Transcriber’s Notes.
Hyphenation has been standardised.
Other changes made are noted at the end of the book.
H. G. HAWKER
AIRMAN:
HIS LIFE AND WORK
H. G. HAWKER, AIRMAN:
HIS LIFE AND WORK
By
MURIEL HAWKER
WITH A FOREWORD BY
Lt.-Col. J. T. C. MOORE-BRABAZON, M.C., M.P.
WITH FRONTISPIECE AND 24 ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON:
HUTCHINSON & CO.
PATERNOSTER ROW
FOREWORD
By Lt.-Col. J. T. C. MOORE-BRABAZON, M.C., M.P.
I have been shown the great honour by Mrs. Hawker of beingasked to write a Foreword to this book about her late husband.I can do nothing better than give the advice to all to read it,because, if they have followed aviation for some time back, theywill live over again that heroic epoch when flight was really beingmade possible and will appreciate some of the difficulties andmany of the successes that make the early days of aviation sucha fascinating story; and if, on the other hand, they have onlytaken an interest in aviation lately, they will get conveyed to themfrom this book the atmosphere that pervaded the little communityof enthusiasts who existed in the early days.
The figure of Hawker looms up large in the early days ofaviation, and such was the man, that even after the war, withthe hundreds of thousands of people that came into the movement,he still stood out a noteworthy figure.
His name will go down for all time coupled with others whogave their lives for the cause, such as Rolls, Grace, Cody.
It does indeed show a singular change in the mentality of thenation that the most popular sporting figures of recent times havebeen men whose prowess has been associated with their dominationover machinery rather than animals. The bicycle was theinstrument that first compelled the attention of all to a knowledgeof mechanics, the motor-car demanded further knowledge on thesubject, but it was not until the advent of the aeroplane that theimagination of the youth of this country was fired to appreciatethe necessity for knowledge of mechanics.
Hawker, thirty years ago, was an impossibility, but when hedied he was the idealised sportsman of the youth of the country,and it was rightly so. Modest in triumph, hard-working, atremendous “sticker,” yet possessed of that vision without whichno man can succeed, he stands out a figure whose loss we mourneven to-day, but whose life and career will serve as an exa