I recently saw a social media post indicating that the two photographs featured here were taken just 66 years apart.
(By John T. Daniels – File:Wright_first_flight.tif, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75148383)
(By NASA / Neil A. Armstrong – Apollo 11 Image Library (image link), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=137926)
It prompted me to think about my granddad, Harold Manterfield, who was a child at the time of 1903 photograph, showing the first powered, controlled, sustained airplane flight, which occurred on 17 December that year.
Harold enlisted in the armed forces during the First World War and learnt to fly, firstly for the Royal Flying Corps and later for the Royal Air Force. The photograph shown here, of him wearing his flying gear, was taken in about 1918.
Possibly because of that experience, my granddad was very interested in the Soviet and US space flights in the 1960s, but sadly he didn’t get to see the first Moon landing, as he died on 8 February 1968, the year before the Apollo 11 mission.
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