Description

After six years of prohibition January 1946 saw the lifting of restrictions on private and club flying which had been shut down at the outbreak of the war, but there was an extreme shortage of suitable planes as many light aircraft had been requisitioned at the start of the war and few had survived. Less militarily useful machines, including most single-seaters had just been left to deteriorate. There were legislative changes too. Whereas before the war all flying had come under the jurisdiction of the Air Ministry, the recently-formed Ministry of Civil Aviation was now in charge of non-Service flight. This new ministry was driven by paperwork without which no aircraft should fly. Many otherwise perfect aircraft were allowed to rot because their documents were ‘not in order’ and the home-built aeroplane was especially vulnerable not being understood. Hence in the 1940s we revamped aircraft and took to the skies as best we could. This new book describes just how private flying survived.