I have received sad news that a friend of my dad, Sox Hosegood has recently died. He was a real gentleman, and a most interesting man to talk to.
Here is a post I wrote about him after his 92nd birthday:
Sox was a friend of my dad Donald, a fellow golfer at Weston-super-Mare Golf Club and helicopter test pilot. Charles Hosegood, nick-named Sox, served in the Fleet Air Arm during the war and was appointed to the first armed merchant cruiser which was fitted with a catapult. Towards the end of the war, he was one of the first British helicopter pilots to be trained in the USA and when he returned to the Britain , his skill as a pilot enabled him to serve in different experimental units. This included the Experimental Unit at Beaulieu.
After the war Sox worked at the Bristol Aeroplane Company, testing and helping develop helicopters; he became the Chief Helicopter Test Pilot in the initial stages of developing the Sycamore.
This helicopter became the first British certified helicopter, and Sox flew many, many hours in BAC’s Mk.3 demonstrator which coincidentally was known as SX – because of its registration, not because Sox was flying it! he later tested the tandem-rotor Type 173 which was the first British twin-engine helicopter, and the also the Type 192 Belvedere. The Belvedere is interesting because it was the ancestor of the Chinook.
BAC Helicopter Division relocated to Weston-super-Mare, which is where Sox became a member of the golf club; the Belvedere was first flown at the local airfield in 1957 by Sox, and the following year he demonstrated it at the Farnborough Air Show.
Lois Elsden 