Sun May 18, 2003 5:46 pm
#15955
My far from perfect memory tells me that the original 1970 members of the Rothmans Aerobatic Team were Manx Kelly, Neil Williams, Iain Weston and Ray Hoggarth. Andrew White and Mike Findlay had replaced Neil and Ray on the team by 1972, when they were still flying the Stampes, and Nick Daniel was commentator. Barry Tempest also flew with them that season, famously surviving an horrendous low-level mid-air between his Rothman's Stampe G-AYGR and Tiger Moth G-ANMO during a Barnstormers' flour-bombing contest at Weston-super-Mare that July.
The first five Rothman's Pitts S-2As were the four as already listed, plus G-BAEA. That was destroyed in a post take-of crash at Sywell on 19 April 1976, seriously injuring the team commentator and his passenger, 'Flight International's' then General Aviation Editor Cliff Barnett. Cliff was later to die in a mid-air between the Aztec he was flying and a Beech 1900 during an air-to-air photo session over Hanover; 'Flight's' talented young photographer Stephen Pearcy was also killed, along with another photographer.
In addition to that initial batch of Pitts S-2As (subsequently added to as replacements were required), Manx also had the homebuilt two-aileron S-1C G-AXNZ, built by Wally Berry and Bert Etheridge at Old Warden. It was painted in Rothman's colours, but I don't think it was ever flown in displays. There was also a static display S-2A which had truncated wings for transporting around by road for promotional work, and wore the spurious registration 'G-RKSF' (Rothman's King Size Filters!).
