NOTED GLIDER PILOT

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27404, 17 July 1954, Page 6

NOTED GLIDER PILOT

VISIT OF MR PHILIP WILLS HOLDER OF WORLD TITLE Mr Philip Aubrey Wills, the noted English glider pilot who won the world’s championship for single seater gliders at the last international gliding meeting in Madrid in 1952, will visit New Zealand at the end of the year. The chairman of Fowlie, Reid and Wills, Ltd., a firm of London exporters, Mr Wills will be on a business trip, but it is likely that he will do some gliding in this country. He may wish to fly again a Germanbuilt Weihe single-place high performance sailplane, now in New Zealand, which he once owned. The sailplane is in the possession of the Christchurch glider pilot, Mr S, H. Georgeson, who has established New Zealand height and distance records in it.

The Weihe was built in Darmstadt in 1944. At the end of the war the Royal Air Force sent it to Farnborough for research. It was subsequently handed over to the British Gliding Association and acquired by Mr Wills. Between the end of the war and the beginning of 1952 he established most British height and distance records in it. Mr Georgeson, who knows Mr Wills well, bought it from him in 1952. Mr Wills has relatives in New Zealand. Mrs Hamilton, wife of Mr C. W. F. Hamilton, of Christchurch, and Irishman Creek station in the Mackenzie Country, and Mr Matthew Wills, of Christchurch, are cousins of Mr Wills. Mr Matthew Wills is the patron of the Canterbury Gliding Club. Distinguished Flying Career After learning to fly in 1928, Mr Wills, four years later, took up v gliding, and played a prominent part' in the rapid development of British sailplane flying from that time. In 1934 he became the second British holder of the international “Silver C” award, and since that date he has frequentlyestablished British height and distance gliding records He was the first holder of the International Gold Badge (No. 3) for flights of more than 3000 metres in altitude ana 300 kilometres in distance in a sailplane; Mr Wills was the senior British pilot at the world gliding championships at Samaden in Switzerland in 1948, and Orebro in Sweden in 1950. At Madrid in 1952 he won the world championship for single-place craft, and next week he will be defending his title when the world meeting is held again in England. Tn 1939 he joined the Air Trans—' Auxiliary in England, rising to become its second-in-rommand and dinytnr nf operations. He qualified to ferr’- aU types of single/ twin and multi-engined

aircraft. Between 1946 and 1948 gen°vrl manager (technical) for ’’.2 A j....’ - ice 19?“ he h-as chairman of Fov he. and Wills, Ltd.