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Our team

Patron and Ambassadors

Air Marshal Cliff Spink CB, CBE, FCMI, FRAeS, RAF (retd)​​

Patron
More about Cliff

Mike Ling MBE​​

Ambassador
More about Mike

Paul Bonhomme​

Ambassador
More about Paul

James Holland

Ambassador
More about James

Mark Greenfield​​

Ambassador
More about Mark

Project team

The Hawker Typhoon Preservation Group is formed of three trustees. Their responsibility is to safeguard the legality of the charity and ensure, through the appointment of a Director and subsequent forming of a team, that the aims of the charity are being met. Without the trustees the charity would not exist. They, along with all the team members, are volunteers, giving their time freely in the pursuit of this endeavour. Moreover, they are friends, doing something in their spare time that many have previously said is impossible.

Sam Worthington-Leese

Trustee
More about Sam

Alex Davies

Trustee
More about Alex

Dave Hands

Trustee
More about Dave

The project team is led by the Project Director. He leads a dedicated, all volunteer team who in their spare time are working towards achieving the charity’s aims. The project would not be where it is today without this small, but passionate and hardworking team, who all sacrifice a great amount to ensure the continued success and progress of the project.

More about Cliff

Air Marshal Clifford Rodney Spink, CB, CBE, FCMI, FRAeS is a retired senior Royal Air Force officer. In 2019, following almost three decades of Warbird display flying, he retired, performing his last display at the Duxford Battle of Britain airshow. He is currently the only known person in the world to have flown every airworthy mark of Spitfire. Cliff is widely regarded as one of the most experienced Warbird pilots in the world and joined the Project as Patron in 2020, bringing with him a wealth of experience and contacts.

More about Mike

Mike, or “Lingy” as he is more commonly known, was the longest serving Red Arrows pilot which included three years flying and six years commentating, supervising and consulting on overseas tours. Many on the global air show scene will recognise his voice with his commentary becoming synonymous with the Red Arrows display. He survived a mid-air collision and ejection in 2010, becoming a member of the Martin Baker Ejection Tie Club in the process, and in 2017 he was formally recognised for his outstanding service to the RAF and the community by HRH The Queen in the New Year’s Honours, where he was made a ‘Member of Most Excellent Order of the British Empire’ (MBE). Lingy has displayed in front of tens of millions of people, all over the world.

More about Paul

With over 45 podiums, 19 race wins and an unmatched three World Championship titles across 10 seasons, Paul Bonhomme is the most successful pilot in Red Bull Air Race history. Paul has been flying for 40 years, is a Captain with British Airways on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, as well as one of the most respected Warbird pilots in the world. Paul is an Aircraft Restoration Company pilot and has a huge amount of experience on Hawker types, as well as other high performance piston warbirds.

More about James

James Holland is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning historian, writer, broadcaster and podcaster. The author of a number of best-selling histories, he has written and presented a large number of television programmes and series. James is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Research Fellow at Swansea University. He is hugely passionate about the Typhoon, so much so that he commissioned a giant replica Typhoon, in RB396’s colours, to sit atop the hill at the 2019 Chalke Valley History Festival, an event which he set up and now chairs. He runs the “We Have Ways” podcast, with his co-host Al Murray, and they can regularly be heard “talking Typhoon” on there.

More about Mark

Mark Greenfield is the founder and CEO of the Ultimate High Flight Academy based at Goodwood, West Sussex. A longtime flight safety and aerobatics instructor and an Unlimited level Air Display pilot in the Extra 300, Mark is passionate about getting RB396 airborne as a legacy to all those who played a part in the Typhoon’s history. After flying in the RAF, Greeners moved to the Investment Banking world, finishing as  Global Head of Risk Management for a major US bank. Mark ran the Empire Test Pilot School at Boscombe Down for QinetiQ from 2009-2011 and represented the U.K. on the European Aviation Safety Committee that mandated improved flight safety training for commercial pilots from 2019. He is also an aviation journalist and very much looks forward to covering RB396’s first flight!

More about Sam

As a result of the 2010 Defence Review, Sam left the RAF in 2012 as a low hours trainee. Qualifying as a commercial pilot, he spent six years as a professional flying instructor at Shoreham and Goodwood where he flew the Harvard IIb and other vintage aircraft, as well as being the first Non-Qualified Service Pilot to be selected to fly for Ultimate High. During this time, he qualified as a Display Pilot. In 2018 he was asked by John Romain, founder of the Aircraft Restoration Company, to join their team at Duxford, where he now flies the Spitfire. Since November 2018 he has been flying the 737NG for TUI Airways. He co-founded the HTPG in 2016 as a result of researching his Typhoon pilot grandfather. Parts of his grandfather’s Hawker Typhoon, whose final mission in WWII was from Goodwood, are to be incorporated into the rebuild.

More about Alex

Alex has more than a decade of experience in the tech industry and is a Digital Product Owner at TUI. His background ranges from managing e-commerce websites generating £20m+ per year to designing large-scale web applications for over 100,000 users at airports around the world. He joined the project at the end of 2019, offering his technical skill set to overhaul digital aspects of the organisation and is now a core member of the team. In 2020 he completed commercial flight training to achieve a frozen ATPL and has ambitions of flying warbirds in the future. His passion for the Hawker Typhoon comes from fond memories of his Great-Grandfather, who witnessed the aircraft in action during WWII.

More about Dave

Dave lives in Oxfordshire with his long term partner and has two grown children. He is a Senior Design Engineering consultant in the automotive industry and has worked all over the world. He’s been a private pilot most of his life having been a member of the British Gliding Team three times, a flying instructor, sheep farming microlight pilot in Australia, Power Pilot and flown hot air balloons. His greatest achievement in flying is having an equal number of landings as take offs. His family connection with the Typhoon is through his father who was an engine flight test engineer for Napier, helping to develop the Sabre in a specially rigged Warwick Bomber test aircraft. This passion for flight and engineering was passed to Dave through his father and he wants to experience the same pride as his father did when he saw  Hawker Typhoons fly.

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