#626, Christopher Charles BLOUNT

An officer of the RAF who joined up as an AC2 and was a driver for a year today becomes an Equerry to the Queen.  He is 29-year-old Flight Lieutenant Christopher Blount whose home is in Cambridge.

His mother said last night: "My son has done no duties before with the Queen or the Duke of Edinburgh.  I don't think he has even seen them.  I am very proud of him.  He does not say much about his work when he is at home, but I think everyone agrees he is great fun."

Flight Lieutenant Blount has been adjutant of 615 (County of Surrey) Squadron, Royal Auxiliary Air Force, at Biggin Hill since 1952.  One of his last duties before leaving for Buckingham Palace was to receive from Sir Winston Churchill the Esher Challenge Cup, awarded each year to the most efficient fighter squadron in the R. Aux. A.F.  Sir Winston is the squadron's honorary Air-Commodore.

When Flight Lieutenant Blount went into the RAF there was a surplus of pilots, so he served as an MT driver until he could take his air crew training.  Then he flew Mosquitoes with two night fighter squadrons.  He has since been an instructor at the RAF College, Cranwell, and ADC to the Air Officer Commanding, British Forces, Aden.

Newpaper cutting 1954.

                                                                              X-X-X-X

Squadron Leader Christopher Blount, who has died aged 99, commanded an RAF jet bomber squadron, served as an equerry to the late Queen and became a banker in the City of London.

He ejected from an upside-down Canberra at just 5000 ft. - his parachute had only been open for 30 secs., but he survived with light injuries.

In November 1957, Blount was appointed to command 45 Squadron based in Singapore where it was operating the single-seat Venom fighter bomber and preparing to re-equip with the twin-engine Canberra bomber. Eight crews, including Blount and his two navigators, trained on the Canberra at a base in Lincolnshire.

On December 7 1957, four aircraft, led by Blount, deployed to Singapore on a route that took them via Libya, Cyprus, Bahrain, Karachi and Ceylon, where one of the aircraft was delayed. Blount and the other two pressed on to Butterworth, near Penang, before heading for Singapore.

As they approached RAF Tengah, however, they encountered cloud, and one of the aircraft collided with the rear of Blount’s, severing its tail and making it uncontrollable. Blount and one of his navigators managed to eject, but their difficulties were far from over.

The aircraft was upside-down at just 5,000 feet when he ejected, and the Martin Baker ejector seats were relatively primitive. The parachute was open for barely 30 seconds before Blount landed with minor injuries in a plantation. Sadly, his second navigator was killed, as were the three men in the other Canberra. It was a tragic beginning to a new era for 45 Squadron.

Blount was fresh from his three years as an equerry, an appointment he had taken up in 1954, a year after the Coronation, and which saw him accompany the new Queen on her 1956 tour of Nigeria and her state visit to Portugal a year later. He also became a lifelong friend of Princess Margaret.

The historian James Pope-Hennessy recalled being shown around Balmoral in 1957 by Blount, who materialised “bounding down the stairs: a smooth, blonde, tight-skinned face with mildly protuberant blue eyes, which looked at me askance as though I might have been Lord Altrincham [a prominent critic of the Queen] in disguise. He was excessively shy and awkward; I felt more than ever like a Christian traveller who had blundered into the wrong part of a mosque.”

This diffident exterior, however, concealed an aptitude for mischief. One evening at Windsor Castle, Blount hid a decanter of whisky so that the Queen’s uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, would not find it, and they could all go to bed. But the Duke “sniffed about – he knew it was somewhere”, Blount recalled, and eventually found it behind a curtain.

Blount was appointed MVO, and lived to be the oldest surviving equerry to Queen Elizabeth II.

Christopher Charles Blount was born in London on February 6 1925, the son of Air Vice-Marshal Charles Blount CB, CBE, MC, a Royal Flying Corps veteran who was killed in a flying accident near Hendon airfield in October 1940, and Beatrice, née Lempriere, of an eminent Australian family.

Christopher’s father had been a first-class cricketer, who had played for Harrow against Eton in the famous Fowler’s Match of 1910, when Harrow’s seemingly commanding position – needing only 55 for victory, at the start of the final innings – was demolished by one Etonian, Robert St Leger Fowler, who took nine wickets for 32, Harrow collapsing to 45 all out.? A century later, Christopher Blount organised a reunion dinner at the Cavalry and Guards Club for descendants of those who had taken part in what The Spectator argued “might just be the greatest cricket match of all time”.

