Neville Stack might not be remembered now, but he was well known in the 1920s and 30s. He flew a De Havilland Moth to India and was awarded the Air Force Cross by King George V. He broke records galore with dramatic, high-speed trips to Berlin, Copenhagen and Constantinople. But he also found himself appearing in court far too frequently.
A hair’s breadth
Stack was the son of an Irishman who had come to London to make his fortune. He joined the Royal Engineers at the start of World War I and served as a motorcycle dispatch rider on the Western Front, before transferring to the Royal Flying Corps in the hope that it would make his life more exciting. That was the spirit in which he entered the 1934 MacRobertson Race to Australia.
This promised to be the great aviation adventure of the age, and Stack would be in good company. A bevy of famous flyers announced that they would
