About the Book
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 38. Chapters: Charles Rolls, Henry Petre, Transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown, Joseph Summers, Samuel Franklin Cody, John Capper, Jack Walker, Alex Henshaw, Grace Marguerite Hay Drummond-Hay, Glen Kidston, John Albert Axel Gibson, Bill Lancaster, Ronald Ivelaw-Chapman, Eric Gordon England, Maurice Michael Stephens, Derek Harland Ward, Hedley Hazelden, Lewis Collins, Steve Jones, Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith, Walter Churchill, Mary Bailey, Cecil Grace, Walter Gibb, Claude Grahame White, Richard Hamblin, Gustav Hamel, Rex King-Clark, Richard Frewen Martin, Pauline Gower, Brian Trubshaw, John Grierson, Wilfred Theodore Blake, Joan Hughes, Simon Baker, Barbara Harmer, Allan Wright, Mike Bannister, Wilfred Parke, Brian Walpole, Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypeski, Peter Cope, Gerry Sayer, John Derry, Richard Meredith-Hardy, Hugh Merewether, Harold Perrin, Thomas D. Calnan. Excerpt: Henry Aloysius Petre DSO, MC (12 June 1884 - 24 April 1962) was an English solicitor who became Australia's first military aviator, and a founding member of the Australian Flying Corps, predecessor of the Royal Australian Air Force. Born in Essex, he forsook his early legal career to pursue an interest in aviation, answering the Australian Defence Department's call for pilots in 1911. He chose the site of the country's first air base at Point Cook, Victoria in 1913, and established its inaugural air training facility, the Central Flying School, with Eric Harrison. Following the outbreak of World War I, Petre was appointed commander of the Mesopotamian Half Flight, the first unit of the newly formed AFC to see active service. His actions in the Middle East earned him the Distinguished Service Order, the Military Cross, and four Mentions in Despatches. Transferring to the Royal Air Force as a Major in 1918, he retired from the military the next year and resumed his ...