The young Christopher also excelled at cricket, which he vastly preferred to the compulsory boxing at his prep school Elstree, where he was biffed on the nose by the rumbustious Irish peer Lord Mount Charles. Among his other Elstree contemporaries were The Boy Friend composer Sandy Wilson, who Blount recalled was forever drawing pictures of girl’s dresses, and Dwin (later Field Marshall Lord) Bramall, whose ambition even then was to be head of the Army.

Blount played for Harrow in the Eton and Harrow match and then joined the RAF, first being sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, to read general arts. He completed his pilot training just as the war in Europe was ending, then flew Mosquitos in the night fighter role before becoming a flying instructor.

In 1950 he left for Aden to join 8 Squadron which had recently been equipped with the twin-engine Brigand ground-attack aircraft. Known as “the quiet years”, this was a period of muscle-flexing around the Arabian Peninsula, with disturbances increasing in the Aden Protectorate, the Persian Gulf and in Iraq. The squadron patrolled areas of dissident tribesmen, and spent time at Shaibah in Iraq during rioting against the Anglo-Iranian oil company.

After almost two years on 8 Squadron, Blount was appointed to be the ADC to the Air Officer Commanding British Forces Aden, Air Vice-Marshal Douglas Macfadyen, with whom he travelled widely around the Middle East and East Africa.

He was then sent to Biggin Hill, where he was asked at the bar whether he was interested in delivering single-engine Vampires to India, for £200 per flight. Despite never having flown the type, he assured his enquirer that he had done so and was prepared to take on this “freelance” venture.

After an anxious night spent studying the pilot’s notes, he delivered the first Vampire from the De Havilland factory. All went well until the fourth delivery, when the aircraft caught fire on take-off at Jodhpur.

In 1958, after his eventful arrival in Singapore to take command of 45 Squadron, he was soon in action in support of Operation Firedog, the campaign against communist terrorists in the Malayan jungle. On March 18 Blount led the squadron’s first bombing mission when four aircraft each dropped six 500lb bombs on targets in the jungles of northern Malaya.

There was another anxious moment a year later when, on an exercise to Don Muang near Bangkok, the undercarriage of Blount’s Canberra would not lower, but he pulled off a smooth “pancake” landing on the aircraft’s belly.

On August 17 1959, 45 Squadron flew its last Operation Firedog mission when Blount led three aircraft to bomb a terrorist camp. A few weeks later, he and his crew won a bombing competition against other local squadrons. On May 26 1960 the popular and highly respected Blount handed over command of 45 Squadron to his successor.

That year he chose to leave the RAF and joined Hambros Bank, becoming a director in 1973; he later moved to Lazard’s, retiring in 1984.

In 1965, the Blount family suffered further tragedy when Christopher’s elder brother, Air Commodore John Blount, DFC, a former Spitfire photographic reconnaissance pilot and POW, then serving as Captain of the Queen’s Flight, was killed when a Whirlwind helicopter of the Queen’s Flight crashed when a rotor blade failed, killing the four occupants.

Quiet and debonair, Christopher Blount was a fine raconteur. As the best fisherman on the board of Hambros, he was given the onerous task of entertaining clients on the Suldal river in Norway, where Hambros had the fishing rights. He was also a fine shot and for several years returned to the isle of Tiree for the snipe.

He and his wife were intrepid travellers, and enjoyed visiting their son James on his diplomatic postings to Peru and Pakistan. Blount was particularly pleased to revisit Peshawar, which he had known as an airman, and to see the North-West Frontier.

He also chaired trusts for Harrow School, was a governor of Elstree, and a leading light of the village of Barkway in Hertfordshire, where he lived for nearly 60 years in the family’s Jacobean manor.

In 1957 he married Susan Cobbold, daughter of the 1st Baron Cobbold, a former governor of the Bank of England, and his wife Lady Hermione (née Lytton). Susan predeceased him in 2021 and he is survived by their two sons and two daughters.

Daily Telegraph, 8th January 2025

Blount's great great nephew is singer James Hillier Blount