[WWI] Healey museum

[ot 811]

David,
Apparently Donald Healey was as interested in aircraft as he was,
later, in race cars:
    Here is an excerpt :
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In order to get into the RFC it was quicker to join the infantry
first, so I fudged my age and went along to enlist, being accepted in
the East Surrey Regiment at Shepherd's Bush on 29 October 1915. My
father thought otherwise, however. By disclosing my real age, he had
my enlistment cancelled, and back I went to Sopwith's until early in
1916 when, having reached the age of military dis­cretion, I went
along to Earls Court where the RFC were recruit­ing. The only way I
could get in was as an Air Mechanic, although I could practically fly
an aeroplane, and the only way to gain quick promotion to Air Mechanic
1st Class was to pass a test, the prin­cipal qualification for which
was to splice a wire rope, which I had already learned at Kingston.
Much importance was attached to rigging on those early machines.

This move was, I think, one of my greatest mistakes. Had I remained
with Sopwith's as a pupil I would eventually have learned to fly — it
was included in the original £200 fee; and, by the end of the war, my
extensive experience in building aeroplanes as designer and engineer
would have been invaluable, such knowledge and expertise being very
rare then. Had I stayed on with them, I believe there would have been
Healey aeroplanes, instead of Healey cars. Instead, I was subjected to
what seemed an unending period of day-long 'square-bashing' under
selected, very tough, ex-Guards sergeant-majors — wholly unprofitably,
in my view, turning us into infantrymen first.  .....