The Shuttleworth Collection's de Havilland DH88 Comet, Percival Mew Gull and Miles Hawk Speed Six, at the Shuttleworth Family Airshow 2021.
3 De Havilland DH88 Comets were made for the 1934 MacRobertson Air Race from England to Australia.
Each cost £50,000 and De Havilland Ltd financed the project for prestige and research. Each was sold for only £5,000.
The first , the black and gold ‘Black Magic’ E-1 (G-ACSP) flew on 8/9/1934. It was flown in the race by Jim and Amy Mollinson (nee Johnson). It was powered by two 230 hp Gipsy Six R engines, driving Ratier two-position propellers that changed the pitch from fine to coarse automatically as airspeed increased.
Two crew sat in tandem behind three fuel tanks which gave a range of nearly 3,000 miles. It had a retractable undercarriage and its light-weight was the result of it being made mostly of wood. The only metal used was for load bearing components.
The other two aircraft were the British Racing green (G-ACSR), flown by Owen Cathcart and Ken Waller and this aircraft, (G-ACSS) ‘Grosvenor House’, flown by CWA Scott and Tom Campbell Black.
The race started on 20/10/1934 from RAF Mildenhall. Both 'Black Magic' and 'Grosvenor House' flew to Baghdad non-stop. This DH88 won in 70 hours 54 minutes.
It was evaluated by the RAF as K5084 and shown at the 1936 Hendon Pageant. It had several accidents and was sold as scrap. It was bought by F Tasker and restored at Essex Aero Ltd, Gravesend. Renamed ‘The Orphan’ it was fourth in the England-Damascus Air Race of 1937.
It was renamed as ‘The Burberry’ and set time records for round trips from England to both the Cape and New Zealand.
It was left and stored at Gravesend during WW2. De Havilland apprentices statically restored it for the 1951 Festival of Britain. It was given to the Shuttleworth Collection in 1965, restored and flown again on 17/5/1987.
In 2002 the undercarriage failed when landing. Modifications to its structure were made and the aircraft flew again in 2014.
The Miles Hawk Speed Six was designed as a racing development of the Miles Hawk series of sports and towing aircraft. Three were built by Phillips and Powis. The prototype G-ACTE first flew in 1934 and was raced in Kings Cup races from 1934 to 1936.
The two others were the M2U, G-ADOD, and the M2L G-ADGP. These were built for Luis and Ruth Fontes. Both were raced in 1933 and 1936 until G-ADOD was written off on 1st October 1936 after engine failure. This left G-ADGP as the sole survivor. It was modified before and after WW 2 to obtain faster speeds, coming 2nd in 4 out of 13 Kings Cup races from 1948 to 1960.
By 1971, G-ADGP had been modified so much that it was almost unrecognisable. In 1986 it was sold to Tom Buffaloe who had it rebuilt to 1937 specification. It spent most of the next 10 years based at Old Warden. In 1997 it was sold to Concorde captain Roger Mills and kept at Fairoaks. In 2018 it was sold to the Shuttleworth Collection.
This Percival Mew Gull was originally registered ZS-AHM, named ‘The Golden City’ and flown by Major A M Miller. It was one of three Mew Gulls intended to take part in the Schlesinger Race from Portsmouth to Johannesburg in 1936. Having run out of fuel just before the first control at Belgrade and being unable to obtain a suitable grade of spirit for refuelling, Miller retired and returned to England. In 1937, the Mew Gull was sold to Alex Henshaw and re-registered G-AEXF.
Henshaw flew it to win the 1937 Folkestone Trophy at 210 mph, but suffered engine failure and force landed during that year’s King’s Cup. For the 1938 season G-AEXF was modified by Essex Aero at Gravesend. They fitted a Gipsy Six R engine in place of the former standard Gipsy Six and a Ratier variable pitch propeller taken from the Comet racer G-ACSS. Soon the Ratier was replaced by a de Havilland constant speed propeller and the fuselage was remodelled above the top longerons to give a lower profile – with the pilot seated on the floor. After this Henshaw won the 1938 King’s Cup at 236.25 mph.
G-AEXF then returned to Gravesend where a Gipsy Six series II engine, radio and long-range fuel tanks were fitted in preparation for Alex Henshaw’s Cape record flight. He took off on February 5th 1939 and returned from Cape Town 4 days 10 hours 16 minutes later, a record that stood for over 70 years. G-AEXF spent WW2 hidden in France and was returned to England, refurbished and overhauled in time to win the 1955 King’s Cup.
G-AEXF was bought in 1985 by Desmond Penrose and was returned to its original 1939 configuration by AJD engineering and then based at Old Warden. In 1991 it was badly damaged when it force landed in a barley field, probably due to carburettor icing. It was restored and later, in 2002, sold to the Real Aeroplane Company. It was then bought by the Shuttleworth Collection and went back to Old Warden on 6th October 2013.
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