Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2007 | Page 31

INTERVIEW
impression on me and started an interest
in aviation that was to shape my life,”
he writes. From school he accepted an
apprenticeship with Saunders Roe in East
Cowes, builders of advanced flying boats.
In what proves to be a recurrent theme
to John’ s story, of projects which flounder
through forces outside his control, the start
of his apprenticeship marked the end of
the market for flying boats. When in 1959
Saunders Roe was taken over by Westland,
“the romance was fading and it was time
to move out into the big wide world.”
John takes work on board a South
African cargo ship, he hires out
deckchairs back in Ryde, takes a job as
an engineering instructor in Leatherhead,
before finding a job as a Hovercraft
designer with Cushioncraft in St Helens,
part of Britten Norman Ltd. “The object
was to design ... a no-nonsense ten
seat aircushion vehicle capable of
operating over water, sand or swamp.”
The resulting CC7, which took to the
beach and sea in 1967 proved successful.
But the following year the company was
sold off. Again, he was out of a job.
Marriage, to Swede Birgit, and birth of
two daughters do not make for a less
peripatetic life, which next sees him
employed in Somerton Works in Cowes

Island Life - www.isleofwight.net

life

Photo:
P.30 -Thrust II is
'Ready to Race'
Greenham Common
Sept 1981
P.31 - Right: John
pictured with his
father in Mhow 1942
Below: John Ackroyd
meets the Queen
Mother & Earl
Mountbatten on
Sandown Pier 1975

31