Months on Tow

Sir,

Following the picture in October’s Motor Sport of a DH Gipsy Moth being towed tail-first through Shanghai, you might like to have for your records the enclosed photographs of DH Cirrus Moths being towed in England, a not unusual means of ground-handling them.

John Scott, Public Relations Manager of Hawker Siddeley Aviation Ltd., Hatfield, sent me the photographs from the old de Havilland archives. The one showing a Morris in suburban London is a copy of a printed reproduction, hence the fuzziness; date unknown, source “Photopress”. The Hampton one is a copy of a Flight photograph. It appeared in C. Martin Sharp’s hook “An Outline of de Havilland History” (see photostat.)

The DH60 Moth made its first flight on February 22nd 1925, with a 60 h.p. Cirrus I engine. The DH6OG Moth, which became known as the Gipsy Moth, first flew in July 1928, with a 100 h.p. Gipsy I engine. The last of the Moth series was fitted with a 130 h.p. Gipsy Major engine. In all, 1,762 Moths -.vere built in the UK alone.

A development of the Moth was the DH82 Tiger Moth, with a 130 h.p. Gipsy Major engine, which first flew on October 26th 1931 and became a trainer throughout the world. 5,055 were built in the UK, and large numbers in Australia. Canada and New Zealand.

I thought all this might interest you. How sad that, like so much else in this country, we’ve lost the light-aeroplane market.

P. E. GORDON-MARSHALL Chipping Sodbury