Our Speed Team

PKellettR19020002.jpg

Title

Our Speed Team

Description

A newspaper cutting with an article about the Long Range Development Unit of the RAF. There is also a separate image of a Wellesley and the team of airmen and ground crew involved.

Date

1938

Temporal Coverage

Coverage

Language

Format

One b/w photograph and one newspaper cutting

Rights

This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.

Contributor

Identifier

PKellettR19020002

Transcription

[photograph]

Our Speed Team

PUBLIC schools are strongly represented in what is officially called the Long-Range Development Unit of the R.A.F., which will attack the non-stop record set up by Russian airmen with 6,306 miles, last July.

[photograph]
Wing-Commander O.R. Gayford

Squadron Leader Richard Kellett, now 32, is the oldest of the four pilot officers. He was educated at Bedford Flight-Lieut. Henry Algernon Vickers-Hogan, 28, is an old Malvern boy. Flight-Lieut. Andrew Nicholson-Combe, 26, is on Old Rugbeian: born at Kensington, he is London’s only representative among the unit’s nine officers. Flight-Lieut. Frank Steight-Gardner, 29, graduated from Sydney University.

Britons All

ALL four navigators of the team were trained at Manston, near Ramsgate; Flight-Lieut. Richard Templeton-Gething, 28, is a second contribution from Malvern College; Flight-Lieut. Brian Kenyon-Burnett, 24, went to Charterhouse; Flying-Officer Rowland Gascoigne-Musson, 25, is from Tonbridge School; and Flying Officer George James Douglas-Thomson, 28, from Dale College, King William’s Town, South Africa.

Two officers of the British team were born in India, one in New South Wales, and one at Durban.

At 44

WING-COMMANDER O.R. GAYFORD is in command of the unit, but it is not certain that he will take part in any actual attempt on the record. He is 44 and was educated at Bishop’s Stortford School.

No date has been fixed for the transfer to the new training camp at Cranwell.

LRDU – formed 1937 - 38

Collection

Citation

“Our Speed Team,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed May 22, 2025, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/41624.

Item Relations

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