Lt. Commander George Pearson Glen Kidston & Captain Thomas Anthony Gladstone. Let’s go back to 5 May 1931. A mere 8 km, as the crow flies, from Oban Historical Guest Farm. A massive dust storm exploded at Tieties Berg near Nelson’s Kop and the small Havilland Puss Moth struggled. In an attempt to outrun it…tragedy struck.



Lt. Commander George Pearson Glen Kidston
W.O. Bentley described Glen Kidston as “a born adventurer.” was rough, tough, sharp and as fearless as Birkin. He was one of the four core members and, perhaps the most wealthy of the infamous Bentley Boys of the late 1920s. From a wealthy family, Kidston was perfectly set-up to spend his whole life mucking about, pretty much as he saw fit.
His father, Archibald Glen Kidston, was a grandson of the original A.G. Kidston, founder of the firm A.G. Kidston & Co, who was a metal and machinery merchant in Glasgow with interests in the Clyde Shipping Company, local solicitors, accountants and banking interests amalgamated into the Clydesdale Bank. Kidston was a member of the well-known Bentley Boys of the late 1920s, and possibly the wealthiest of that already wealthy set. Kidston was one of the four, core Grosvenor Square-based Bentley team drivers, whose day-long parties passed into contemporary legend.
Of all the Chappiest Chaps that history has ever chucked-up, few, if any, were ever more classically steeped in Chappist lore than Glen Kidston. Glen was born in Natal, South Africa to a wealthy family of Scottish industrialists and bankers. He was perfectly set-up to spend his whole life mucking about, pretty much as he saw fit.
His early ambitions saw him join the Royal Navy, where he rapidly rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander and as such, found himself on the strength of the cruiser HMS Aboukir during WW1.
On 22 September 1914, they were crossing the North Sea in convoy with their sister ships HMS Hogue and HMS Cressy, when the Aboukir was hit by a torpedo launched at close quarters from the German submarine, U-9 under the command of Commander Otto Weddigen. The Aboukir sank rapidly, but the captains of the Hogue and the Cressy, thinking that the Aboukir had struck a mine, closed in quickly and began picking up survivors.
Glen climbed aboard the Hogue, just in time to find himself torpedoed and tossed into the briny water again for a second time! By the time that Glen had reached the apparent sanctuary of HMS Cressy, it’d dawned on the ship’s captain that there might just be a U-Boat on the loose. He strained to manoeuvre his charge towards a safer position. But it was all too late.
The commander of U-9 was on a roll, and Glen Kidston was soon getting his feet wet for the third time that morning! Soon after this, Glen volunteered for submarine duties and became seconded to the notorious X1.
Commissioned in 1925, the X1 was an experimental cruiser-submarine. And was, at the time, the largest submersible that had ever been built. The idea was to have a craft that would be as effective as a surface vessel as it would be underwater. The result though, was just a vehicle that was crap at being either! An effect that was compounded by its impressive talent for sniffing-out disaster at practically every turn of its propeller.
During Glen Kidston’s tenure on the X1, a faulty depth gauge allowed them to dive too deep on one occasion and get stuck in the mud lining of the North Sea. Luckily an extrication was eventually established. But not before they’d spent a worrying few hours shuffling along in the recruiting queue for the Davy Jones Line.
Glen later got command of his own H-class submarine and, having already developed a personal interest in aviation matters, also became enthusiastically involved in the Royal Navy’s blossoming flying division before leaving the sea to concentrate on the family business empire. And, to stimulate the soul, pursue his general interest in sporting matters of a mechanical bent.
He tried his hand at motorcycles and took part in the 1929 Isle of Man TT and, true to form, he managed to survive a major crash in the race. He raced power-boats. And inevitably, he raced aeroplanes. But it’s for his competitive activities involving motor cars that Glen Kidston is now best remembered.

