Comets and Concordes, The pilot who flew the first and fastest of all jet airliners

In this unique memoir Peter Duffey records not only the challenges of flying such varied and different machines, but also the remarkable people he met and events he witnessed in his long career. His love of aircraft began with childhood sightings of the R101 Airship and Short Mayo composite flying boats. His first flight was aboard a de Havilland Fox Moth and he crossed the English Channel with his family on a four-engined de Havilland biplane. As an ATC cadet his familiarisation flight on a Vickers Wellington had to be diverted when the Luftwaffe attacked the aircraft's home base! He joined the RAF in 1943 and was trained on the Tiger Moth, Fairchild Cornell and Airspeed Oxford. He was later trained to fly anti-submarine patrols in the B-24 Liberators of RAF Coastal Command. After the war he flew for Portsmouth Aviation, then Scottish Airlines and later British South American Airways. In 1949, BSAA merged with BOAC and Duffey transferred to BOAC as a co-pilot, initially on the Argonaut and later the Comet 1. When the Comets were grounded, following a spate of accidents, he flew Argonauts and Stratocruisers before moving to the DC-7C on which he obtained his first command. He later flew the much-improved Comet 4 and became a training captain. In 1965, with the retirement of the Comets, he became a training captain on the Boeing 707, and in 1975 he was one of British Airways' first six Concorde training captains. He retired in 1980 and emigrated, with his wife, to Canada where he requalified as a flying instructor and executive jet pilot.

IMAGES: 57 colour and mono illustrations