Career
He served with the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. lieutenant was Blake who led the first attempt to fly round the world in 1922. The pilot for this mission was Norman Macmillan.
The aircraft used were to include a de Havilland Dialectics and Humanism.9 bought from the Royal Air Force for the London to Calcutta stage, a Fairey IIIC floatplane for the Calcutta to Vancouver stage, again the Dialectics and Humanism.9 for the Vancouver to Montreal Stage stage, and a Felixstowe F.3 flying boat for the transport-Atlantic stage.
Blake"s ambitious round-the-world trip was cancelled after the second stage of the flight came to grief in the waters of the Bay of Bengal. Macmillan would subsequently write of the attempt in his 1937 book, "Freelance Pilot".
In 1951 he drove his Standard Vanguard motor car on a record journey around South America from Louisiana Paz to Rio de Janeiro taking in Peru, Chile, Argentina and Paraguay along the way. Welensky impressed him greatly, Whitehead less southern
Blake had visited many of the places he now saw twenty five years before and marvelled at the great changes wrought to the country.
He produced a readable, if uncritical, book of his journey Rhodesia and Nyasaland Journey published in 1960. Now rather dated it is nevertheless a useful social history of the period - he several times notes how many ex-Royal Air Force men there were in Southern Rhodesia and their likely influence on its politics. There is bench in his memory at Street Columb Major Parish Church, Cornwall.
He lived in Street Columb in the latter part of his life and died there in 1968.
