By then, he was serving as a Harrier pilot with No 1 (Fighter) Squadron at RAF Wittering. In fact, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands on Glover’s 28th birthday. Whilst based at RAF Leeming, he met his first wife, Dee, with the couple marrying in February 1981, just 14 months before the start of the Falklands War. Next, he trained at RAF Leeming in Yorkshire before returning to RAF Valley to be a qualified flying instructor on the Hawk, while also capturing the aerobatics trophy. The following year, at RAF Valley on the island of Anglesey in north Wales, he came top of his course in advanced flying training on Gnat jets. Glover gained a BA Honours degree in engineering sciences at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, but was also a member of the University Air Squadron.įrom 1976-7, Glover attended the RAF College, Cranwell, in Lincolnshire, where he won the Battle of Britain Trophy for best aerobatics pilot. An only child, he was educated at Cowley School, St Helens. Jeffrey William Glover, the son of a school headmaster, was born in St Helens, Lancashire, on 2 April 1954. This was because he was shot down on his very first combat mission, thereby losing one of the six aircraft from his squadron and becoming the only British pilot to be taken as a Prisoner of War during the 1982 conflict. He is glad to have played a part in a winning campaign but for a very long time he felt he had “let the side down”.
Published in AIRMail magazine in April 2022.įorty years on, Jeff Glover has mixed thoughts about the Falklands War.
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