“I have never been in a helicopter” is in Winston S. Churchill, vol. 8, Never Despair 1945-1965 (Hillsdale
College Press, 2013),
Wendy Reves, “The Man Who was Here,” Finest Hour 63, 2nd Quarter 1989:
I
remember . . . our helicopter ride together. It was his first, and mine also.
He was to be the honored guest aboard the Randolph,
an aircraft carrier. He loved unusual happenings, and this was certainly one.
My husband Emery, Sir Winston, his bodyguard Detective Sergeant Murray and I
drove to the Nice airport, where we found two Navy helicopters awaiting us. The
plan was that Sgt. Murray would go with Sir Winston in one machine, and Emery and
I in the other. Then, without warning, Sir Winston said, “No! Wendy comes with
me.” And so it was. The helicopter was a rough and raw model, sternly navy with
no comforts. The pilot, feeling I think his moment of greatness, lofted us up
so quickly and so roughly that we were both startled. I looked across at Sir
Winston, and there before me was the young, valiant Churchill, courageous, with
his chin jutting forward. It was as though he had suddenly shed 50 years, and
was once again squarely facing a challenge: a split second only ... a memory.
Martin Gilbert, Churchill:
A Life, 954:
The
helicopter ride was “an exhilarating incident,’ he told Wendy Reves, who
accompanied him.
Edmund Murray, I Was
Churchill’s Bodyguard, 160:
On
trips abroad, especially to the French Riviera, we invariably had trouble with
too many enthusiastic photographers and reporters. On the 1952 trip, one of the
newer weapons of the fourth estate, the helicopter, was employed to spy on
Churchill while he painted in the seclusion of the Caponcina grounds. But he
was quite unperturbed for, as he heard the chattering of the machine overhead,
he commented, “I may fly home in a helicopter too.”
“Would
you wish to land in the Festival Grounds, Sir?”
“No,”
said he, “on the Horse Guards Parade. Why not?” Chuckle, chuckle. He did not do
so, however, and in fact, his first ride in a helicopter did not take place
until some four or five years later when the American Navy picked us up at Nice
Airport to carry us to the United States carrier Randolph, part of the
Mediterranean Fleet, for dinner. It was a superb evening and I was told that
permission had been obtained from the White House or the Pentagon, for
champagne, whisky and cocktails to be served, probably for the very first time
since the American Navy went dry.
Second Helo Ride, May
1959
Pilpel,
Churchill in America, 268:
On
Wednesday, the sixth, Eisenhower took Churchill to have a look at his
Gettysburg farm. They traveled by helicopter from Washington, which gave Winston
a chance to inspect the Civil War battlefield from the air en route.
Anthony
Montague Browne, Long Sunset, 261:
We
had flown with the President by helicopter to his Gettysburg farm, and after
the visit had hovered over the battlefield with the curator of the museum. All
had been astounded that WSC could pick out with the utmost accuracy the main
features of that terrible engagement: Round Top Hill, Pickett’s charge, with
their distances and significance, were fluently and dramatically described. WSC
had walked many of the Civil War battlefields and his descriptions are very
close to the greatest of his prose. It was a triumph for a very old man.
Mary
Soames, Speaking for Themselves, CSC
to WSC, 7 May 1959:
“Not
one word from you & Anthony after the short message announcing your safe
arrival - However I follow your doings in the Press - I am so very glad you
went to see Mr Dulles & General Marshall, & what fun the helicopter
must have been!”
Churchill on Helicopters (seems there was nothing he didn't contemplate....)
15
July 1953. From Moran, Struggle for
Survival
“He
was troubled often with fluids going down the wrong way. Turning to Clemmie
after one of these bouts of coughing, he said: ‘You see, dear, we have a
turnstile in our throat, and it is so arranged that traffic is bound to go the
right way, until things go wrong.’ He showed me a memorandum that he had
written on helicopters. When they were 300 feet from the ground or less, if the
engine cut out or the propeller came off there was a nasty crash. His
memorandum contained suggestions to meet that contingency; the propeller was to
be hollow, and in the hollow there was a parachute. He had sent his paper to
the Prof. for his comments.”
Gilbert, Never
Despair, 772: “He also wanted to know, on another occasion, why a parachute
could not be deployed by a helicopter, should the engine fail, and thus float
down in safety!” [The paper, 1943, is referenced in The Churchill Documents, vol. 18, Hillsdale, 2015.]
Paul
Alkon, Winston Churchill’s Imagination,
60:
“Knowing
as we now do how and to what effect helicopters evolved from autogiros later in
the twentieth century, we can see that Churchill was right to identify the
advent of what he calls wingless flight as a noteworthy milestone in the
history of aviation. As someone whose own flying lessons had taught him
firsthand the difficulties of landing conventional aircraft, he is quick to
appreciate the advantages of a different method of getting back to the ground.
It is easier to see now that Churchill is a little over optimistic in
supposing that landing disasters would thereby be almost entirely eliminated,
and wildly overoptimistic in jumping to the conclusion that via autogiros
flying will be taken up by “the millions just as the cheap motor car is used
to-day;’ thus relegating airports to a minor role in aerial transportation.
Three years later Churchill is a more somber prophet in his 1938 essay “The
Effect of Air Transport on Civilization.”
Pedantic nit: Emery's surname name is not “Reeves” but Reves
(from the original Hungarian Imre Révész). The possessive is “Reves’s.”
Richard M Langworth CBE
Hillsdale College Churchill Project
3.4
