AIRMAN PADDY FLYNN

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20821, 3 June 1939, Page 25 (Supplement)

AIRMAN PADDY FLYNN

KILLED IN A CRASH BUSPECTED OF SMUGGLING SHADOWED BY SCOTLAND YARD (T'mes Air Mail Service) LONDON, May 10 Scotland Yard and Customs Investigation Department officials called for their records yesterday on Captain J. J. (“Paddy") Flynn, one-legged Irishman who was killed on Monday while flying with a nineteen-year-old typist Air Guard, reports the Daily Express. They marked the flies with one word in large letters—Dead. But Paddy Flynn would have been alive to-day if he had stuck to • making time-tables. After the crash in which he lost his I*B —in 1930—Imperial Airways gave him a job in their statistical department. But time-tables bored Paddy and he went back to the air. Shadowed Few of his friends knew that for the last three years he had been watched on several occasions by Scotland Yard officers and Customs inquiry officers.

Flynn, former Imperial Airways pilot, was shadowed by the authorities when it was discovered that a foreigner had been smuggled into England by air.

For days , police and Customs officers kept 'watch at his little flying field in Essex where Flynn kept I a few planes. From there they followed him to a flat in the West End of London. Flynn afterwards confessed that he had received £IOO for a trip to France to pick up a foreigner. He was fined for breaking Customs regulations. He told the court that he had refused to fly the man back from France when he found out that he was an undesirable alien. £2OO Job Although still making history as a i one-legged flying instructor, Flynn was soon under the notice of the police again when it was discovered that he j had obtained an Irish Free State passport lor a man living in London. Paddy, who had been an organiser jof the Irish Free State Air Force, I flew to Dublin to obtain the passport j and w'as paid £2OO for the job. When Scotland Yard seized the i passport they discovered Flynn’s part. When he gave up his time-table i job he started his own flying school. ; It had little success. It closed down, and for Paddy it seemed that his air i days were finished. I Bailiffs took away his furniture. His I telephone was cut off. Last summer I he was made bankrupt, when he adI mrtted liabilities of £137 with no assets. The new flying boom took Paddy I back into the air again.