MAF Mourns the Loss of a Legendary Co-Founder - Jack Hemmings

31 minutes ago5 min read

By Rob Russell

Jack Hemmings did what all young naughty pilots do. He flew and crashed aeroplanes and lived to tell the tale, both in the name of war and peace. A squadron leader in the Second World War, who won an Air Force Cross for gallantry for safely returning his badly damaged Lockheed Hudson "back to base" in the Bay of Bengal after leading a bombing raid on Japanese-held ports in Burma, Hemmings went on to co-found the world’s largest humanitarian airline, Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF).

John Stuart Hemmings was born in Bentham, North Yorkshire, in 1921, the middle of three children to Herbert Hemmings, a garage owner, and Elsie (née Greenap). He won a scholarship at Christ’s Hospital, West Sussex, and went on to study accountancy. War intervened and in 1941 Hemmings enlisted in the RAF. He earned a promotion to Squadron Leader of 353 Squadron, flying Lockheed Hudsons and C-47 Dakota aircraft in India to protect the Bay of Bengal, enabling ships to continue delivering goods to and from Britain without being destroyed.

Early in the posting he was pulled unconscious from a burning aircraft after crashing on take-off because of engine failure. He recovered to lead a mission to bomb the port of Taungup in occupied Burma: “The Japanese had the audacity to fire back. We were met by a shower of flying incendiaries. There was a loud bang and the rear gunner called to say, rather dryly, ‘Lot of little holes in the wing Jack.’” He left the RAF in 1947 and later said that serving his country in the war was the “making of him”.

Having experienced war, he wondered how aircraft might be used for the betterment of humanity and then read about plans to start MAF in a Christian magazine. After demobilisation, he joined the effort to raise £5,000 to buy an aircraft and conducted a ten-month survey of central Africa to assess the need for a service that could fly in life-saving medicines, vaccines, clean water and school books to some of the remotest places on earth, while evacuating the seriously ill to hospital. And so the concept of a humanitarian air service, later to be known as Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) came to be.

In January 1948 he and Stuart King — another RAF veteran who had taken part in the D-Day landings — took off from Croydon airport in a flimsy Miles Gemini four-seat touring aircraft. If they were nervous about being buffeted by high winds and sheeting rain that day, it did not help that they had left their navigator behind because they were over the weight limit. Nevertheless, twenty-seven days and 20 refuelling stops later they landed in the Kenyan capital.

Then their troubles really began as they set out to visit 100 Christian mission stations in nine months, flying over desert, swamp, jungle and mountains on a journey that took in the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), Sudan, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Burundi.

Airstrips in the bush had to be improvised while the Gemini’s wheels had a habit of sinking into desert sands on landing. Other hazards were being blown off course and the sudden appearance of “brooding walls of cloud” that would erupt into tropical storms. Strong winds and the lower density of air in the hot humid climate robbed a light aircraft of power and lift, and after visiting 80 of the 100 mission stations on their list, their flying came to a rather abrupt ending on the side of a mountain. In what is now Burundi, Hemmings was attempting to reach an altitude of 8,500ft to clear some mountains when a headwind dragged the aircraft down. “We barely skimmed over a ridge,” said King. “Suddenly I winced as I felt a brief splintering jerk. The end of the starboard wing had caught and broken off the top of a banana tree, foliage flying in the air.” Moments later they smashed into the mountainside, leaving the aircraft with wings twisted and broken and the tail snapped, but the aircraft’s occupants unharmed. The demoralised friends travelled back to Nairobi by lake steamer and train but carried on and visited the last 20 mission stations by land. They concluded that an MAF service should start in the vast territory of Sudan because its few roads were poor and impassable for six months each year in the rainy seasons.

In March 1950 Hemmings and King returned to Africa in a newly purchased de Havilland Dragon Rapide. Having won permission from a crusty British colonial official in Khartoum to start the Sudan Air Service, Hemmings hoped to become MAF’s first pilot but his journey came to an abrupt end when a slight eye defect prevented him from being issued with a commercial pilot’s licence that was required to fly MAF missions.

His passed studies were put to good use and he became an accountant, working for MAF, instead but watched with pride as MAF steadily grew all over Africa and Asia in the coming decades.

His passion for the air and flying never ceased and he was always in the air, whenever the opportunity arose, despite his eyesight problems. In his early seventies life in the skies began a third chapter when he took up aerobatics, undeterred by his third crash at the controls of an aeroplane in which he broke his neck and was told he may not walk again. Just for good measure, he started skiing at age 74.

His grandchildren recalled the magic of having a daredevil grandpa. “Whether hurtling down hills with us on a toboggan, whisking us off to France in his aeroplane for lunch or building a magnificent treehouse perched nonchalantly on a 12ft ladder, he inspired us deeply,” they said. “Our childhood was filled with magical moments in the garden, eyes to the sky, scanning to spot him doing aerobatics in his plane. We stood on the trampoline holding handmade signs, hoping he would spot us as he soared overhead.”

Hemmings was known as a jovial man who loved a joke, but he took an increasingly bleak view of the modern world. “I am worried we have already returned to the difficult times of war,” he said during an interview last year. “If someone wants to invade us, they will. Leaders need to start preparing and devote all their energy into striving for peace.” How true those words are, as the world enters turmoil, with a new leader in America the prosperity of peace in the Russian/Ukraine war and the nervous unsure future emerging in Europe and the Middle East

Despite old age and its associated health problems, Jack survived a stroke and after several weeks in a frail high-care facility, he emerged to continue his adventures. In 2022 he returned to the controls of a Miles Gemini aircraft at Old Warden Airfield, raising more than £40,000 for MAF.

He received a fly-by smoke salute from the Red Arrows on his 102nd birthday in August 2023. On Remembrance weekend that November at the RAF Museum in Hendon, north London, he was reunited with the Lockheed Hudson aircraft that he had flown with such gallantry.

Jack Hemmings was proud of the fact that at the time of his death, MAF had grown to serve some 1,500 mission and development organisations throughout the world, operating more than 120 aircraft in over 25 countries, many piloted by ex-RAF servicemen and women like him. And he laughed at the thought that it all started when he crashed into a banana tree. “Ha ha, it was fun to fly.”