OBITUARIES F
our more dedicated supporters of our Museum have passed away in recent months
– three were ex-RAF World War Two veterans and two became very accomplished post-war test pilots.
S/Ldr Peter P Baker AFC S/Ldr Baker was born on 2nd September 1925 and, after being educated at the Merchant Taylors’ School and Oxford University, he joined the RAF in 1944 and mainly flew Sunderland flying boats until qualifying as a flying instructor in 1949. He then progressed to the Empire Test Pilots’ School at Boscombe Down in 1953 and gained useful further experience on jets and helicopters there before leaving the RAF to join Handley Page Ltd at Radlett, chiefly as an experimental test pilot on the Victor Mk 2. After the tragic loss of BAC’s Deputy Chief Test Pilot (CTP) Mike Lithgow and his crew in the crash of the 1-11 prototype in October 1963, Peter joined BAC to continue testing the VC10 and 1-11 (including the first flight of the Museum's example G-ASYD, as well as a remarkable forced landing of G-ASJD on Salisbury Plain in 1964) from Wisley and Hurn until transferring to the Concorde programme in 1967. As Assistant CTP (Concorde) until 1980 he logged 1,360 hours testing the iconic airliner until retiring as British Aerospace Filton's Deputy CTP in 1982, when he joined the Civil Aviation Authority as a senior test pilot before retiring as their CTP in 1987. Further work as a freelance airline captain and aviation consultant followed and his logbooks record an impressive grand total of 10,045 hours, flying 95 different aircraft types including all three V-bombers! A keen supporter of the Museum – especially when we acquired Concorde G-BBDG which he flew on its first and last flights – Peter died in London on 18th November 2017 aged 92 and his funeral was held at St Mary's Church, Benefield near Peterborough on 6th December.
Maurice Curtis
Maurice Curtis died on 18th December in his mid-90s and was known to many of us as a long- standing and very knowledgeable steward on the Loch Ness Wellington. He worked for the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough both be- fore and after WW2 when he became an RAF pilot in Bomber Command, training on Welling- tons before flying Handley Page Hampdens oper- ationally. Shot down over enemy territory, he was
63
Update
Peter Baker celebrating BAC 1-11 G-ASYD’s 40th birthday in 2005 (John Downey).
made a Prisoner of War until a long and gruelling march to freedom ahead of the Russian advance through Germany in 1945. Specialising post-war in auto-landing research at Farnborough, he later joined BEA at Heathrow Airport to assist with the Trident airliner's auto-landing system before join- ing Ferranti in Kent where he finally retired as a sales executive. His later life was spent in Guild- ford and he became a regular Museum volunteer in the old ‘Wellington Hangar’ with his wife Gwen. My grateful thanks to John Lattimore for helping with this tribute to Maurice.
Noel (Dick) Lewis
‘Dick’ Lewis was a highly dedicated Brooklands enthusiast from childhood. After war-time service as an engineer on Lancasters in RAF Bomber Command, Dick ran his father’s well-known Weybridge motorcycle shop, Lewis & Sons, a widely-respected BSA specialist. He was a founder member of the Brooklands Society in 1967 and a leading figure in the Society’s Track Clearers in the 1970s and 80s – often reporting in the Society’s Gazette on their progress in removing decades of accumulated vegetation and other abandoned materials from all surviving sections of the Race Track.
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