In the aftermath of the Great War, Alan Cobham, a 24-year-old pilot from Streatham, was demobbed from the RAF with few vocational skills, but a knowledge of flying machines. He entered the public gaze when he became lead pilot with the aircraft builder Geoffrey de Havilland and in the 1920s flew outrageously long distances all over the Empire, the newsreels famously reporting his arrival in India, Australia and South Africa. When he returned home - his floatplane landing in front of the House of Commons - he was immediately knighted by King George V. His antics eclipsed de Havilland, and he parted company to found a 'Flying Circus' with aerobatics, wing-walkers, and parachutists, who toured the country and sold joy rides to thousands of people for 5 shillings. "It's a full time job being Alan Cobham!" he was quoted as saying. The mid-1930s saw aircraft technology go through a dramatic transition, the fabric airships and clumsy biplanes of the previous decades being replaced by streamlined, metal-skinned monoplanes. The post-war rules that had created Imperial Airways' monopoly were expiring and it was now possible for private companies to operate new air routes. Cobham took this opportunity to invest £30,000 in his own airline, Cobham Air Routes. He offered two services a day, hopping from Croydon airport to Portsmouth, Bournemouth, and finally landing on the beach at Guernsey, flying one Airspeed Envoy and three eight-seater Westland Wessex monoplanes bought second-hand from Imperial Airways. Cobham recruited a number of local pilots, including 31-year old Robert William Ogden from Camberwell. Barely in his teens in the Great War, Ogden had nonetheless been smitten with the 'air-mindedness' that Cobham had sought to inject into the British public with his publicity-seeking exploits. On Monday, 6 May 1935 Cobham Air Routes flew its first passengers to Guernsey. As visitors to Guernsey can testify, the Channel Islands are frequently fog-bound, requiring modern aircraft with their powerful engines and sophisticated instruments to divert or postpone their flights. Yet seventy years ago safety was not given the same consideration as it has today, travel was expected to be daring - every month of that year The Times ran stories of deaths and injuries from train crashes, while aircrashes were even more frequent. It would be another two decades before seat belts were even considered for regular fitment on motorcars. So when Pilot Ogden prepared his engines for his return flight from Guernsey on the afternoon of the 3rd of July he probably felt no major concern when the starboard engine on his Westland Wessex airliner had difficulty starting. After all, he had just one City businessman to carry as a passenger, the airliner had two other 140 horse power radial engines, and the weather was clear, even if the wind was gusting. Eventually the third engine cackled into life, and he took off in the late afternoon towards Bournemouth, aware that he would have to hurry if he was to get to his new home in Bognor Regis that night. Soon into the flight the starboard engine spluttered and, after thirty minutes, it cut out totally. Ogden's attempts to restart it failed, but he knew he had two more engines which would get the plane past the Needles. From there he could put down on the Isle of Wight, otherwise he would have to turn back or divert to France. After 30 minutes a second engine failed and the Wessex lost power and height. The headwind had strengthened, and Ogden realised he would never make landfall. He was over the Channel 10 miles south of Swanage when he ditched into the sea. His last actions before impact were to put out a distress signal on his radio and to warn his passenger to put on a cork lifebelt. After a crash landing in the rough swell, passenger C.F.H. Grainger was able to force open the rear exit door and jump out. At 20.00 Grainger was spotted 22 miles from the Needles by the London steamer Stanmore, and was fished out of the sea. He had been in the cold water for two hours and had suffered badly from exposure and exhaustion. He required resuscitation for an hour and a half before he was revived and was conveyed to Fowey harbour in Cornwall. Grainger told his rescuers that Ogden had been incapacitated by the crash and remained at the aeroplane's controls strapped to his seat for the fifteen minutes that the airliner took to sink. He was never seen again. At the subsequent Air Ministry investigation, the Inspector of Accidents concluded that Ogden could have turned back safely, but that he took an 'unnecessary, but not wholly unjustifiable risk' in choosing to continue his journey after the first engine failed. Ogden's death gave Cobham cause for reflection. He halted his plans for the Cobham Air Routes and sold it to Captain G.P. Olley. (Olley Air Service was merged into British European Airways after WW2). Cobham withdrew a little from publicity and turned his energies towards industry and the technologies that would made flight both possible and safe. Among his countless innovations, the best known is probably in-flight refuelling, which drew the interest of the USAAF and RAF in the later years of WW2 as they tried to fly longer distances. Both the British 'probe and drogue' method and the American 'boom' system were pioneered by Cobham, and are now commonplace in all the major air forces of the world. Sir Alan Cobham died in 1977. Cobham plc, the company he founded after Ogden's death, is now valued at £2.5 billion on the London Stock Market. Ogden's memorial at Norwood lies at the foot of that of his mother Susannah Ellen Ogden (1877-1943) (grave 39,595, square 67). http://www.findonvillage.com/0390_flying_over_findon.htm http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person.php?LinkID=mp00938&role=sit&page=1 Flowers at the funeral of Sir Alan Cobham buried at Tarrant Rushton
