Description
One of the big figures at Hendon was the late Bentfield Charles Hucks who, after a wonderful career, died from pneumonia following influenza. He joined Mr. Grahame-White in 1910, and toured with him in England and America. He taught himself to fly on a Blackburn monoplane at Filet’. Hucks was the first British aviator to “loop “, and was for a long time, without a doubt, the finest aviator in this country. He was one of the airmen who have been favoured with a Command to fly before the King.
- C. Hucks was the first British pilot to loop. He used a modified Bleriot monoplane like Pegoud’s. The date was November 22, igog, a Sunday, and a wet and windy day. At his second loop he failed to complete the circle, and slid backwards. Disaster appeared inevitable, but the machine recovered its normal position. When he came to the ground, but not before he had looped several times, he explained that insufficient speed had prevented his machine from reaching the top of the loop, but that it had righted itself.
Unfortunately for the argument in the newspaper quoted above, on the very day it appeared Gustav Hamel looped on a standard unaltered Morane monoplane.
During his passing-out flights for a certificate his machine broke in the air! He had his share of accidents. Thus, in the Circuit of Britain his engine failed at Luton, and he landed in a field enclosed by a barbed-wire fence which carried his chassis clean away.
In June, 1912, an Australian gentleman who gave prizes in the Aerial Derby paid £1,000 to the Grahame-White Company to release Hucks from his six months’ contract. In July of that year Hucks flew from Hendon to Birmingham, 110 miles, in about 1½ hours, on a Bleriot monoplane. Over Rugby he was caught in a rain squall, and was hurled about like a leaf. His course was almost sideways, so big was the angle of his machine to its path on account of allowance for drift.
He used his aeroplane in a flying campaign for the Unionist candidate at an election in Midlothian in August, 1913, and in the same month lost a race with Hamel in a flight from Birmingham to Redditch, Coventry, Nuneaton, Tamworth, Walsall, and back to Birmingham; but only 20 seconds separated them at the finish.
In 1912 Hucks flew from Weymouth to Hendon, non-stop, 133 miles, in 105 minutes. Also from Hendon to Bath and back, without a stop either way, 212 miles, in zoo minutes flying time. On one occasion he carried sample tins of tobacco to towns round Newcastle.
In 1913, he flew upside-down and looped-the-loop at Buc, the first Englishman to do it, and on return to England he was met at Charing Cross by other aviators and ” chaired ” upside down ! This was followed by exhibitions at Hendon of upsidedown flying and looping-the-loop.
At the outbreak of War Hucks joined the R.F.C. and went to France, where he contracted pleurisy. He was invalided home and given Captain’s rank, and became test pilot for Mr. Holt Thomas’s Company.
Hucks left his mark on aviation in a great many ways. Material evidence of it is afforded by the Hucks Starter, that queer-looking auto-carriage with an apparatus from which a long arm stretches out. Its long arm is attached to the propeller of an aeroplane, which is thus started without swinging by hand. How many lives and how much labour has the Hucks starter saved ?
