Captain Clive Collett

Signed portrait of Captain Clive Collett MC, who was born at Spring Creek, near Blenheim and joined the Royal Flying Corps in England in 1914. Following a serious crash in 1916, he became a test pilot, his experimental work including a jump from a BE.2c in January 1917 wearing a prototype parachute. Later that year he commanded a flight of No. 70 Squadron, flying Sopwith Camels, and was credited with the destruction of seven enemy aircraft and a further four sent down ‘out of control’, including one shared. Wounded in September, he returned to test flying and died in an air accident while flying a captured German Albatros fighter over the Firth of Forth on 23 December 1917.

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