As an addendum to Harry Turner's account of the great rocket adventure of 1937, here is a collection of contemporary newspaper cuttings and documents from 1936 to 1938, which captures the optimism of the members of the Manchester Interplanetary Society before their explosive event, the somewhat patronizing tone of the newspapers towards a group of teenagers with space travel on their minds and the notoriety which the Society acquired afterwards.

Group around the rocket (l to r): Eric Burgess, Bill Heeley, Trevor Cusack
(holding the big gloves), and Harry Turner, who built Rocket No. 2

See also the Pictures of Rocketeers & Fans page for further material.

As usual, further finds provided a couple or three postscripts to the original material . . . and local amateur astronomer and blogger Gurbir Singh performed a spot of landscape detective work using the "house on the hill" in the picture above to identify the launch site near the visitor centre in Clayton Vale – see the Google Earth map segment below:

Created for RFV&SDS by HTSP Web Division, 10 SK6 4EG, Romiley, G.B. © RFV&SDS, 2012.