Spring Vale
SPRING VALE: Temporary Landing Ground
Location: N of the A34, just E of the B4456, about Inm ESE to SE of Walsall town centre
Period of operation: 30th August 1913
This was the 6th and penultimate waypoint during the air race between Bentfield (Benny) Hucks and Gustav Hamel, sponsored by the Birmingham Daily Post. The other waypoints, starting and finishing at the TALLY HO, Edgebaston, were Redditch, Coventry, Nuneaton and Tamworth. A full account of the race can be found in the BIRMINGHAM AIR RACE 1913 listing. The whole affair was something of a fiasco as it turned out, ruined by the then 'prima donna' cavalier approach of Gustav Hamel.
A MICHAEL T HOLDER GALLERY
Note: The advert was published in the Walsall Advertiser on the 30th August 1913.
Note: The article in Flight magazine makes for interesting reading. I'll bet the Birmingham Daily Post were not best pleased with how the event turned out.
The area view is from my Google Earth © derived database.
The advert above also lists Edwin T Prosser as being at this waypoint. And, that passenger flights were on offer. Could it be that Prosser, who hailed from nearby Wolverhampton, could carry a passenger on his Caudron?
Born in April 1895, it is claimed he made his flight flight on a Blériot aged just 16, in 1911. Therefore he was still only 18 when he appeared here. By comparison Bentfield Hucks was born in October 1884, and Gustav Hamel in June 1889. Neither lived long, as was so often the fate of most of the early aviators. Hamel disappeared over the English Channel in 1914, and Hucks in a crash in 1918. Rather surprisingly, I cannot find a date for when Prosser died.
We'd love to hear from you, so please scroll down to leave a comment!
Leave a comment ...
Copyright (c) UK Airfield Guide
