Lieut.-Colonel Henderson, M.C., A.F.C.
Bthe death of Lieut.-Colonel Henderson in the recent air liner crash, not only has British aviation lost one of the most gallant and skilful of pilots, but the world has lost perhaps the greatest propagandist for aviation who has lived since the War.
He was a great pilot and navigator with a fine War record but it was not in this that he gave the most valuable services to aviation. It was rather in his work since the War, in his continual and strenuous work of creating an " air minded " public in this and other countries, of giving practical demonstration of how air transport could surmount its difficulties, of teaching innumerable pupils of all nationalities. A Persian whom he taught flew his own machine to Baghdad, where he is carrying on the work of propaganda for aviation, just as the Chinamen, Hindoos, Japs, and men from Overseas, were taught and enthused by him, and returned each to his own country to " spread the gospel."
Col. Henderson was a Scholar of Eton ; took his Law Degree at and rowed for Trinity, Oxford ; and was a barrister in 1914. When War was imminent he received a telegram from his brother Charles ur:ing him to join the Flying Corps. This brother, by the way, I served with in a Field. Artillery Battery in the 1st Division, which he joined as Captain after we lost ours at Neuve Chapelle. He was as remarkable a man in his way as Col. Henderson was—a brilliant soldier, a clear, quick, incisive thinker, a strict disciplinarian, yet of a nature so lovable that ever since his death commanding his battery, his mother and family have received to this day regular letters from the men who served under him.
He had an uncannily long sight in military matters ; and it was this, the firm belief that the War would last for years, and that the air arm would grow to unheard of size and value, that made him advise his brother to get into the Flying Corps.
But in August, 1914, there were more men eager to join than there were machines to be flown, and Col. HenderSon was rejected. The Motor Cycle Dispatch Riders offered the next most adventurous field, and he promptly joined them and went to France. For seven months he shared the cheery comradeship of that adven- turous band, but his health suffered under the terrible conditions of that first winter, and he was sent home to undergo a rather serious operation.
ImMediately he recovered he tried for the Flying Corps, was almost rejected on account of eyesight not being up to the required standard, but managed to " wangle" through. He " took his ticket " after a record minimum of tuition, and went at once to France (1915) flying a Morane.
His first action was against four enemy aircraft over on a bombing expedition. The call for action was a hurried one, and he went up with a machine gun he had never fired, and in the handling of which he had to have one hasty lesson before he took off. He drove down two of the four and chased the others off. Three days later he went up again, alone, to tackle six enemies, fought an amazing action in full view of the ground, and after driving two down, was caught while reloading and shot down by a glancing bullet across the forehead. He fell, stunned, for three thousand feet, recovered his senses and control of his machine on the very edge of disaster, flew back, blinded by the streaming blood, landed on his 'drome, and fainted. He was awarded the M.C. for these actions.
He was sent home ; returned to France ; came back to command Croydon and then Dover ; went to France again in 1917, commanding a Squadron, and crashed badly in a machine with an engine so defective that he would let no other fly it back for exchange. He was awarded the A.F.C. When peace came he was Lieut.-Colonel, Wing-Commander, and he got "demobbed" as quickly as possible after.
Then came his most valuable services to world aviation. He began his career as pioneer and propagandist for air transport, which continued up to the day of his death. In 1919 he bought and took to Sweden six machines-
Armstrong-Whitworths, Avros, and Fairey seaplanes. He made regular flights over the most dangerous moun- tainous country, fitting wheels, floats, or skis to machines, according to whether his journeys were over the moun- tains, or the Baltic, in winter or summer, taking up on " joy flips " every man or woman he thought might influence aviation, preaching, preaching aviation every- where to everyone.
In 1921 he was home again, giving all his unbounded energy to flying and to fighting the battle for the rights of civilian pilots, which none of than a Ito knew it will ever forget. He opened his flying school at Brooklands then, teaching (and preaching) flying to pupils from all over the world. He went to South Africa next with four of his own machines, and spent a good six months there on the same pioneer and missionary work for air transport.
Home again, he took up teaching, joy-rides, anything that would encourage aviation, and so came at last to the day when I saw him last on Croydon aerodrome, when he watched the ceremony of the baptism of the machines of the new line, and the take-off for Lc Touquet. lie pro- mised to lunch with me at Croydon, and then went off " upstairs," giving " flips " to the guests of the line's baptismal ceremony, and preaching the same old lesson of air-mindedness to them. I left Croydon two hours later—and his lunch was still uneaten, his machine was still droning round the sky, and he still preaching and teaching aviation and air transport.
" Herein endeth " my personal contaet with him, but it was only a few short days before the crash that my friend of the air line told me, very jubilant lc, how tin.y had got "the best, and very best man in the gain(' 0-tilly to join them and take complete charge of the flying services.
Those of the line, and the bereaved relatives and friends, have at least this one satisfaction : that however disaster came, it could not have been avoided by any human skill or knowledge, coolness or courage, because there, in the pilot's scat, was the epitome of all those
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