He drove a Brescia Bugatti at Brookland’s before becoming the first British customer for the celebrated Bugatti Type 35, acquiring one in 1925. Aside from Brooklands, Kidston also raced on the continent finishing fifth in that year’s Provence Grand Prix at Miramas.
However later in the year he stopped racing in order to marry however, his life remained exciting. He and his wife had survived a high-speed boating accident outside Southampton in 1927 and his first recorded aircraft crash came on a hunting expedition outside Nairobi in 1928.
Then an invitation came to become a full-time member of the legendary “Bentley Boys” via his friendship with the Bentley company Chairman, Woolf Barnato. He would play a major part in Bentley’s emphatic 1-2-3-4 result at Le Mans in 1929 when he shared a car with Jack Dunfee to finish in second place for the Cricklewood based firm behind the winning sister car of Woolf Barnato and that other ‘Alpha Chapster’, Sir Henry Birkin.
Later that summer, he lead the motoring headlines again after an epic solo drive in the Irish Grand Prix around Dublin’s Phoenix Park where, in front of a packed crowd, he toughed-it-out in a race long battle with the nimble, little Alfa Romeo of exiled, former Russian Army officer, Boris Ivanowski. Glen though, was hampered badly by the crumbling track surface and captured as a consequence more than his share of the post-race anecdote material like this little high-speed, off-piste loop around the back of one of the safety banks! But Ivanowski’s lightweight Alfa was far less bothered by the deterioration. And despite putting body- and-soul into the effort, Glen was forced, in the end, to settle for a hard won second place.

The pinnacle of Glen Kidston’s racing career though probably the one single achievement for which he’s now best remembered which came at Le Mans in 1930. He shared Woolf Barnato’s Bentley to celebrate yet another 13. famous victory (on the left with Woolf Barnato on the right) for the legendary wearers of the British Racing Green allowing Woolf in the process, to notch-up a third Manselle win in just three starts. A unique record that still stands proudly.

Woolf Barnato though, had been funding Bentley’s ongoing existence very largely from the contents of his own vast pockets. But that last success in the 24-Hours, had been enough of an excuse for him to hang up both his sporting and his corporation head-gear. Without Woolf’s money to sustain their un-sustainability, Bentley Motors were left with no choice but to close down their racing team and hurl themselves down the slippery-slope towards dissolution and the 1931, take-over by Rolls-Royce forcing simultaneously, the pretence for Glen Kidston to terminate his own automotive exploits. Glen would now divert all his energy into the pleasures of aviation. A field in which he could’ve been said to have already built-up a bit of a dubious track record.
On the 6th November 1929 Glen Kidston would have been found boarding an Amsterdam bound, Lufthansa branded, Junkers G31 at Croydon Aerodrome (then London’s principal airport) and settling down with the six other passengers and the two-man crew to enjoy the forthcoming decampment to the continent. Unfortunately though, the pride of German civil aviation developed issues shortly after take-off and the whole experience was prematurely terminated in a field near Godstone in Surrey.

Finding himself trapped in the burning wreckage, Glen escaped by quite literally, punching and kicking his way through the side of the plane’s fuselage and, having rolled on the grass to quell his scintillating clothing, leapt straight back into the conflagration to effect the rescue of one of his fellows.

Realising that, back in those pre-radar days, the controllers at Croydon might very likely have been completely unaware of their plight, Glen set off across the fields to secure help startling a passing motorist with his charcoaled visage and smouldering clothing when he burst unexpectedly out of a hedge to flag him down for assistance! His deliverer was called upon to proceed directly to the nearest public phone where Glen personally called the airport to report the disaster before having himself driven off to the nearest hospital. The fellow flyer that Glen Kidston had pulled from the flames that day turned out to be Prinz Eugen Von Schaumberg-Lipp and was the only other escapee.


Glen enjoyed some recognition from the grateful German authorities for his show of bravery. But in the end, the Prince sadly failed to qualify for a place on the, now rather limited, guest list for the Godstone Air Disaster Survivors Annual Christmas party. Glen made a point of getting himself back in the air as soon as possible so as not to risk losing his enthusiasm for the medium. He also retained his links with Africa where, incidentally, he’d built up quite a reputation as a bit of a big game hunter.
In early 1931 he departed Netheravon airfield in Wiltshire at the controls of a specially prepared Lockheed Vega with the single-minded objective of reaching Cape Town quicker than anybody else had ever before which, of course, he did in a record time of just six-and-a-half days!


But, just a month after arriving in South Africa Glen, accompanied by his friend Tony Gladstone, hired a De 17 Havilland Puss Moth from the Johannesburg Light Plane Club (their plane ZS-ACC, was one of the sisters of the club’s ZS-ACA shown here) for a routine, hand-keeping-in flight from Johannesburg to Natal. Passing through the Drakensberg Mountains though, they would encounter an unexpectedly fierce dust storm. Unable to fly around it, over it or outrun it, their little plane got sucked in and thrashed about until it could stand no more….leaving them still airborne but without the supporting element of a viable flying machine! Without Glen’s usually well-honed capacity for the dramatic escape, this time…his luck ran out.

