South African Air Force

So, look, I've got grandparents that actually come from Scotland and that.

We've got units that served here during the Second World War that were still part of our South African Air Force, which were the restoration that came in.

So, yes, the history component, you've got more than just 300 years, you know, where we've got maybe 200 in terms of it and things we hear about but you don't see.

And beautiful nature.

Ladies and gentlemen, my guest today has lived 10 aviation lives all in one.

He's a South African Air Force fighter pilot, an airline captain, an aerobatic display pilot, and at his core, a farm boy with a dream that refused to stay small.

Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Johan Van Solms.

Welcome to Let's Wing It.

Yeah

... at the South African Air Force, and you walked into yourself on the apron there, what would you say to yourself?

Be a bit more chilled, uh, uh, in, in your initial career, you know? You're so stressed.

You know it when you, you did your license.

By the end of the war, over seventy-seven hundred, Mosquitoes had been produced in Britain and in Canada and in Australia.

They served with the Royal Air Force, the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Royal Australian Air Force, the South African Air Force, and eventually the Israeli Air Force, which flew them in the early conflicts of the late nineteen forties and early nineteen fifties.

What de Havilland's team built in a country that had been told it could not afford the aluminum to build it was a machine so capable that the RAF eventually figured out roles for it that the original designers had not imagined.

They hung rockets under the wings and used it for anti-shipping strikes.

And he had sewn the ribbon of the OBE in the wrong place on his tunic.

And, although he was still a captain in the South African Air Force, he was wearing the uniform of a lieutenant colonel.

These points were noticed by an observant officer in the Royal Air Force who passed the information on to the security police.

A rapid checkup followed and Hyson was court-martialed and cashiered for the third and last time.

But I can tell you that my parents, you know, so if you backtrack, I said I wanted to be a pilot or I wanted to be an astronaut growing up.

And I knew the only way to do that is to get into the South African Air Force, learn how to fly.

Some I get to America, join the US Air Force and get into NASA.

Does

No,

not at all.

And we had a very good Air Force, but a strange thing happened in the early 90s when I joined the South African Air Force.

And if you… Remember, Nelson Mandela was released from prison in the early 90s.