Pat Monk – RIP

I have just received news that my very good family friend, former neighbour and well known aircraft designer Pat Monk has died, in the Isle of Man. I will attempt to detail a potted history of his long and varied career as a designer, from my memories of conversations with him. Forgive me if any details are skewed by the memory, I will try to find more facts later to add to this.

Patrick William Charles Monk was born in Reading, and at the age of 15 during World War Two he became an apprentice with the Miles aircraft company.

Over several years Pat worked in the design office at Miles, working on all sorts of types including the Miles M.52.

He then went to Slingsby Sailplanes where he worked as designer for several of their gliders.

His career then began to take him all over the world, including a period working in the top secret Woomera facility in Australia for the British nuclear industry.

In the early 1970’s Pat and wife Joyce, and his two daughters Charlotte and Katherine, moved to Cambridge, New Zealand. Pat became the chief designer for AESL, and then New Zealand Aerospace Industries.

He worked in that capacity in improving the Airtourer, and the Fletcher variants, and he took the tried and tested Fletcher design and worked his magic on that to upgrade and redesign the basic aircraft for turboprop engine installation. This resulted in his much improved Cresco, a type commonly seen in New Zealand skies even today.

Then Pat designed an all new aircraft, the CT/4 Airtrainer, a design inspired by but quite different to the Victa Aircruiser.

The Airtrainer sold to several countries including the RNZAF and RAAF, and most of the 1970’s-built examples still fly today in flying schools in Australia. Production ceased and his dream to build a turboprop version, which he’d begun designing did not happen.

It was some 20 years later that production of Pat’s design began again and a turbo version was created, which now serves in several countries too. But by that time Pat had well and truly moved on from Aerospace.

In the late 1970s Pat began to return to the UK, particularly the Isle of Man, for six months of the year, where he was designing airships for Wren Skyships.

That company eventually failed, not due to his design work but due to other reasons. Pat’s plan to see his airships gracing the air routes never came to be.

Eventually Pat and Joyce moved from Cambridge to Raglan in the late 1980’s, a place where Pat loved to play with his boat and go fishing. he had designed and built his home there, and before they moved into it fr many years it had acted as a happy batch where the Monk and Homewood families spent many happy summers.

At this point Pat was doing a lot of freelance design work, which took him as far afield as Boeing in Seattle, work for the US Government that he couldn’t discuss, and various Fletcher engine installation designs for Pacific Aerospace

In the early 1990’s the Monks sold their Raglan home and moved to Koramatua, south west of Hamilton, where they bought a small farmlet. it was a lovely spot and much loved by them, but the call of the Isle of Man got to them and eventually Pat and Joyce decided to leave their beloved New Zealand and live permanently in their Man home.

Retirement eventually came for Pat but he kept busy till a fall from a ladder a couple of years ago resulted in a brain injury that progressively decreased his capacity. The last year or so of his life was spent in care.

My own memories of Pat Monk will always be very happy. He was our next-door neighbour from about the time when I was two years old till I was in the RNZAF.

He was a wonderful person, always willing to help anybody, and always full of knowledge. Pat was one of those few people you might meet in a lifetime whom you could have a conversation with about any topic and he’d be able to tell you more about it – he had been there, done that in every sense of the word.

As well as aviation, he had a passion for pottering about in small boats. He loved his cats, especially Jenna whom he brought all the way to New Zealand from the Isle of Man, and was unusual in that she was purebred Manx but had a tail.

Pat and Joyce were extremely generous and caring people, who always bought Christmas presents for me and my siblings when we were kids, and always had gifts for us when they returned from an overseas trip or a six-month summer in the Isle of Man.

I would find it very difficult to think of a more devoted couple than Pat and Joyce, nor two people more suited to each other.

Pat was extremely witty, and was the absolute quintessential English gentleman. His polite, happy manner saw him talk his way into many business situations where others may not have got his foot into the door.

One thing about him that always endures in my mind was his incredible recall memory. He remembered everything! Important facts and non-important trivia, it was all there. I remember a remark he made to me once when we were stood in his garage. He pointed to a Tomahawk axe. He said (with exacting detail – the x’s are my failing memory, not his), “You know, I bought that axe on the xx of x-month in 195x, in such-and such a shop in such and such a street in London. It’s been with me everywhere I’ve lived since and is still a fine axe.”

it was so sad to know that after his devastating fall, and the disease that followed, it was this incredible memory that failed him in his last years.

Pat was always whistling when he was in his garden, rain or shine. We lived two houses over yet his beautiful trill permeated our premises regularly and always made us smile. He was brilliant at it, a closet Ronnie Ronalde. His whistled ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ was the background music to my summers!

Another thing that made me proud to know him was he’d worked on the famed Miles 52, the more famed Concorde, and also for Boeing. Plus, he was a real life rocket scientist. Top class stuff.

Yet we all smiled and it has often been re-quoted in our family how he once admitted he returned his VCR to the shop because he could not work out how to set it up! Brilliant.

I raise a glass to Pat – my favourite neighbour, family friend, surrogate grandfather, hero.

Rest in peace.