Nick Comper

John Greenland’s Comper Swift 

John Greenland as a child had his imagination captured by a children’s book that told the fictional adventures ofa tiny aeroplane named Midge.  Midge was undoubtedly based on the single-seat Comper Swift sporting aeroplane.  Later at the King’s Cup air races at Hatfield in the 1930s, young John vowed that one day he would own and fly one.

In the intervening years John had a successful career as an airline pilot.  This included 27 years with Swissair.

By the 1980s several Swifts still existed but their owners did not want to part with them, so John decided to build his own.  He found that the structure of the Swift was very complicated and embarked on fashioning hundreds of metal fittings by hand.  He was known when an airline pilot to take two cases on his trips to New York - one for his clothes and the other for his tools.  In his hotel room at night he worked on his Comper Swift.  By the time of his retirement the metal bits were complete.  Then the Swift began to take shape in his workshop at his home at Blackacre Farm in Wiltshire.  It was finished in 1993, having taken 8,000 hours to build and in the August of that year first took to the air.

The finished aircraft empty weight was just 2lbs heavier than the 580 lbs of the original.  Those who know and love the Swift describe John’s plane as the “42nd Comper Swift”.

John died on 11th March 2010, aged 79, having logged over 19,000 hours of flight in his career.  He was greatly respected both in the worlds of model and full-sized aviation.