Captain Frederick Dismore

I just happened upon this obituary from the New Zealand Herald newspaper dated 25th of March 1940. He seems to have been a significant pilot of the past that I’d never heard of. I thought some here may find it of interest.

NOTED CIVIL PILOT

CAPTAIN F. DISMORE

DEATH OCCURS IN SLEEP

REMARKABLE FLYING RECORD

[from our own correspondent] LONDON, Feb. 23

A civil pilot, Captain Frederick Dismore, well known to thousands who have travelled on the air route between London and Paris, died in his sleep at Bristol. He was about 47 years of age. Nearly all his interests were centred on aviation. As a youth of 18 he joined the Royal Engineers in the hope that he would get into the Balloon Section, which was then the only branch of aviation in any way associated with the Services. In 1912 he was transferred to the Central Flying School, and his career as a pilot began when, on August 5, 1913, First Class Air Mechanic F. Dismore was awarded Certificate R.A.C. No. 580.

Exactly a year later he was on his way to Newcastle, where he was charged with the duty of carrying out sea patrols over the North Sea. After the last war, he was one of the first civil pilots to fly regularly over the English Channel, and he became a captain for Imperial Airways on the formation of the company in 1924.

Dismore was the first civil air pilot to celebrate his silver jubilee. By that time he was able to claim that he had | flown 1,250,000 miles in 11,600 flying hours, and also that he had flown over the English Channel not less than 4600 times.

Soon afterward he retired from actual flying and continued to work for Imperial Airways in a supervisory capacity, but on the eve of the war he resumed his flying.

He was a man of simple tastes and devoted to his home, where he lived with his wife and daughter. He felt keenly the breaking of home ties which the present war necessarily involved. But he had with him several of his old comrades of the air, and younger pilots regarded with unmixed affection the rather silent man whose career almost completely coincided with that of civil aviation and whose remarkable skill had on at least two occasions saved his aircraft an passengers from destruction. They were when an air liner he was piloting made a forced landing in the Channel in 1926 and when the Hannibal, then the world’s largest luxury air liner, made a forced landing in Kent. He did not know how many passengers he had carried during his 4600 flights over the Channel; but none had lost their lives while they were in his charge.