Arthur Clouston CB
Awarded the Segrave Trophy in 1937 for his flight with Betty Kirby-Green in a de Havilland Comet from Croydon to Cape Town and back in a flight time of 77 hours and 49 minutes.
Arthur Edmund Clouston was born in April 1908 at Motueka, South Island, New Zealand, and were it not for chronic seasickness he might have gone for a naval career. As it was, he started a second-hand car business, and learned to fly with the Marlborough Aero Club as a hobby. One activity then overtook the other and he emigrated to England to join the RAF in 1930, starting his initial training in September. Later he was offered the role of civilian test pilot at the RAF’s Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough and excelled in long-distance flights such as his award-winning Cape Town odyssey. The RAE’s patrol planes were unarmed but during the War Arthur used them – without permission – to buzz and threaten German enemy aircraft. He was twice grounded for this. By 1943, however, Arthur was commanding 224 Squadron at Beaulieu, and their sterling anti-submarine work brought him the DFC. Granted a permanent commission in September 1945, Clouston was seconded for two years to the RNZAF in July 1947. He retired from the RAF in April 1960 as an Air Commodore CB and settled in Cornwall.
