UP IN THE AIR by Donal Kennedy

The terminal was designed by Desmond Fitzgerald Jr,  an elder brother of Garret Fitzgerald. Before devoting himself to politics,  Garret as an economist played a key role in the growth and success of Aer Lingus. Between bouts of ministerial office Garret was also involved with Tony Ryan, founder of Ryanair, in  an aircraft leasing firm which soared like Icarus before crashing.

The firm’s name might have been concocted by Monty Python,Percy French and the creators of Father Ted, if they had been high on cocaine and wacky-baccy. It was Guinness Peat Aviation, suggesting, at least to me, a stage-Irish show where the pilots are fuelled with porter and the planes with turf. Nevertheless in the real world Ireland is today  the base for the largest aircraft-leasing business on earth.

The IRA acquired a bi-plane during the ‘Tan War, I think with a view to dropping a bomb on LLoyd George, and during the negotiations which followed kept it at Croydon for a quick getaway for the Irish delegation had the talks broken down. It was the first of the very few

military planes ever belonging to an Irish administration. During the 1920s Senator Oliver St.John Gogarty, a founder member of Sinn Fein, better known as “Buck Mulligan” to readers of “Ulysses” used borrow or hire an Air Corps plane, and fly to London, not to drop bombs on Ireland’s enemies, but to perform lucrative surgery on Dukes and Duchesses, rub shoulders with Lady Londonderry, and swap witticisms with such odious toe-rags and irredeemable scum-bags as the Earl of Birkenhead.

In 1928 Colonel James Fitzmaurice of the Irish Airc Corps was a co-pilot with the German, Hermann Kohl of “THE BREMEN” , the first heavier-than-air machine to cross the Atlantic from East to West. For his feat he was presented with a Congressional Medal by US President Calvin Coolidge in Washington, made a Freeman of the cities of Dublin, in Ireland and Bremen in Germany and received by the Archbishop of Dublin. Newsreel film of all these receptions is available on YOUTUBE.

Also on YOUTUBE is a remarkable newsreel taken in London in May 1940 in the last days of “the phoney war” and just before the German outflanking of the Maginot Line which saw the surrender of France and the retreat of their British allies from continental Europe. Ireland had declared an Emergency in September 1939 and the World War proper didn’t begin before Germany invaded the USSR in June 1941, or the Empire of Japan attacked the British, French and Dutch Empires and the United States Republic in the countries under US hegemony in December 1941. Contrary to what you may have been told, Ireland did not describe wars as

emergencies, but merely declared that those conflicts had created an emergency for Ireland. The UK fought a war in Malaya in the 1940 and 1950s but described it as an Emergency, to save rubber plantations, and tin-mining companies high insurance premiums.

The remarkable newsreel shows an Aer Lingus plane landing in London. Tanaiste Sean T O’Ceallaigh, Minister for Finance skips  briskly out of it. He’s followed by Cabinet colleagues James Ryan, Sean MacAntee, Sean Lemass agus a bhean, and Lt Colonel P A Mulcahy in full uniform. I think that Eamon de Valera  and Frank Aiken are the only key Ministers not with the Trade Delegation. I doubt you’d find so many key eggs in the same basket at the best of times, but when Britain was at war with a near European neighbour  possessed of an air force it’s hard to credit. There’s very much of a family aspect to the delegation. Sean T was married to one of James Ryan’s sisters (whom he had married when another of the sisters died) and P.A. Mulcahy’s brother General Richard Mulcahy, was married to another Ryan sister.

You shouldn’t think that De Valera or Frank Aiken were scared of flying. Dev had said he wouldn’t fly unless he was to fly with Lindbergh, who took him up on a visit to Dublin. Dev was as interested in aviation as any statesman of his time and particularly aware of Ireland’s

unique value for transatlantic flight. His Clare constituency was bounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the estuary of the “Lordly Shannon, spreading like a Sea” as the Elizabethan poet had it. It was under de Valera’s government that Aer Lingus was founded and Dublin Airport

established and a base for transatlantic Flying Boats established at Foynes on the Shannon Estuary.

The British were experimenting with mid-air fuelling and Dev not only welcomed them to Shannon but went aloft with his son Terry and with Frank Aiken in a plane whose seats and other gear had been removed. While the refuelling, which involved a man leaning out of a window

to direct the refuelling hose from the tanker aircraft to plane to be refuelled, Dev’s plane had to bank steeply to avoid a collision. Dev, his son Terry and Frank Aiken were thrown about the plane, with the heavily built Aiken at the top of the pile.

I’m telling you, they were better men than I am, Gunga Din.