ever pilot to win the Kings Cup Air Race. He set the fastest-ever time, an average speed of 236.25 mph, another record which still stands.
Perhaps even those records were eclipsed by his wartime exploits as chief test pilot of Vickers’ Castle Bromwich factory. The factory built over half of the total output of Spitfires, and 350 Lancaster heavy bombers.
Henshaw tested both, leading a team of 25 others. It is estimated that Henshaw flew 10% of all Spitfires and Seafires ever built, testing up to 20 aircraft a day, often in weather we would regard as unflyable.
Aviation artist and Henshaw biographer Michael Turner PFGAvA, was the perfect guide to talk us through Henshaw’s life and achievements.
Over a period of over 20 years before Henshaw’s death in 2007, Turner worked with Alex to create a series of paintings illustrating his incident-packed life.
It turned into a long-lasting friendship and ultimately a collaboration to create a book, based on Alex’s memories, to complement his already legendary autobiographies. (More on Michael’s work can be found at www.studio88.co.uk)
For the past two months the paintings have formed the centrepiece of an exhibition at Hendon.
Under the shadow of a replica of Henshaw’s Mew Gull racer G-AEXF, Michael talked us through the exhibition and his memories of the flying legend.
It was a fascinating day out and a perfect tribute to a flying legend.