Alex Henshaw - Early Life

Early Life

Henshaw was born in Peterborough, the eldest son of a wealthy Lincolnshire family. He was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Stratford-on-Avon ("Shakespeare's School" where he sat at the bard's desk), and Lincoln School (grammar school). He was awarded a Royal Humane Society medal for saving a boy from the River Witham.

Henshaw took to motorcycles, and then learned to fly at the Skegness and East Lincolnshire Aero Club in 1932, funded by his father, who bought him a de Havilland Gipsy Moth. Henshaw received his private pilot's licence (no. 4572) on 6 June 1932. He made a name for himself in the 1930s in air racing, competing against legendary pilots like Geoffrey de Havilland. Aged only 20, he competed in the blue riband of air racing, The Kings Cup, in 1933, in a Comper Swift. winning the Siddeley Trophy. He also flew a Leopard Moth and an Arrow Active which caught fire while he was performing aerobatics. Henshaw bailed out safely. He later moved on to a Percival Mew Gull. He won the inaugural London-to-Isle of Man air race in 1937, and won the Kings Cup in 1938, flying at an average speed of 236.25 mph.

Henshaw then turned his attention to long distance flying. After reconnaissance of the eastern and western routes in 1938, he set off from Gravesend at 0335 GMT on Sunday 5 February 1939 to fly his Mew Gull to Cape Town and back. He refuelled on the way out in Oran in Algeria, crossed the Sahara to land in the Belgian Congo and then Angola, landing at Wingfield Aerodrome Cape Town after flying 6,377 miles in 40 hours. He spent 28 hours in Cape Town, and retraced his route back to the UK, landing on 9 February after a flight of 39 hours, 36 minutes. He completed the whole 12,754-mile round trip in 4 days, 10 hours and 16 minutes, breaking the record for each leg and setting a solo record for the round trip. By the end, he was so tired that he had to be lifted out of the cockpit.

His account of this epic feat is given in his book Flight of the Mew Gull (1980) in which Henshaw describes hazardous landings at remote bush airstrips, battling through a tropical storm, and overcoming extreme exhaustion on the return leg. The aircraft he used, G-AEXF, was restored to its Cape flight configuration in the 1980s and remains in flying condition at Breighton in Yorkshire. The Royal Aero Club awarded Henshaw the Britannia Trophy for his record flight.

The Cape record stood for more than 70 years. On 11 May 2009, Charles Stobbart set a new record ratified by the FAI for the reverse route, Cape Town - London - Cape Town. Subsequently, on 3 September 2010, Steve Noujaim, flying a homebuilt Vans RV7, landed at Southend Airport in the UK after completing a round-trip to Cape Town in 3 days, 11 hours and 16 minutes. The new record bettered Henshaw's time by almost a day.