Prince William has revealed that flying is his “happy place” when he reminisced with old air force colleagues about the “glory days” of serving with the RAF Search and Rescue Force. The Prince of Wales visited RAF Benson near Oxford with the Crown Prince of Jordan, where he spoke about flying Sea King helicopters on rescue missions and described how their sound still goes “straight to my heart”.
When he met former colleagues and others in the mess at the RAF base, he was asked if he still spent any time in the cockpit, and the prince replied, “I do still fly, yeah – I keep my hours going. When you learn that skill set, you just don’t want it to go. I’ve definitely lost a lot of the skills I had, but I like to keep on top of my flying, keep doing it.
“And it’s my happy place, I love flying.”
The future King served a three-year tour with the Search and Rescue Force and, during his time based at RAF Valley in Anglesey, carried out 156 search and rescue operations resulting in 149 people being rescued, before he left the Armed Forces in 2013.
He later served as a search and rescue helicopter pilot with the East Anglian Air Ambulance, flying missions for two years before stepping down in July 2017 to focus on his royal duties.
The Prince told the group: “I miss the Search and Rescue – glory days. I miss the Sea King flying around, because when I hear it, that noise, as it flies past. We had obviously the US state visit the other day seven aircraft flying over. Sea King comes in, I was like ‘there she is’ that noise went straight to my heart.”
RAF Benson is a key military base that provides rapid support for various operations worldwide.
It is home to to a number of Squadrons including No.22 Squadron, which provides operational testing, evaluation, tactics and training for all aviation in Joint Aviation Command and No.28 (Army Cooperation) Squadron, which is the Chinook operational conversion unit, training aircrew before they fly on the front line.
While there, William and Crown Prince Hussein helped the technicians with maintenance work. The future monarchs helped tighten a nut on an oil reserve for a rotorhead – the large assembly a Chinook’s rotor blades are connected to on top of the aircraft – using a torque wrench.
After the wrench made a satisfying click, William joked: “You will check before it goes back (into service), I don’t want to be responsible.” The two princes later had a private briefing about undisclosed matters.
Flight Lieutenant Steve Wilders, a Chinook instructor, served alongside the prince in search and rescue at RAF Valley and later once piloted a royal helicopter carrying William.
After speaking to William in the mess, he said: “It was really nice to hear that he has carried on flying – he’s still a pilot. He made it sound as though he still enjoys it and it’s a nice break from the everyday pressures I suppose, getting up and flying away from everything.”