This talk will be the subject of our annual Leaman Lecture.  

 Maj Lanoe Hawker VC DSO is the subject of a new short film due for release later this year. Hawker tells the story of the action of 25th July 1915 when Capt Hawker became the first British pilot to successfully shoot down an enemy aircraft by mounting a Lewis Gun to the side of his Bristol Scout. His victories on that day, on top of his sustained bravery since the outset of the war, resulted in the awarding of the Victoria Cross. It was only the third VC given to an Airman and the first for Air to Air combat with another Aeroplane.  In this talk, film director Daniel Arbon will share the story of the making of the film and will show some cuts of the action. 

Daniel Arbon has always been interested in aviation, and initially trained in aerospace manufacturing, serving a Modern Apprenticeship with Rolls Royce (In a factory built to manufacture “Merlin” engines during WW2). He went on to RMA Sandhurst as Officer Cadet in the British Army in 2005 before being medically discharged. He began his career in the arts as an actor, graduating from Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in 2011.  He made his first film, “Ironheart”, in 2016 and formed  Middle Realm Productions, producing short dramas and corporate films.  

Graham Mottram was born in Sheffield. He read Natural Sciences at Selwyn College, Cambridge, as a University Scholar of the Special Steels Division of British Steel, and then joined the stainless steel section in Pontypool, South Wales. His interest in aviation began when reading his elder brother’s left over Biggles books, and developed into a specific interest in World War 1 during his time at Cambridge. A long time member of Cross and Cockade International, he edited that society’s journal “Hangar Notes” column for many years. After twelve years in steel he left to become Curator of the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton in 1983. He was one of the team which built the “Carrier” exhibition in the early 1990s and became the Museum’s Director in 1995. He won £3.7M from the Heritage Lottery Fund in 1997 to build Cobham Hall, FAAM’s Reserve Store, which came into use in 2000.  As part of the formation of the National Museum of the Royal Navy, he became Director of Collections and Research in 2013, finally retiring at the end of March 2015. In “retirement” he is Chair of the Society of Friends of the FAA Museum, and of Ilchester Town Trust, and a trustee of Cross & Cockade International. In 2018 he published “The Men Who Marched Away”, a record of the 16 men of Ilchester who died in World War 1.

 Among the many social changes that emerged amid World War I was the first entry of non-Europeans into the seemingly elite realm of military aviation. Although they faced prejudice, by 1918 pilots of African descent turned up in the Italian air corps, the Turkish navy, Britain’s Royal Flying Corps and the French air service.