Ken Waller
Awarded the Segrave Trophy in 1934 for his 4,000-mile flight from Belgium to what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and back in a de Havilland Comet, taking just 3,439 minutes – to prove that an airmail service was achievable.
Photo courtesy of the National Aerospace Library/Mary Evans Picture Library
Ken along with Maurice Franchomme had departed Brussels in Belgium on 20 December 1934, their de Havilland 88 Comet racer aircraft packed with Christmas mail and landed at Leopoldville (today Kinshasa) in the Belgian Congo (today the Democratic Republic of Congo) before taking off for the return dash. It took 44 hours and 29 minutes, covering 8882 miles. Just weeks earlier Ken had used the same aircraft to contest the MacRobertson Air Race from England to Australia, in which he finished third in the speed section. He was originally meant to fly with Bernard Rubin of the notorious ‘Bentley Boys’, whom Ken had been tutoring, but when Rubin fell ill Owen Cathcart-Jones took his place. On the return flight they set a new Australia-England record time of five days, 15 hours and 23 minutes, although soon after that epic Ken and Cathcart-Jones fell out over an aviation memoir. Ken himself learned to fly at the East Kent Flying Club at Lympne, and in 1946 was appointed Chief Test Pilot at Miles Aircraft in Woodley, Berkshire. He’d been lucky to escape with his life in the 1936 Portsmouth-Johannesburg Air Race. The Airspeed Envoy plane crashed into trees during a blustery take-off in what’s now Zambia. Ken’s co-pilot and the radio operator were killed, while Ken and another passenger escaped with slight injuries.
