History Menu

Previous Page

Lord Brabazon of Tara

The Right Honourable John Cuthbert Moore-Brabazon, 1st Baron Brabazon of Tara (8 February 1884 - 17 May 1964) was born in England and became a British aviation pioneer.

John Moore-Brabazon in a Voisin in 1909

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 (co-founder of the Rolls-Royce car manufacturing firm) 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 Britain and was awarded Royal Aero Club certificate number 1. During the First World War he served in the Royal Flying Corps 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 (1918-29) and Wallasey (1931-42) 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. In 1906, he married Hilda Mary Krabbé, with whom he had two sons. At the age of 70 he was still riding the Cresta Run.