Dickson Primary(?) glider at Sutton Bank.
On Monday, 1st August 1938 a new member of the Yorkshire Gliding Club was undergoing instruction when his primary machine stalled and nose dived into the ground from fifteen feet, the impact threw him from the machine and he received back injuries.
Pilot - Mr "R H Ronnebeck", of Nunthorpe, Middlesbrough. Back injuries.
During the same meeting a Mr Phillip Wills (later a world champion) made a record gliding flight for his first time flying from Sutton Bank to Lancaster, a distance of 75 miles. Another man, Mr A O Pick, of Leeming Bar made a flight lasting over 13 hours the previous Sunday, also a record for its day. Mr Pick would sadly be killed in a crash a year later at Welburn, detailed on this website.
The Ronnebeck family were iron merchants in Middlesbrough at the time. There was a Heinrich Richard Ronnebeck, born c.1892 in Middlesbrough and died in Cleveland in 1984. An Edward Herrmann Ronnebeck, born 1894 in Middlesbrough, married in Stokesley in 1923 and died in Surrey in 1979 and a Rupert Allan Ronnebeck, born 1898 in Middlesbrough, he left for New York in 1938 but married in Surrey in 1945 and died in Surrey in 1955. It seems likley that the pilot was one of these men and the press report has incorrectly named him. All three men probably shared the same father and mother. Consulting the 1901 and 1911 census would suggest his father was Hermann Ronnebeck (born in 1850 in Berlin, Germany) and mother was Margaret Ronnebeck (nee Crowe) (born in 1865).