Tony Kingston

Tony learned to fly whilst at Kings College school in Wimbledon and took his test to get his flying licence just after his 17th birthday. At the time he was the youngest person with a pilot’s licence: something he would never let anyone forget and pointed out that he could fly before he could drive! He said he used to use the railway lines and other features in the landscape to navigate and that his favourite plane was a red Tiger Moth, regularly flying across Surrey and the North Downs Way.

Joining 76 Entry in 1957, Tony was a first-class Squash player and in the College First Five. This stamina was tested at the Entry Survival Camp in the Harz Mountains, Germany. Everyone seems to remember being very hungry at the end of the 5 day Escape and Evasion Exercise. The cadets survived by only eating tiny fragments of rations – and Tony’s family have still got the tin with half its contents!

He did this almost too successfully where he lost so much weight that his mother didn’t recognise him

when he went home on leave and knocked on the door.

Tony surprised everybody in that, despite having skill in handling an aircraft,

this didn’t translate into instrument flying and so was “chopped” from flying.

Sir Michael Graydon recalls:

“There were some rather immature QFIs around then whose main aim seemed to be to chop cadets. I was lucky in having a mature instructor who was also the Cricket Officer. I was a good cricketer which probably got me through the challenge”.

Another cohort, Sir Richard Johns, adds:

“I also remember being very surprised when Tony was chopped at Barkston Heath; it just didn’t seem right that someone so blessed with athletic coordination had problems flying. That said, in those days the chop rate was high as with National Service in full swing there was no problem with potential shortage of pilots. QFIs were not slow to swing the axe: patience was not their common virtue in my opinion. Whatever, there is no doubting Tony’s longstanding affection for the College and his fellow Flight Cadets in 76 Entry.

It was always a pleasure to see him at reunions.”

After Cranwell, Tony took a role in the family’s meat business at a time when the high street butcher was having to make big changes due to the influx of supermarkets. He helped transform the company from a firm of butchers’ shops into what it is today, a successful property company. He lived most of his life in Betchworth in Surrey with a view of the North Downs Way and loved seeing the odd biplane go past from time to time, following the same route and doing the same tricks he had done as a teenager.