Country: United Kingdom
Travel back to an intrepid age of aviation with this early newsreel, as famous pilot H.J.D. Astley makes an ill-starred attempt to take off from the North Wales coast at Pwllheli. Astley takes it all in good spirit; the son of a millionaire, he had been a racing driver before taking up flying. The woman in the film is likely to be his wife Mary Kinder, an American actress. Astley was no stranger to close shaves, and would survive another near miss on a flight from France to England, but his luck ran out. During a show in Belfast on 22 September 1912, the 30,000-strong crowd saw his monoplane plummet 100 feet to the ground, where he died of head injuries. (Simon McCallum)
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