Using planes for peace | Jack Hemmings

By Gary Clayton

On 24 January 2025, Squadron Leader Jack Hemmings AFC, World War II veteran and co-founder of MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship), passed peacefully away at the age of 103.

Having flown a Spitfire at the age of 102, he’s believed to have been the oldest British pilot to have taken control of the wartime aircraft. He’d also performed aerobatics in a Slingsby Firefly to celebrate his 100th birthday.

The MAF pioneer was 19 years old when he volunteered to join the RAF in 1941. ‘I thought,’ he once said, ‘If I am going to fight in a war, I may as well do it sitting down!’

Jack ended up stationed in Calcutta as part of 353 Squadron protecting flying Lockheed Hudson aircraft to protect the Bay of Bengal and east coast of India.

‘The Hudson,’ Jack recalled, ‘was very comfortable indeed. If you’re going to spend eight hours looking at deadly water, you want to be comfortable.’

After the war, Jack felt that planes should be used to bring practical help, spiritual hope and physical healing to isolated communities, rather than being weapons of mass destruction.

The concept came from Flight Lieutenant Murray Kendon, who wrote, ‘How is it that there is enough money to get thousands of planes into the air to kill and destroy, when only a handful are being used for missionary work?’

In 1946, Jack left the RAF and joined Murray’s band of brothers to help form what eventually became MAF. ‘I was invited to answer the phone while the ex-service pilots went on a speaking tour,’ Jack explained. ‘I went for two weeks and stayed for four years.’

Having flown across the UK, garnering support for MAF in 30 different locations, Jack and his missionary colleague Flight Lieutenant Stuart King left Croydon Airport in January 1948 to assess Africa’s vast needs.

Their departure was not, however, without problems. Originally delayed by an electrical fault, when their four-seater Miles Gemini finally took off, it was pouring with rain – gale force winds buffeting the plane.

Reaching Africa after a 4,000-mile journey, their groundbreaking survey ended dramatically when strong winds caused them to clip the top of a banana tree while climbing the Burundi foothills. Although the two intrepid pioneers miraculously survived, their little wooden plane did not!  

‘It was amazing,’ Jack commented, ‘that by the grace of God we were still very much alive.’

As his son Adrian later told reporters, ‘During the war he was in a very bad crash, and in the early days of MAF he had a crash, so he refers to himself as “Crasher Jack.”’

Despite breaking his neck and ribs in 1997, the unflappable aviator once remarked, ‘I’ve never got into an aircraft and regretted it.’

Completing the final leg of their survey in a rusty four-wheel drive, the pair returned to London, acutely aware of the need for light aircraft to help isolated missionaries and hard-to-reach communities cut off from the outside world.

In 1950, Stuart and Jack helped launch MAF’s first African air base in Malakal, Sudan, flying a de Havilland Dragon Rapide purchased with the insurance money from their ruined Miles Gemini.

Because he’d failed an eye test that prevented him from flying passengers for MAF, Jack eventually returned to his original career in accountancy, though still cheering his best friend on from the sidelines and raising money for MAF.

In time, despite famines, coups and many other crises, the aviation charity gradually expanded across central Africa, serving in the Asia-Pacific area as well.

From its small beginnings after the ashes of World War II to the challenges of the 21st century, MAF’s ministry has been blessed in ways Jack and Stuart could never have imagined.

Today, serving more than 2,500 isolated communities in 533 destinations, MAF’s 115 aircraft enable some 1,500 partners to share the Gospel and transport missionaries, medics, teachers, healthcare workers and emergency relief personnel to some of the world’s remotest regions.

‘Pioneering MAF wasn’t a question of hope,’ Jack said. ‘We just went out and did it. Faith in itself is a doubtful merit, it’s what you have faith in that truly matters.’

Later, towards the end of his life, the man once described by The Telegraph as having ‘the vim and vigour of a man at least 20 years younger’ returned to the controls of a Miles Gemini at the age of 100 – raising £40,000 for MAF. Two years later, Jack travelled to Normandy in memory of his friend, the D-Day veteran Stuart King.

Having lived to see MAF reach its 80th anniversary, Jack died in January this year.

He leaves behind his wife Kate, son Adrian, three grandchildren, and countless numbers of remote and inaccessible people whose lives have been saved and transformed thanks to his desire to use light aircraft for peaceful, life-enhancing purposes.

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Gary Clayton is married to Julie and the father of Christopher and Emma. He is a member of Hayes Lane Baptist Church, Bromley, served for 15 years as Managing Editor of OMF and is currently Copywriter and Editor at Mission Aviation Fellowship. To learn more about how MAF aircraft overcome barriers to reach the world’s most inaccessible people, visit www.maf-uk.org