The Flight of the Mew Gull

Alex Henshaw had the luck to grow up in the '20s and '30s during the golden age of flying. The Blue Riband of flying in the British Isles between the two World Wars was the King's Cup: Henshaw set his heart on it, developing a technique of racing which extracted the very maximum from his aircraft: first the Comper Swift and then the DH Leopard Moth. Parallel with his search for speed was an obsession with making accurate landfalls, and he developed this blind-flying taken deliberately in a flying partnership with his father on many carefully planned long-distance survey flights. His exciting apprenticeship in these two skills was crowned by the acquisition of the Percival Mew Gull G-AEXF in 1937. His amazing solo flight to Cape Town and back in February 1939 established several solo records that still stand today, almost 60 years later. This feat of navigation and airmanship must surely be one of man's greatest flights - 12,754 miles over desert, sea and jungle in a single-engined light aircraft.