AUCKLANDER WINS R.A.F. CHAMPIONSHIP

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 88, 5 July 1927, Page 11

AUCKLANDER WINS R.A.F. CHAMPIONSHIP

MAJOR WALLINGFORD’S SON FINE SHOOTING RECORD According to cabled advice, the rifle championship of the Royal Air Force has been won at Bisley by FlyingOfficer S. Wallingford, son of Major Wallingford, of Devonport. who ‘is himself a fine rifleman. Flying-Officer Wallingford, now 29. won the company cup two years in succession at the Auckland Grammar School. “It proved that a boy could not start too young.” said Major Wallingford, when he attributed his son’s success to the fact that the young man had first learnt to shoot at the ago of seven. Major Wallingford believed that nowhere else have boys the same opportunity of becoming efficient marksmen as in New Zealand. Ho was particularly pleased to hear that his son had succeeded, as he was not sure that his son possessed the right temperament, and the self-control, to stand the nervous strain of a competition. The army championship has been won six times by Major Wallingford, who is just retiring from the position of musketry instructor under the Defence Department. He was the first man to win the army championship at the age of 23, and his son was born on the day on which he won the Prince of Wales’s prize for the first time. Twelve years later his son was sitting behind him when he won it the second time. When only 18 Sydney Wallingford received his commission in the Rifle Brigade, his father’s old regiment, and was then transferred to the Royal Air Force, with which he served at Salonika and in the East. He came back to New Zealand, and took up farming, but he returned to England and rejoined the Royal Air Force. He is at present taking a course in navigation, and holds the position of armament officer. He has also been an instructor in musketry, bombing, and Lewis gun work for some time.