100-year-old airman from Horam to fly vintage aircraft in memory of lifelong friend

A 100-year-old former RAF pilot from Horam will be flying in a 74-year-old aircraft for his lifelong friend' 100th birthday.

Jack Hemmings will take to the skies in a 1947 Miles Gemini aircraft in memory of former RAF Flight Lieutenant’ Stuart King on Saturday, March 19.

Jack said: “I want to celebrate what would have been Stuart’s 100th birthday and to remember all he achieved in his exceptional life; a life that spanned Cardiff University, wartime RAF (including D-day landings), flying, aircraft maintenance and logistics in Africa – then more than 40 years as Director of MAF in the UK. One cannot count the number of people whose lives have been enriched by his services.”

The former RAF Squadron Leader will take off from Shuttleworth airfield, Bedfordshire, in the wooden aircraft model he and Stuart piloted across Central Africa in 1948.

It will be the first time Jack at the controls of a Miles Gemini in 74 years.

Jack is fundraising for Mission Aviation Fellowship [MAF], the charity the pair pioneered three-quarters of a century ago, which has now become the world’s largest humanitarian airline.

Stuart would have turned 100 on March 13, 2022, and Jack said he wishes to publicly remember his friend and raise funds for the charity they co-founded and in which Stuart served until his death in August 2020, aged 98.

Jack’s first Gemini flight was in 1947 when MAF launched its air service to the British public at Broxboume airport on September 6.

From there Jack and Stuart commenced a 30-stage tour of the UK to rally support and become accustomed to the aircraft, before taking off from Croydon on a 3,000 mile flight to Nairobi on January 13, 1948.

The 1948 Gemini survey was the first British mission to assess the humanitarian needs of isolated communities dotted across Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Rwanda and the Belgian Congo – which the two documented in 900 pages of first-hand analysis.

Jack said: "Together we shared many novel experiences – first flying the Miles Gemini on the 30-airfield tour of the UK, and then the six-month survey of Central Africa in 1948. He was a pilot, a conscientious engineer, a pioneer and a man of resolute faith. To him, a setback meant a need for solution followed by corrective action.

"Stuart was a great friend, a man of vision, devoted to MAF since the early days in 1947. Pioneering in Africa wasn’t a question of hope – we just went out and did it! Faith in itself is a doubtful merit, but it’s what you have faith in that matters."

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