FIRST BRITISH AIRMAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 591, 18 February 1929, Page 9

FIRST BRITISH AIRMAN

COL. MOORE-BRABAZON GETS THE HONOUR CONTROVERSY EXPECTED British Official Wireless RUGBY', Saturday. The committee of the Royal Aero Club, under the presidency of Lord Gorell, has investigated claims in order to decide who was the first British aviator to fly in a heavier-than-air machine. The committee has awarded the honour to LieutenantColonel J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon, M.P., who first flew on May 2,1909. The other claimant was Mr. A. V. Roe. The decision of the club is likely to excite controversy. Hitherto it has been generally accepted that Mr. Roe flew over the Brooklands motor course at Weybridge in a machine of his own construction in June, 1908: Mr. Roe produced a witness to testify to that flight. The committee does not deny that Mr. Roe rose from the ground in a machine in the course of his experiments in 1908, but it holds that the machine was making a hop rather than a free controlled flight. It is recalled that at a banquet in London in honour of Mr. Roe last year many references were made to him as having been the first British subject to fly over the British Isles. Colonel Moore-Brabazon flew' in a Voisin machine.

It will be therefore necessary in future to admit that the first officially recognised flight by a British aviator over the British Isles was made in a French machine.