Haldon Aerodrome
Mr William Parkhouse, later MBE, founded the Aerodrome on Little Haldon (near the golf course) in 1929 and it quickly became an aircraft business and a place to learn how to fly. Both men and women took flying lessons from there and several famous pilots landed and took off. Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus of aerial displays came to Haldon and large crowds of people watched.
In 1933 an air service flying twice daily from Cardiff to Teignmouth to Plymouth was inaugurated. The planes were chartered by GWR for airmail service, but this did not last long. Mr Parkhouse left Haldon to take over the management of Exeter Airport, but the Aerodrome continued operating.
The Air Ministry requisitioned the Aerodrome in 1939.
When invasion fears were high, beach huts were transferred from the seafront to make a blockade in case of enemy landings.
Runways were extended to include most of the golf course. Haldon Tea House became a billet for Guards.
In 1941 the Admiralty commissioned the Aerodrome as HMS Heron II, a satellite of RNAS Yeovilton, and the service carried out target practice in Lyme Bay.
Wartime map of HMS Heron II (Haldon Aerodrome)
However, the operations were frequently affected by poor weather on Haldon, and in May 1943 the unit moved elsewhere. An RAF Gliding School, no. 84, was formed, and for the last 2 years of the war, local Air Cadets received elementary training there.
Blackburn Skua Fleet Air Arm - flew from Haldon Aerodrome to tow a target behind for the gunners to practise on
Pauline Gower – joy-riding pilot
She trained as a pilot in 1927 and flew with Alan Cobham in his air shows.
She met Dorothy Spicer at the London Aeroplane Club in Edgware, North London, and together in August 1931, they established a joy-riding and air taxi service in Kent.
Pauline was licensed to carry passengers for hire and Dorothy was qualified as a ground engineer and held an 'A' (private) pilot's licence.
In 1932 they flew into Haldon Aerodrome in their Spartan plane and in her own words “arranged with the owner Mr Parkhouse to do any joy-riding or taxi work that came.
We were only there for about six weeks but we enjoyed it…One afternoon it was agreed that there should be a short exhibition of aerobatics…It was not until I had climbed to a certain height and had done a couple of loops that I noticed ahead in the front cockpit… the stowaway turned out to be a schoolboy”. They bought a Gipsy Moth for the business but struggled to make a living, so they joined another Air Circus and toured the country.
When the war came, Pauline proposed setting up a women’s section in the Air Transport Auxiliary and she became the head of this unit, delivering military aircraft such as Spitfires from factories to storage for use on missions.
Fleet Air Transport Auxiliary pilots - Lettice Curtis Jenny Broad Audrey Sale Barker Gabrielle Patterson and Pauline Gower
Lettice Curtis was born in Denbury and after her Oxford degree was inspired to take up flying from a chance encounter with an airman as she drove past Haldon Airfield. She asked him if women could become pilots and he said yes, so by 1938 she did!
Women pilots of the A.T.A.
Talking shop Mary Hooper from Los Angeles and Dora Lang of London two women A.T.A. pilots © IWM CH 8943
The A.T.A. was founded in 1938 to employ British civilian or former military pilots who weren’t fit to as fighter or bomber pilots in case of war. They would work as ferry pilots and deliver military aeroplanes from factories to the RAF (Royal Air Force) at the front lines.
Not only did the female A.T.A. section grow from 8 to 166, but they also went from solely flying Tiger Moths to flying 147 types of aircraft, including four-engine bombers that even intimidated male pilots.
