Major Wilfred Theodore Blake (1894 – 1968) was a pioneer aviator, travel writer and traveller. He served with the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry

Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry

The Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry was an infantry regiment of the British Army.The regiment was formed as a consequence of Childers reforms, a continuation of the Cardwell reforms, by the amalgamation of the 43rd Regiment of Foot and the 52nd Regiment of Foot , forming the 1st...

.

It was Blake who led the first attempt to fly round the world in 1922. The pilot for this mission was Norman MacMillan

Norman MacMillan (pilot)

Wing Commander Norman MacMillan, OBE, MC, AFC, DL born Glasgow, Scotland was a pilot and author.He served during World War I on the Western Front in 1917–18 with the RFC and RAF, flying Sopwith 1½ Strutter and Sopwith Camel aircraft, becoming an ace by claiming eleven victories and being credited...

. The aircraft was a de Havilland

De Havilland

The de Havilland Aircraft Company was a British aviation manufacturer founded in 1920 when Airco, of which Geoffrey de Havilland had been chief designer, was sold to BSA by the owner George Holt Thomas. De Havilland then set up a company under his name in September of that year at Stag Lane...

 DH9A bought from the Royal Air Force

Royal Air Force

The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...

. Blake's ambitious round-the-world trip was cancelled after the first stage of the flight came to grief in Calcutta.

In 1951 he drove his Standard Vanguard

Standard Vanguard

The car used a conventional chassis on which was mounted the American inspired semi-streamlined four-door body, which resembles a Plymouth. Suspension was independent at the front with coil springs and a live axle and leaf springs at the rear. Front and rear anti-roll bars were fitted. The brakes...

 motor car on a record journey around South America

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

 from La Paz

La Paz

Nuestra Señora de La Paz is the administrative capital of Bolivia, as well as the departmental capital of the La Paz Department, and the second largest city in the country after Santa Cruz de la Sierra...

 to Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

 taking in Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

, Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

, Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 and Paraguay

Paraguay

Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...

 along the way.

In 1959 he and his wife drove around the Central African Federation, again in a Standard Vanguard, at the invitation of the Federation Government, meeting both Roy Welensky

Roy Welensky

Sir Raphael "Roy" Welensky, KCMG was a Northern Rhodesian politician and the second and last prime minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland...

 and Edgar Whitehead

Edgar Whitehead

Sir Edgar Cuthbert Fremantle Whitehead, OBE, was a Rhodesian politician. He was a longstanding member of the Southern Rhodesia Legislative Assembly, although his career was interrupted by other posts and by illness. In particular he had poor eyesight, and wore very thick glasses, and later...

, the Prime Ministers of the Federation and Southern Rhodesia respectively. Welensky impressed him greatly, Whitehead less so. 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-RAF men there were in Southern Rhodesia and their likely influence on its politics.

There is bench in his memory at St Columb Major

St Columb Major

St Columb Major is a civil parish and town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. Often referred to locally as St Columb, it is situated approximately seven miles southwest of Wadebridge and six miles east of Newquay...

 Parish Church, Cornwall. He lived in St Columb in the latter part of his life and died there in 1968.

Bookography

Title	Specifications
The Pampas and the Andes	http://pictures.abebooks.com/ROGERGODDEN/277366364.jpg
Ports of Call	London, Grayson & Grayson. (1933)
Flying Round the World	London, Heath Cranton Limited. Extracted from The Geographical Journal The Geographical Journal The Geographical Journal is a journal of the Royal Geographical Society and has been published since 1831. Its original title was Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London. The journal publishes original research papers and review articles across geography, and has the highest... . Vol LXI No 4. April 1923., 1923.
Flying	George Allen & Unwin Limited, London, 1923
Desert Adventures	None
Thailand Journey	http://pictures.abebooks.com/WANTABLEBOOKS/338136272.jpg London, The Travel Book Club. (1955).
Travels Of A White Elephant: Autobiography Of An English Adventurer.	Taplinger Publishing, http://pictures.abebooks.com/MODEMBUTTERFLY/91948901.jpg (1960)
Rhodesia and Nyasaland Journey	London, The Travel Book Club, (1960)
Central African Survey	Facts and Figures of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Alvin Redman. London . (1961)
Portuguese journey.	London, (1963)
Spanish Journey or, Springtime in Spain	NY, Taplinger. 1960

The following books by Blake appeared under the name of Wing Adjutant

Title	Specifications
The Royal Flying Corps in the War	By "Wing Adjutant". - London, Cassell, (1918)
Plane Tales from the Skies	London & New York, Cassell, (1918) (Tales of dog-fighting over the trenches during WWI )
To-day with the R.A..F.	Cassell, (1939)
Over "Over There"	None