1-193-202 - National Motor Museum/Heritage Images

Lord Brabazon in the driver's seat of a vintage car. He was involved in motor racing, and early balloon and aeroplane flight. He obtained the first pilot's license to be issued in the United Kingdom, and was the second Englishman to fly. In 1909 he made the first live cargo flight by airplane, by tying a waste-paper basket to a wing-strut of his Voisin airplane. Then using it as a 'cargo hold', he airlifted a small pig. With Charles Rolls he made an ascent in the first spherical balloon made in England, which was built by the Short Brothers. He was Minister of Transport and later Minister of Aircraft Production under Winston Churchill. After the war he chaired a British Cabinet committee that oversaw the building of a prototype aircraft, the Bristol 167 Brabazon, the largest plane ever built in Britain, which unfortunately never went into production.