John Moore-Brabazon, 1st Baron Brabazon of Tara

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John Theodore Cuthbert Moore-Brabazon, 1st Baron Brabazon of Tara, GBE, MC (8 February 1884 – 17 May 1964) was a London born English aviation pioneer and Conservative Party politician.

He learned to fly in 1908 in France in a Voisin biplane. On October 30, 1909, flying a Short Brothers aircraft, he flew a circular mile and won a 1,000 pound prize offered by the Daily Mail newspaper. On November 4, 1909 he made the first live cargo flight by airplane when he put a small pig in a waste-paper basket tied to a wing-strut of his airplane. With Charles Rolls he would later make the first ascent in a spherical balloon made in England by the Short brothers.

On March 8, 1910 Moore-Brabazon became the first person to qualify as a pilot in the United Kingdom and was awarded Royal Aero Club certificate number 1, his car also bore the number-plate FLY 1. During the First World War he served in the Royal Flying Corps, attaining the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and was awarded the Military Cross. He was instrumental in the development of military aerial photography.

Moore-Brabazon later became a Conservative Member of Parliament for Chatham (1918-1929) and Wallasey (1931-1942) and served as a junior minister in the 1920s, then Minister of Transport and Minister of Aircraft Production in Winston Churchill's wartime government.

Moore-Brabazon was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Brabazon of Tara in 1942. In 1943 he chaired the Brabazon Committee which planned to develop the post-war British aircraft industry. He was involved in the production of the Bristol Brabazon, a giant airliner that first flew on September 4, 1949. It was then and still is (as of 2004) the largest aeroplane built in Britain.

A keen golfer, Moore-Brabazon was captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, the governing body of golf, from 1952-1953. At the age of 70 he was still riding the Cresta Run.

Moore-Brabazon was President of the Middlesex County Automobile Club from 1946 until his death in 1964.

In 1906, he married Hilda Mary Krabbé, with whom he had two sons.

[edit] External links

• National Portrait Gallery
• Photograph by Cecil Beaton, 1940
• Portrait in Pastels by Alfred Egerton Cooper, 1958

[edit] Offices held

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by: Gerald Fitzroy Hohler	Member of Parliament for Chatham 1918–1929	Succeeded by: Sydney Frank Markham
Preceded by: Sir Robert Burton Chadwick	Member of Parliament for Wallasey 1931–1942	Succeeded by: George Leonard Reakes
Political offices
Preceded by: The Lord Reith	Minister of Transport 1940–1941	Succeeded by: The Lord Leathers
Preceded by: The Lord Beaverbrook	Minister of Aircraft Production 1941–1942	Succeeded by: John Llewellin
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by: New Creation	Baron Brabazon of Tara	Succeeded by: Derek Moore-Brabazon