The Shackleton Association History

by Peter Dunn

It was in July of 1987 that John (MO) Botwood decided to go ahead and form The Shackleton Association. At that time he had just eleven ‘Founder’ members including myself, but expected this to increase once news of the formation got around. It was his intention to coordinate all matters including the administration correspondence and the production of a regular newsletter, his first copy of Growler, which consisted of two folded A3 sheets on blue coloured paper. These he collated, placed in envelopes and then sent them to me to post on to mostly UK members. Later we were posting copies of the Growler to 27 countries. Later the printing of the newsletter was carried out in the UK.

John had written letters to various aviation magazines including Air Mail to which I responded and received a most en-thusiastic reply, from John who put me in touch with other founder members in the UK, Mike McCabe who had been assisting John with admin duties and as archivist and Alistair (Dinty) More. John decided that Mike should be Chairman, I was to become Secretary and Treasurer and Alistair as Organiser. Shortly after this Jim Crail took over as Chairman and aided by Tony Raybole formulated the constitution setting the standards and establishing our credibility in the Aviation world. The aim was to provide a framework on which to maintain the memory of the Shackleton and those that built, maintained and flew her. This I believe we achieved.

During our 38 years we recruited some interesting members including our Vice Presidents Lord Edward Shackleton, AVM Peter Farr, ACM Sir David Parry-Evans, Gerry Sage and AVM Andrew Roberts, the two daughters of Roy Chadwick, the designer of the Shackleton and our Chairmen: Jim Crail, Gerry Sage, John Cubberley, Bryn Lewis and Warwick Allaway. Not to be forgotten are all those who served on the committee who not only attended meetings but represented the association at various Air Shows and events such as the yearly Shackleton Trophy presentation to the Air Cadets, the Newark Air Museum Cockpitfest and various air shows most of which were aided by non-committee members. For my part, it has been a pleasure to serve as Secretary of this outstanding Association.