Thursday, March 28, 2024

A Gipsy flies

The story of a 1929 bi-plane with a truly fascinating pedigree

 

Britain’s best-known wartime Prime Minister piloted a Gipsy Moth aeroplane that will be sold by auctioneers Bonhams in February 2013 at a guide of £120,000. The same craft was also featured in an iconic 1980s film and was also supposedly flown by a member of the Fiennes family who mysteriously disappeared in 1998.

 

The 1929 De Havilland DH 60 GMW Gipsy Moth bi-plane G-AAMY that will be sold by Bonhams at the Grand Palais in Paris in February 2013
Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965)

Piloted several times by Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965) and used in the Oscar award winning Out of Africa, this 1929 De Havilland Gipsy Moth bi-plane is 24-foot long and has a 30-foot wingspan. It is capable of a maximum speed of 105mph and “wears” a yellow and black livery. It’s registration is G-AAMY in homage to the pioneering English aviatrix Amy Johnson (1903 – 1941).

 

In the film, the plane was flown by Robert Redford but though the life of the big game hunter Denys Finch Hatton he played is intriguing; the exploits of Redford’s aviator double are just as fascinating a story.

 

Sydney Pollack’s “Out of Africa” (1985) starred Robert Redford and Meryl Streep
Tom Danaher pictured whilst filming with Mel Gibson

Few outside of the aviation world will have heard of Tom Danaher (1929 – ) but aside from Out of Africa, he’s pretty much done it all. After graduating from a high school in Dallas in 1941, he became a Marine Corps fighter pilot. Stationed on Okiwana in August 1945, he shot down the last Japanese bomber on the final night of the Second World War and also made history, aged 21, for downing three other Japanese “Betty” bombers in the eight nights before the ceasefire.

 

Recalled to active service in 1951, Danaher flew one of the earliest jets, the F3D Skynight, with the Marines in Korea on night combat patrols and then was part of the last combat mission on a high altitude bombing strike over Pyongyang, North Korea in July 1953.

 

Danaher’s passion for flying continued after the war and in 1954 he flew his own plane, a 1948 Bonanza, to England to visit friends he’d made from the RAF whilst in Korea. To make the journey, he built a 109-gallon auxiliary fuel tank so that he could fly straight across the Atlantic. On the way home he called in for an audience with Pope Pius XII in Rome.

 

The surplus Second World War minesweeper from which Wonderful Radio London operated in the 1960s

Danaher’s visits to England led to him becoming involved in a pirate radio station in from 1944 to 1967 named Wonderful Radio London. Like many others, Danaher was not impressed by the BBC’s monopolistic attitude to radio programming and so helped build a 17,000-watt station on a surplus Second World War minesweeper. It was anchored three and a half miles off the English coast and outside of Britain’s territorial limit. Of the experience, Danaher told Airport Journals:

 

“We had someone in Dallas who would record KLIF, a top 40 station, and we put it right on the air… The Englishmen over there just ate it up… The station programmed news and top 40 music and was very successful. It had the largest listening audience of any of any commercial broadcast station at the time.”

 

Back in America, Danaher owned three car dealerships in Wichita Falls, Texas but sold them in 1972 to open his own airport, the Tom Danaher Airport. Lake Wichita Airport (7TXO), as it was also known, kept the aviator busy but he has also piloted in films numbering Empire of the Sun, Sky Bandits, Air America, Bad Medicine, The Pleasure of Love, White Hunter Black Heart, Cliffhanger and Goldeneye.

 

In 1985, Danaher was recruited to fly Gipsy Moth G-AAMY by Sydney Pollack (1934 – 2008), the American director of Out of Africa. He recounted his six week experience on set in Masai Mara, Kenya in an interview for his local Texan newspaper, the TimesRecordNews, in 2008. Here, he highlighted the problems of trying to film with a vintage plane that “has no brakes and is difficult to steer”:

 

“Robert Redford couldn’t make the thing turn. It took considerable finesse to turn it on the ground… The third time, he gave it full throttle… The left wing contacted a thick thorn bush and it tore some of the fabric off the lower left wing of the plane. We couldn’t fly it the rest of the day.”

 

Other dramas arose with G-AAMY in terms of Meryl Streep’s body double refusing to fly in it and the craft struggling to reach the high altitudes necessary to film a sweeping shot of the plane flying past a waterfall. Danaher took charge stating: “If I can get a piece of string and a ruler, I can fix this.” He found just such, cleverly installed them and Pollack: “got every single shot he wanted.”

 

Pilot Roger Fiennes (1944 – 1998) pictured with Alexy Zaitov during the 1989 Glasmoth project expedition to Moscow and back

Another person to have piloted the Gipsy Moth G-AAMY, according to a comment left in the PPRuNe Professional Pilots Rumour Network forum, was a man named Roger Fiennes. Whether this “rumour” is true or not, the cousin of the actor Ralph Fiennes and the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, is another character with a flying history as fascinating as his true family name – which turns out to be “Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes” when presented in full. Of why he did not use this lengthy and historic surname, Fiennes is said to have once commented:

 

“You try writing that signature on a 6 foot long cheque book.”

 

Fiennes flew many hours in a variety of planes and one of the best documented was an expedition supported by the Daily Mail from White Waltham Airfield in Berkshire to Sheremetyevo Airport in the Soviet Union in April 1989 and back. He flew one of three Tiger Moth bi-planes with a Russian navigator named Alexy Zaitov. The journey took three weeks to complete, involved 33 perilous stops and covered 5,000 miles.

