This exceptional day will commemorate five outstanding airmen, who were pupils at Lancing College SPITFIRE FLYPAST in memory of Jeffrey Quill, the great test pilot who earned the title ‘Mr Spitfire’
The order of events on Saturday 14 June 2014 are as follows:
11.00am: Service of commemoration, conducted by Fr Richard Harrison, in the magnificent Grade I listed Lancing College Chapel
11.45am: SPITFIRE FLYPAST
12noon: Official welcome from Head Master, Jonathan Gillespie
Unveiling of the Memorial Plaque in the War Memorial Cloister by Susan Pyper, Lord Lieutenant of West Sussex
The pilots being honoured all played a major role in Flying Operations in the Battle of Britain, protecting this country from invasion. They were former pupils at the School:
- Flying Officer Jeffrey Quill OBE AFC – Spitfire test pilot
- Squadron Leader John Sample DFC
- Air Vice Marshal Stanley Vincent CB DFC AFC
- Squadron Leader Jefferson Wedgwood DFC
- Squadron Leader Robert Woodward DFC
Family members will be present, as well as John Pulfer, Managing Director of the Battle of Britain Historical Society.
Jeffrey Quill is the most celebrated figure. He entered the RAF directly from Lancing College in 1931. After only five hours’ dual instruction, he flew an Avro Tutor solo, and later graduated with the rating “exceptional”. Quill was to become chief test pilot at Vickers Supermarine, where he carried out meticulous test flights in the Spitfire and other aircraft, helping to ensure that they performed as their designers envisaged. He also fought as a fighter pilot during the Battle of Britain, and this experience enabled him to instigate essential design improvements to the Spitfire.
Quill’s Daily Telegraph obituary explains that “In Quill’s day, designers could not call upon computers or large wind tunnels to help them get it right, nor could test pilots use flight simulators; so he risked his life as he took prototypes off the ground for the first time.”
In 1943, as a lieutenant commander in the air branch of the RNVR, Quill undertook innumerable deck landings onto aircraft carriers enabling him to recommend design modifications to Sea Spitfires, or Seafires, and the training of their pilots.
Wartime activities took a toll on Quill’s health. When he could no longer test high performance aircraft, he carried out highly successful administrative roles. At one stage, as Marketing Director of Panavia, the Anglo-German-Italian consortium which developed the Tornado multi-role combat aircraft, Quill shared an office with Willi Messerschmitt, creator of the ME 109, which opposed the Spitfire in the Battle of Britain. In 1983 he published Spitfire, A Test Pilot’s Story. Quill was awarded the AFC in 1936, appointed OBE in 1942 and elected Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1980.
