The 1930’s saw the exploits of such famed female aviators as
Amelia Earhart and Amy Johnson and a Liverpool-born woman did her best to join
their ranks with an attempt to fly from London to Cape Town.
Delphine Rose Reynolds was in a position to indulge her
passion for aeronautical adventure as she was the daughter of the wealth cotton
broker Sir James Reynolds. Born in 1907 she turned her hand to flying in the
late 1920’s after an injury interfered with her horse riding. She flew her
first solo flight on 28th September 1930 and soon after gained her
pilot’s licence. Her proposal to attempt the journey received financial backing
from her father and support from the Scottish peer and aviation pioneer Lord
William Forbes-Sempill. (It is well worth researching Semple as he blatantly
spied for the Japanese for two decades and despite being caught communicating
with them just days before Pearl Harbour. Whereas the norm for treason in
wartime was to be shot he escaped any punishment as Churchill did not want to embarrass
the establishment.)
Her co-pilot for the flight was Flight-Lieutenant W G Pudney
and they were to travel in her Blackburn ‘Bluebird’. The flight plan submitted
to the South Africans said they would be carrying “firearms and ammunition
but no radio”. They took off from Hanworth aerodrome on 1st
March 1931 and were immediately plagued by bad weather, failing to make their
intended destination of Boulogne and having to turn back on their second leg to
Toulouse. Reaching Tangier by 11th March they made their way to Bathurst
(now Banjul) in The Gambia on 17th March. From here they undertook
various exploratory flights but their expedition to Cape Town was to make no
further progress, damage to the plane and corrosion being cited as reasons for
their failure.
This seemed to be the end of Delphine Reynolds aviation
adventures. A report in the Liverpool Daily Post on 7th March 1939 praised her for her efforts to help refugees leave Germany for England, putting them up at her own expense in the family's London home. In 1944 she married the Czech Ernst Polak, and in 1963 married John
Trinick. She died in 1993 at her home, Treetops, Vicarage Way, Milnthorpe. She
spent her childhood and youth at the Renolds’ family homes of Dove Park,
Woolton L25 (in what is now Reynolds Park) and 12 Abercromby Square L7.