Glen left behind his wife and a young son. Mr Kidston had also been quite the socialite in his time. Back in his Bentley days, he’d taken a flat in Grosvenor Square directly adjacent to those of his fellow drivers Woolf Barnato, Sir Henry Birkin and Bernard Rubin. The all-day-and-night parties therein, became a legend. The street outside became so crammed with the produce of W.O’s temple of manufacturing, that ‘Bentley Corner’ became, for a while, a renowned London landmark!
News of Kidston’s death broke in the London evening papers and Margaret Whigham (later Duchess of Argyll) and Barbara Cartland, both amongst Kidston’s lovers, claim in their memoirs to have fainted on leaving the theatre and seeing the headlines. Cartland named her first son Glen in his memory. The Hollywood femme fatale Pola Negri is also reputed to have known Kidston.
He married Nancie Miriel Denise Soames in 1925 and had a son, Archibald Martin Glen (1927–1978). Cath Kidston is his granddaughter.
A memorial to him stands at the place where his aircraft crashed.
Captain Thomas Anthony Gladstone

Thomas, born at Stockton-on-Tees, Co. Durham, was the son of Thomas Hopwood and Maud Gladstone, née Rudd. (1911 Census, Newton le Willows, Yorkshire N.R., Aysgarth School: Thomas Anthony Gladstone. Boarder. Aged 12. Schoolboy. Born, Stockton, Durham). (Supplement to the London Gazette, 10 October 1919. Royal Air Force, in recognition of distinguished services rendered during the war: Awarded the Air Force Cross. Flt. Lieut. Thomas Anthony Gladstone.) (” Yorkshire Post ” Wednesday, 6 May 1931: IDENTIFIED BY A VISITING CARD. Storekeeper’s Discovery of Wreckage. VAN REENEN, Natal, Tuesday.)
A vivid story of how Lieut.-Commander Glen Kidston, the ” flying millionaire with a charmed life, ” and his companion, Captain T.A. Gladstone, met their deaths in a crash at Mauba, about 16 miles from here, was told to Reuter’s correspondent by Mr. Helman, the Mauba storekeeper, who discovered the tragedy. ” I was busy in my store, ” said Mr. Helman, ” when above the roar of the gale outside I suddenly heard a terrific crash.
I rushed into the open, and was horror-stricken to see the tangled wreckage of a large aeroplane which had fallen nearby. ” The bodies of the two occupants were so mutilated that I had to search for some means to identify them. Eventually I found a visiting card near one of the bodies. It bore the name Lieutenant-Commander G.P. Glen Kidston. ” I hastily summoned a neighbour, and then hurried to the telephone and reported the tragedy to the magistrate at Harrismith.”
The airmen had left Johannesburg on a tour with a view to developing air services … CAPT. T.A. GLADSTONE. Work for Development of African Air Route. Captain T.A. Gladstone, who was unmarried, lived with his mother, Mrs. T.I. Gladstone, at Castle Hill, Middleton St. George, near Darlington. He went to South Africa in January in connection with the organisation of an air mail service from England to Central Africa, Johannesburg, and Cape Town, by the Cobham-Blackburn Air Lines, Limited, of which he was a director.
Mrs. Gladstone, the mother of Captain Gladstone, was staying at Eastbourne for her health. His sister, Mrs. Green, lived at the Manor House, Carlton Husthwaite, near Easingwold. A close friend of Captain Gladstone said: ” I have been in very close touch with Captain Gladstone for many years, and I can say definitely that he has literally given up his life since the war to the development of this African air route. It was absolutely due to his pioneer work in conjunction with Sir Alan Cobham, who knew him personally, that the route was made possible.
He carried out negotiations with all the Governments along the route, and obtained subsidies from various Governments. The Imperial Airways African route was based entirely on Gladstone’s pioneer work. ” Captain Gladstone was in the early thirties, and was educated at Uppingham.
During the war he served in the Royal Flying Corps, and I understand that he gained a decoration for his courage in rescuing a comrade when their machine crashed into the sea. In the course of his adventurous work in Africa he had many hairbreadth escapes. Twice his machine crashed and was completely destroyed.”

