The Rotary Club of Anstruther was delighted to welcome retired Engineer and Pilot, Jim Allan as guest speaker on 4th March.

Jim entertained with stories of his life-long passion for flying and of the 65 years of solo flying he celebrated in August of last year. It all started for Jim when, as a boy, he was taken to see ‘Cobham’s Flying Circus’ performing close by Elie. It was an obsession that blossomed when studying mechanical engineering at Glasgow University, where he joined the university air squadron.

Apprenticeship training with the Bristol Aircraft Company and Vickers Armstrong followed and then the RAF. It was with the RAF that Jim gained his ‘wings’ – training on increasingly sophisticated and powerful aircraft, then graduating to the Gloster Meteor – the UK’s first jet fighter, which saw action towards the end of WW2 where its speed made it effective in the interception of V1 ‘flying bombs’.

Both Jim and his wife were pilots and during their business lives achieved an ambition of owning their own small aircraft, which ferried them around Europe and the UK. With retirement came the opportunity to join with others in the purchase of an aircraft which was flown from the grass strip at Kingsmuir – it being there that Jim celebrated his 65 years of solo flying in the group’s ‘Rallye’ aircraft.

Jim’s talk was brilliantly illustrated with slides of the aircraft he knew and flew – many now iconic and preserved in museums. From the Tiger Moth in which he first went solo from Perth in 1947, to Airspeed Oxfords, Miles Magisters, De Havilland Chipmunks, North American Harvards and finally the ‘serious’ Meteor twin-engined jet fighter.     

A vote of thanks for a fascinating talk was proposed by William Duncan.