The Liddy family, steeped in aviation lore with the Air Corps for three generations, have lived with danger for so many decades that they appear totally nonchalant about the risks of flying.
Captain Mick Liddy, 28, has just completed a remarkable single-handed sailing circumnavigation of Ireland in record time, but he has also performed many aviation feats. His father, Graham, and his grandfather, Seamus or Jim Liddy, did likewise before him.
Dangerous living began with Mick's great-grandfather, Sean Joseph Liddy, who had been the o/c of the Old IRA in West Clare during the War of Independence. He was elected to the Dáil in 1921 and he was one of the first recruits to the Garda Síochána. Not long afterwards, the Dáil decided that guards could no longer remain sitting TDs, so his career in national politics was brief.
For the rest of his career, he rose through the ranks in the Garda, retiring as a chief superintendent. He had many narrow escapes, including falling down a cliff and having a bomb put in his car, fortunately found in time. During the Emergency years, he was stationed in the then Sligo-Donegal district and by this time, was vehemently opposed to the IRA; hence the bomb in his car. After he retired, he was knocked down and killed after getting off a bus in Dublin.
Jim Liddy's mother, Nan Breen, had been Ireland's first female dentist and wanted her son to follow in her footsteps. He had no such interest and served in the Army during the Emergency, transferring to the Air Corps in 1945. Jim flew such planes as Spitfires and Hurricanes and for a short time in the early 1950s was a pilot for Aer Lingus, when Air Corps pilots were seconded to the national airline. However, the daily tedium of being a civilian pilot didn't appeal and he returned to the Air Corps.
When the Air Corps got its first jets, Vampires, in 1956, he flew those, then flew operationally with the UN in Lebanon. He had his lucky escapes - notably when his plane crashed into a hillside near Shannon. Lucky Jim, who was trapped by his shoes in the wreckage, managed to escape before the aircraft blew up, although he was caught in the blast. The sole survivor of the crash, he was badly burned in the explosion and had to have 165 stitches in his head. But he was back flying within three months.
He was addicted to flying; it must run in the family, because Jim's brother Jack joined the RAF. When Jack was based in north Wales, flying jets, the two brothers met at 7,500 metres (about 25,000 ft) over the middle of the Irish Sea, for mock dog-fights. That wasn't in the rule books! However, his luck ran out in 1970, when aerial scenes for a film called Zeppelin were being filmed off Wicklow Head. A helicopter being used in filming the aerial sequences collided with Jim's plane and all crew were lost.
Long before that, Graham Liddy, father of our present hero, claims to have flown with the Air Corps at the age of two. He explains that around 1949, when the Inter-Party government was in power, it was quite keen on joining Nato. Graham's father was flying an Anson over Donegal one weekend and as Graham's mother was in hospital at the time and no babysitter was available, he was taken along for the flight.
Graham made his first solo glider flight just after his 16th birthday and by 19, he was the youngest gliding instructor in Ireland, and probably in Europe. At one stage, he set a brief Irish altitude record for a glider - 5,486 metres (18,000 ft), without oxygen. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he put on many dazzling displays at air-shows around the country.
As he wears glasses, he couldn't join the Air Corps as a pilot, but instead joined in 1973 as an aeronautical engineer. But having been responsible for maintaining so many aircraft, he managed to fly in practically everything in the Air Corps fleet, retiring as the commandant officer in charge of helicopter maintenance. For the past 10 years, he has been working with the air accident investigation unit in the Department of Transport. It's a bit like doing jigsaws, putting all the pieces together, he explains.
Mick Liddy's first memories are of a glider wing being built in the house where they were living at the time. The family lived and breathed flying, including the fumes from the wing construction. When he was six, he started sailing, an enthusiasm he has retained. He says that the skills you need for sailing helped him get into the Air Corps. He started training in the Air Corps in 1996 and won the much coveted trophy for best pilot in his class. By the end of the 1990s, he was flying government ministers around Europe.
In late 1999, he transferred to helicopters and went on to spend nearly five years flying on over 150 rescue missions, including SAR (Search and Rescue), air ambulance and neo-natal transfer work. He logged over 1,000 flying hours on the Dauphins. He is full of stories about SAR, such as one about a colleague who was returning from a rescue mission far out in the Atlantic. This man managed to land his helicopter at Castletownbere, when all that was left in the fuel tank was fumes.
Mick has had his own narrow escapes. On one occasion, when he was training, he put the helicopter into a spin. Normally, it should be a straightforward manoeuvre to bring a helicopter out of a deliberately induced spin, but Mick found that his foot had become trapped in a bar on the floor of the cockpit. He just managed to free his foot and operate the foot controls, with 10 seconds to spare before the helicopter plummeted to earth.
At the moment, he is doing all kinds of helicopter work, everything from formation flying to transporting VIPs around the country. Next year, when the Air Corps starts taking delivery of its new Bell Augusta helicopters, he is due to start training on them in Italy.
In line with his long family tradition, Mick is addicted to flying, and completly relaxed about his near misses. If you say to him that they sound really scary, he merely replies: "Interesting".