Philip White from Bicester Heritage explores a momentous and dramatic flight that made history at RAF Bicester.

“I STARTED from Oxford on the morning of August 19th, 1911,” wrote Lt. H.R.P. Reynolds in April 1913, “and flew along the line towards Cambridge, where I encountered a misty atmosphere and thought it well to descend.

"I came down close to Launton station. That evening, soon after 7pm, I started again.

"It was warm and fine, but rather suggestive of thunder; the air was perfectly still.

"I scarcely had occasion to move the control lever at all until I got to Bletchley, where it began to get rather bumpy.

"At first, I thought nothing of this; but suddenly it got much worse, and I came to the conclusion it was time to descend.

"A big black thundercloud was coming up on my right front; it did not look reassuring, and there was good landing ground below.”

"At this time I was flying about 1,700 feet altitude by my aneroid, which had been set at Oxford in the morning.

"I began a glide, but, almost directly I had switched off, the tail of the machine was suddenly wrenched upwards as if it had been hit from below, and I saw the elevator go down perpendicularly below me.

"I was not strapped in, and I suppose I caught hold of the uprights at my side, for the next thing I realised was that I was lying in a heap on what ordinarily is the under surface of the top plane. The machine in fact was upside down.

"I stood up, held on and waited. The machine just floated about, gliding from side to side like a piece of paper falling.

"Then it over-swung itself, so to speak, and went down more or less vertically sideways until it righted itself momentarily the right way up.

"Then it went down tail first, turned over upside down again, and restarted the old floating motion.

"We were still some way from the ground, and look what seemed like a longtime in reaching it.

"I looked round somewhat hurriedly, the tail was still there, and I could see nothing wrong.

"As we got close to the ground the machine was doing long swings from side to side, and I made up my mind that the only thing to do was to try and jump clear of the wreckage before the crash.

"In the last swing we slid down, I think, about thirty feet, and hit the ground pretty hard. "Fortunately I hung on practically to the end, and, according to those who were looking on, I did not jump till about 10 feet from the ground.

"Something hit me on the head and scratched it very slightly, but what it was I did not know, for I was in too much of a hurry to get away from the machine to enquire at that time.

The next morning I went out to it and found one of the rods, which held up the left extension lying by the engine and the right wing tip.

"The propeller was undamaged, the elevator and the tail were practically unhurt, while the undercarriage, being uppermost, was untouched.

"The machine on which this happened was an ordinary Bristol biplane with a 50-h.p. Gnome.

"I was told that just before I smashed there had been two or three ‘whirlwinds,’ as the people called them, in Bletchley, and that one of these had stripped the leaves off a tree.

"Very possibly this was my friend.”

This astonishing flight by Reynolds in 1911 achieved two ‘firsts’.

The first being that he unintentionally became the first man to fly upside down (whilst standing on the underside of the top wing of his Bristol Boxkite!), and secondly being the first aircraft to land and take off from the grass that later became RAF Bicester (near Launton), now Bicester Heritage.

RAF Bicester continued to be a location for ground breaking moments, perhaps its next most important being the first flight of the prototype Handley Page Halifax, which took place on October 25, 1939, less than 30 years after Reynolds.

Not to mention the plethora of young men who took their first leap in to the air in Bristol Blenheim bombers whilst in the care of No. 13 Operational Training Unit, destined for No.2 Operational Group, Bomber Command.

Today the site continues to pioneer, not just in aviation but in the world of motoring too, becoming the world’s first business campus dedicated to historic motoring enterprise.

The historic flying field is still wonderfully active; largely thanks to the Bicester Gliding Centre, in action on the grass and in the sky since 1956.

To this day the club runs an active, award winning training programme with some thirty 14-18 year olds enrolled, 15 of whom are already enthusiastic solo pilots.

They welcome new students, so do get in touch if you wish to take on a new challenge.

In addition to the gliders, Finest Hour Experiences offers the opportunity to take to the air in a vintage Tiger Moth biplane, which frequently conjures evocative scenes above the skies of our town.

Keep your eyes peeled for The Classic and Sports Car Show in association with Flywheel on the 23-24 June, when the airfield will fill once more with dramatic air displays from the greatest flying machines from the pre-jet age era.

Long may Bicester’s aviation and motoring history continue!