Royal visits to Plymouth's aerodrome

A COUPLE of weeks ago, in a piece accompanying a couple of aerial 'Then & Now' images of Roborough aerodrome, I managed to suggest that the member of the Royal family who opened the airport in 1931 was Prince George, the Prince of Wales.

- CHRIS ROBINSON DETAILS

As noted by at least one Herald reader, this was not right, as the then Prince of Wales was Edward, the future Edward VIII, and not George, his younger brother, who became king on the former's abdication in 1936.

It was careless on my part as, flicking quickly through the pages of my book, Plymouth in the Twenties and Thirties, I saw a picture of Prince George at the airport just below the paragraph referring to the opening by the Prince of Wales and, without thinking it through, conflated the two stories. When the book was published, I didn't have a picture of Prince Edward at the opening, but I do now.

Meanwhile, there are several images of Prince George at Roborough Aerodrome taken less than a year later, in May 1932. He had come down, literally, on a flying visit to Devon and Cornwall. Indeed, most of the way down, Prince George had personally been in control of his Gipsy Moth flying machine.