DH 60 Moth G-EBWD.............. 0694

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The Shuttleworth Model Collection

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DH Cirrus Moth. Richard Shuttleworth's first aeroplane in blue/silver.

6 cards, two screen printed blue on silver, one blue on white: Includes decals, etched metal and hardware, moulded wheels and resin cast engine and propeller

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AIRCRAFT HISTORY

Built 1928, constructors no. 552, powered by one Cirrus Hermes 4 cylinder in line engine of 105 h.p.

G-EBWD originally flew from Stag Lane 25/2/28 with a Cirrus II engine.

Richard Shuttleworth bought G-EBWD on the recommendation of Ron Paine, who was working at the Brooklands Flying School when Richard told him that he was on the look out for a "real good Cirrus ll Moth". Paine found a privately owned example that had had three owners since new. It was the best Moth that he had seen for some time, displaying none of the displaced longerons of many other used Moth, and had just had a top engine overhaul. "Is it right?" Richard asked. Paine replied "Dead right!"....Paine continues "Once at the aerodrome, Richard, fresh from London in his pinstripe trousers and morning coat with a big red carnation, and sitting on a chock, put his hand into his pocket and started to count out £300 in £10 notes. 'Go and get the receipt and the Certificate of Registration' he said to me. Back in the office they gave me the documents smartish, fearing that any delay would bring Richard to ask for 10% off!"

Richard didn't want his mother to know about the Moth, so he arranged for it to be kept in a lock-up garage in Ashwell. But Dorothy became suspicious, and Richard decided that he could no longer keep up the deception. On the day that he was to tell her of his new interest, Richard drove her to Henlow to see the aeroplane. She recalled. "We motored to Henlow aerodrome where it (the Moth) was parked, for me to see. Of course I was made to go up in it and, as the connection to the pilot was out of order, I could not speak to him, and I did not like it much then - or ever! When we came down, I was heartened to see an ambulance rushing up, Richard was waiting for us and asked what I felt like coming down. I was so thankful to be on the ground again that I said, 'A direct answer to prayer!"

Richard and his friend Jimmy Edmunds had great fun with the aeroplane: On one occasion they bombed Leighton Buzzard with rolls of toilet paper. On another, they decided to fly to Clermont Ferrand to visit Dorothy at the Shuttleworth's Chateau. En route, they crashed the Moth, stalling on landing, and collapsing the undercarriage. Fortunately, neither was injured, and Richard had to arrange for a repair team to go out from Heston to the crashed aeroplane at Villacouble, from where, after restoring the Moth to flying condition, Richard flew it back to England solo.

Between January 1932 and the time of the purchase of the Moth's successor as Richard's personal run-about, a Desoutter G-AAPS, Richard's flying log shows him using the Moth on an almost daily basis around the country on business and to and from car-race meetings. During this time, he was a frequent visitor to Hooton Park, organising the purchase of two Comper Swifts in which he hoped to compete with in the Viceroy's Air Race from New Delhi, and in the process of buying the Swift, becoming sufficiently interested in Nicholas Comper's aeroplane that he took shares in the Comper Company.

Richard's purchases of more exotic aeroplanes from 1934 onwards, and his growing interests in the business of aviation, motor cars and estate management generally, meant that he flew G-EBWD less frequently. However, it was regularly plied for hire by others, and still flown occasionally by Richard himself; his last logged flight in the aeroplane, and the last until the Second World War ended, being on 12 January 1940.

Over 60 years since Richard Shuttleworth first brought G-EBWD to Old Warden, it is today the longest based resident aeroplane anywhere in the world on one aerodrome, as well as, in all probability, being the most complete and original DH 60 Moth in existence.