Captain Clive Collett

Captain Clive Collett

Signed portrait of Captain Clive Collett MC, who was born at Spring Creek, near Blenheim and joined the Royal Flying Corps in England in 1914. Following a serious crash in 1916, he became a test pilot, his experimental work including a jump from a BE.2c in January 1917 wearing a prototype parachute. Later that year he commanded a flight of No. 70 Squadron, flying Sopwith Camels, and was credited with the destruction of seven enemy aircraft and a further four sent down ‘out of control’, including one shared. Wounded in September, he returned to test flying and died in an air accident while flying a captured German Albatros fighter over the Firth of Forth on 23 December 1917.

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