Page 93 - KBHA Bulletin 10

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certified pilots numbered 353, compared with the UK’s 57, Germany’s 46, Italy’s 32,
Belgium’s 27, and the USA’s 26.

Era 1: Flying comes to South Africa and Cape Town 1909 - 1914

Houshold and Mansel

The first heavier-than-air flight in South Africa was made around 1875 by John
Goodman Houshold in his home-made glider on the farm Der Magtenberg, a few miles

north of the Howick Falls, Natal. The second “flight” was made early in 1903 by Ralph
S. Mansel, chief electrical engineer at De Beer’s Explosive Works, Somerset West, in a

Voisin glider imported from France. (Fig. 3.4). He managed only a few short and

largely unsuccessful glides, on the slopes above the farm Groot Paarde Vallei, before
the craft was too badly damaged during crash landings to be flown again.

Kimmerling and Weston

The first powered flight in South Africa was made on 28 December 1909 by a visiting
Frenchman, Albert Kimmerling, in an imported Voisin which he flew from the Nahoon

racecourse, East London. But the first all-South African-made and piloted plane was
built by John Weston, the first true South African aviator. (Fig. 3.5). He was born in

1872 in northern Natal, and trained and worked as an electrical engineer, mostly in

Belgium, patenting a number of inventions. He fought in the Anglo-Boer War against
the British and spent some post-war time in Russia before returning to take up farming.

In 1907 he began building a plane at Brandfort, Orange Free State. As he lacked an
engine with enough power he dismantled the aircraft and shipped it to France where he

fitted a 50 h.p Gnome rotary engine. and flew it successfully there in 1910. He was
awarded the French Aero Club’s Aviator’s Certificate 337 in 1911, and returned home

with enthusiasm for aviation and agencies for related products. On 16 June 1911 he

made the first flight in Kimberley, establishing a South African non-stop flight record of
eight-and-a-half minutes in his Weston-Farman biplane.