ERNIE Brooks really was a magnificent man in a flying machine, a sky’s-thelimit inventor with half the North-East looking up to him and out for him.

The revolutionary one-seat gyrocopter that he designed in his garden shed and then built in his garage at Spennymoor became familiar everywhere.

It sold for £1,150 – £300 cheaper than any competitor, he claimed.

It could cruise at 80mph was forecast by aviation experts to become the motor car of the air – not least, perhaps, because it was run on a converted Volkswagen engine.

Tragically, Ernie died on March 9 1969 when his Brookland Mosquito crashed 150ft to the earth at Teesside Airport. He was 39.

The next morning’s Northern Echo reported that he had been “performing a series of manoeuvres”.

Friends recall that – “Ernie being Ernie” – he’d been trying to loop the loop.

Now the extraordinary story of the man and the Mosquito is being written by Shirley Jennings, a gyro pilot and instructor, from Cornwall.

“I have nothing but respect and admiration,” says Shirley. “These achievements are virtually unknown and deserve much wider recognition.”

They were, of course, widely reported by the Echo, but the library file appears also to have taken wing.

Like Shirley Jennings, we’d love to hear more from friends and associates of Ernie Brooks and of the later crew who kept the Mosquito aloft.

ERNIE lived in Tudhoe Colliery, developed the prototype in the garden shed out the back, flew his first gyrocopter in 1962. The commercial garage in Coulson Street, Low Spennymoor, is still used by a tyre company.

Spennymoor photographer George Teasdale, who knew Ernie well, recalls that the twin propellors were also built in the garden shed and that Ernie was helped by an Austrian friend.

“He could always be seen over the town, but I also went to the airport at Middleton St George to watch him and he was trying to do things that the machine couldn’t really do. One of the real sadnesses was that the business was taking off, too.”

George also supplies the wonderful photograph, thought to have been taken over Brighton pier, in which Ernie – wig and a prayer – is believed to have been test piloting hairpieces. If it didn’t come off, he could keep it, they said.

“It was typical of him; he was as bald as a coot. He was a bit of a madcap, maybe did fly by the seat of his pants to an extent, but he was a very pleasant man,” says George.

The Echo reported that he’d been in talks with US and Canadian companies about building two and threeseat models. David Marden, a Canadian company director who saw the plunge, had hoped to set up gyro schools to train Mosquito pilots.

“My company felt they could have been the motor cars of the air,” he said. “We don’t know what will happen now; there’s no one else to design the machines. Mr Brooks had all the details. It is a terrible tragedy.”

Our “Northern air correspondent” wrote that the Mosquito wasn’t a toy but a serious aircraft. “The death of Ernie Brooks will certainly cause a delay in the original ambition to make the Mosquito gyrocopter the private transport of the future.

“The main problem facing interested companies is the loss of the unique knowledge that Ernie Brooks possessed, That the aircraft will become well known is still in no doubt.”

SHIRLEY Jennings sends the cover of a New Zealand flying magazine, published the month before Brooks died, on which the gyroplane is said to be as easy to control as a large motor cycle.

“Take off is completed at 30mph in 65 yards with the wind and landing distance required is six yards.

“On a fuel consumption of about two-and-a-half gallons an hour the Mosquito will climb 750ft per minute and cruise at up to 80mph. The main structure is of alloy, with fibreglass tank, tail and fuselage.”

An order had been received from France, it added, with inquiries from South American farmers and the Bahrain police.

The Mosquito, adds Shirley, was subsequently developed into the Hornet by Cecil Golightly and Brian Lewsley, trading as Gyroflight in Ferryhill. They also operated a flying school at Acklington, Northumberland, where one of the instructors was Denis Lee, a young ATC cadet.

Cecil Golightly was a former RAF and Fleet Air Arm pilot who later ran a civil engineering company. He died about five years ago.

Brian Lewsley flew one of the tiny, open-cockpit machines across the Channel in 1970 – “no mean feat,” says Shirley – the adventure recorded in another photograph taken at a Calais airfield with the gendarmes looking boldly on.

“Un ancien pilote de la “Royal Air Force” traversa la detroit en autogiro,” says the caption. That’s probably something about magnificent men and flying machines, as well.

Thereafter, however, tragedy struck again. The partners had taken the renamed Hornet to the Munich Air Show when Brian was also killed – and, again, trying to loop the loop. It ended Cec Golightly’s flying days.

“There’d been two deaths, a second man chopped out of the air, and that was enough. My father took it quite badly,” says Andrew Golightly.

“They could fly gyrocopters in James Bond films but they did things differently there.”

Cec Golightly wasn’t quite finished, however. “It was the time of one of the Arab-Israeli wars and he had the idea of using the engine as a flying boat, got a speedboat hull, put a machine gun on the front and took it off to Hartlepool Marina for trials,” says Andrew.

“The Israelis were quite interested.

He managed to get it out of the water but steering the thing was the problem. After that he packed in.”

Shirley Jennings talks of “incredible global interest” in the machines back in the late Sixties and early Seventies.

“It makes a very moving story spanning the length of the country and, five decades later, it has come to light through a chance find in a cellar in Cornwall.”

She’d love to hear – brookland.gyroflight@yahoo.com – from anyone who knew or worked with any of them. The column can be contacted at the email address above.

THE former Brookland garage is now owned by Brian Cain, Consett lad originally. “There can only have been room for six or seven cars side-by- side, I don’t know how he went about building aircraft as well," says Brian.

Now he's considering returning the business to its original name.

"This just gets more incredible the more you hear about it. It's history; I'm proud to be part of it."