Early Flights
Donald Bennett was born the youngest son of a grazier in Toowoomba, Queensland. He attended Brisbane Grammar School and later joined the Royal Australian Air Force in 1930 and transferred to the Royal Air Force a year later, starting with the flying boats of 20 Squadron. Bennett developed a passion for accurate flying and precise navigation that would never leave him. After a period as an instructor at RAF Calshot, he left the service in 1935 (retaining a reserve commission) to join Imperial Airways. Over the next five years, Bennett specialised in long distance flights, breaking a number of records and pioneering techniques which would later become commonplace, notably air-to-air refuelling. In July 1938 he piloted the Mercury part of the Short Mayo Composite flying-boat across the Atlantic; this flight earned him the Oswald Watt Gold Medal for that year.
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Famous quotes containing the words early and/or flights:
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“A noble soul is not the one that can manage the highest flights but the one that rises very little and falls very little but always dwells in a free, resplendent atmosphere and altitude.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)