 

On 19th April 1998, Fiennes was piloting a 1941 DH82A Tiger Moth, G-BALX, from Dieppe to Headcorn Aerodrome in Kent but he failed to reach his destination. The Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) report into the disappearance concluded:

 

“Although the pilot contacted Paris Information by radio, in the absence of a specific request, the flight plan was not activated. Lashenden was therefore unaware of the flight’s departure and ETA. When the aircraft was reported missing overdue action, and the subsequent Search and Rescue operation, which was activated on the morning of 21 April 1998. Since then there has been no sign of the aircraft or pilot.”

 

Articles at the time and forums since are sparse in detail but several forum posters and articles suggest that Mr Fiennes had “mounting debts and a string of business collapses.” Whilst some go as far as to suggest a “Lord Lucan” style disappearance and make references to “paddling canoes” and “check[ing] the Panamanian register,” others remember a “nice guy, sadly missed.” Whatever really happened that fateful day, though, will probably never be solved.

 

Another image of Gipsy Moth G-AAMY

G-AAMY, which was marked G-AAMT for the filming of Out of Africa, is a plane with a remarkable past. We suspect there’ll be a few more dramas for this craft yet.

The 1929 De Havilland DH 60 GMW Gipsy Moth bi-plane G-AAMY will be sold by Bonhams at the Grand Palais in Paris, France sale during Rétromobile week (6th to 7th February 2013). For more information telephone +33 1 42 61 10 11 or go to: http://www.bonhams.com

 

To learn more about Tom Danaher’s experience flying G-AAMY in Out of Africa, read the full TimesRecordNews report by Lara K. Richards at: http://www.timesrecordnews.com/news/2008/jun/08/fly/?print=1

 

To read the AAIB account of the disappearance of Roger Fiennes and DH82A Tiger Moth, G-BALX, go to: http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/dft_avsafety_pdf_502449.pdf

 

The Steeple Times
The Steeple Times
We research and background check our articles. If you believe we have made and error in some detail please get in touch, we seek always to write the truth and stand against a press owned by a self selected few. Please help us, we will accept all your likes, subscriptions and anonymous suport. The Editor and his team at the Steeple Times.

4 COMMENTS

  1. Hi Matthew.
    This aircraft was actioned by Bonhams at Silverstone about 10 years ago. We were selling a 4.5lt Blower Bentley and my Stepfather wanted to buy the plane for my Mother as she loved the film so much and he had romantic ideas of flying her to the Isle of Wight where we had just bought a house……!
    I think it was expected to achieve £32,000 from memory, but I wish we had bought it!! Pretty much the coolest bit of film memorabilia one could own.
    NB read the link below about Denys Finch-Hatton’s .450 double rifle that supposedly went down in the plane with him at Tsavo in 1931.(http://www.holtsauctioneers.com/Admin%20Stuff/In%20The%20Gun%20Room/December%202009.pdf).
    It is now on display in Ray Ward on Cadogan Place. The owner bought it off John Ormiston about 3 years ago.

  2. Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, or how I flew from London to Paris in 25 hours and 11 minutes. What nostalgia, rather grand I would say. Those were the days.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

£1 per week Supports The Steeple Times

Help journalism to remain honest & independent. You can make a difference to the world today.

3,573FansLike
2,068FollowersFollow
16,731FollowersFollow
4,962SubscribersSubscribe

Subscribe For DAILY NEWS

Please subscribe, like and share this unique site, it helps us tremendously. The Steeple Times in return will send you an email at noon each and everyday, that we sincerely hope you will enjoy & look forward to seeing in your inbox.

AD
Advertisement

Trending Now

Getting One’s Goat – A Cheesy Conundrum – Goat vs Goats vs Goat’s vs Goats’ Cheese

Matthew Steeples explores conundrum of how to describe cheese made from goat’s milk and shares thoughts of Susie Dent to Alan Rusbridger, Christine Hamilton, Jay Rayner, Matthew Jukes, Mic Wright, Nigella Lawson, Matthew Wright, Tom Parker Bowles and Samantha Markle on goat cheese.

Most Popular Articles

The Phil & Matt Show

Phillip Schofield filmed smoking shisha with his alleged ex-lover Matt McGreevy (and pictured in bed thereafter); another image shows the pair together in photograph...

Was Mucky Minx Meghan Markle A ‘Yacht Girl’ For ‘Randy Andy’?

As author Kirby Sommers suggests that the then Meghan Markle likely spent time with Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein before she met Prince Harry, we again highlight the mucky, murkiness and mendacious manner of this alleged “yacht girl.”

SchofieldLite

‘Politicalite’ suggest Phillip Schofield orchestrated his ‘mass coming out’ after a former ‘This Morning’ runner had gone to the press about a supposed relationship...

Meddling Meghan Markle Expose – Attwood, Hopkins & Steeples

Expose interview with Matthew Steeples by Shaun Attwood and Jennifer Hopkins about the former Meghan Markle watched over 73,000 times in 16 hours since it aired; Steeples condemns hapless Prince Harry and his meddling menace wife.

Ampika Pickston

Oldham born divorcee and former glamour model Ampika Pickston describes herself as “feisty, fun loving and warm hearted”. Now based in Hale Barns, Cheshire...

Justice for James Scurlock

Power of social media proven after senseless killing of James Scurlock in Omaha, Nebraska allegedly by a controversial bar owner named Jake Gardner who has been photographed with Donald Trump.

Nasty NestSeekers

Entitled Hamptons brat Jonathan Davis exposed for allegedly squatting in Sag Harbor during the coronavirus lockdown; it turns out he’s a realtor with NestSeekers.
[td_block_6 custom_title="Most Liked..." sort="popular7"]