Heroic Scottish pilot who brought stricken jet back to base dies

The Herald Scotland

17-05-2025

Died: March 26, 2025
Captain Geoffrey Harold Rosenbloom, who has died aged 88, was a legendary aircraft pilot who was born in Shimla, India, to Major Leah Violet Rosenbloom, and Colonel Alfred Rosenbloom, both Royal Army Medical Corps. Both parents were Scottish Surgeon Officers attached to the Indian Army. The Indian divisions would go on to acquire a truly heroic reputation in the Second World War, with 87,000 killed in action, including 3,000 killed in the taking of Monte Cassino, during the Italian Campaign.
Young Geoffrey lived in India until he was nine years old. Later in life he would hold his children and grandchildren spellbound with stories of growing up with a pet elephant and several pet monkeys. Geoff was sent off to boarding school in Scotland while his parents remained serving in the Army in all its theatres of war.
His parents fully expected him to gain excellent grades and enter university to become a doctor like them. The world then was not what it is today. The war had just ended, and displaced and lost souls were trying to find their families in a world as yet unencumbered with the internet and social media. His trip to Scotland, with his mum and younger sister, Jane, took several weeks on trains and steamers.
At boarding school, Geoff joined the Air Cadets. Dutifully gaining good grades, he started medicine at Edinburgh University. By this time, he was also enlisted in the University Air Squadron. At just 18 years old he obtained his wings.
Read more Obituaries
He had now caught the 'flying bug' however, and after just two years of medicine, Geoff was awarded a commission in the RAF. He abandoned his medical studies. Today the RAF would pay for such a cadet to finish their studies but, perhaps back then, the RAF needed pilots as much as they needed doctors.
Geoff then found his future wife, Liz on a blind date. This was the start of a life-long 'honeymoon'. When Geoff was promoted as a fast jet pilot, he was posted abroad, where the victorious powers were still trying to restore post-war order.
He was posted to Cyprus with 43 squadron, to help the restoration effort in the Middle East. He few a Hawker Hunter single seat fast jet fighter. At first Liz remained in Scotland studying at the Domestic Science School, fondly remembered as the 'Dough School' in Edinburgh. Liz, who died in October 2020, was renowned for her cooking and needlework skills.
Liz and Geoff wrote to each other almost every day. On the occasion of one of his rapid promotions in the squadron, Geoff ended one of his letters to Liz with the remark 'I'm thinking of getting married.' Liz immediately replied with a two-word letter 'Who to?'
Soon after that the couple were married in Scotland, and they were allocated officer's family accommodation in Cyprus.
Geoff received an official Commendation and a medal from the Queen, while stationed in Cyprus. One day he was performing a tight left dive at 21,000ft in his Hunter jet fighter, when he realised that he no longer had full control of his jet; it would no longer respond to aileron input, which rolls and turns the jet. Being over the sea, the standard drill if one lost control, called for the pilot to depart the stricken jet by ejection seat, and bask in the Mediterranean sunshine until fished out of the water by helicopter.
However not our Geoff, to whom losing aileron control meant little more than an inconvenience. Geoff wrestled the jet to something close to straight and level and nursed his jet back to a very passable landing. When asked by his Station Commander why he had not ejected, Geoff replied that trying to bring the stricken jet back would allow engineers to examine why the jet lost aileron control.
True enough it was readily determined that the near catastrophe was due to the failure, through metal fatigue, of an aileron pulley wheel bracket. Geoff's Commendation recorded that in heroically and selfishly nursing his uncontrollable jet back to base, the problem was corrected across the fleet, potentially saving loss of life in the future.
Geoff also saw service in Aden and the Suez Crisis, after which his Commission on fast jets came to an end. Returning to Scotland in 1962, Geoff was hired by Willie Logan's fledgling Loganair becoming their third pilot after Captain Duncan 'Mac' MacIntosh DFC and Captain Ken Foster DFC, both sadly no longer with us. Geoff was invited as a guest of honour to Loganair's recent 60-year anniversary celebration, which he attended with his customary grin.
After some years flying for Loganair, which included piloting the renowned 24/7 air ambulance service to the outer and northern isles of Scotland, Geoff started his own air charter company. Later, with a fleet of 12 aircraft and many pilots, Geoff took on a new director, Sir Hugh Fraser, at that time owner of House of Fraser including Harrods.
Geoff flew many well-known characters and celebrities, including Elton John, the Rolling Stones, The Average White Band, Diana Ross and Scotland's own Billy Connolly. Elton invited Geoff to a VIP seat at his Glasgow concert including a visit back-stage.
As well as being a legendary pilot on the Scottish scene, Geoff was equally well known for being an international broker in the purchase and sale of all types of aircraft, from the smallest primary trainer to Boeing Jumbo jets. Only a couple of years ago he arranged the sale of two very large passenger jets from the French Government fleet to a customer in Indonesia. Geoff personally delivered a lot of the aircraft he bought, sold or brokered. He performed over 1,000 long-distance ferry flights, over the Atlantic, the Arctic and Indian oceans.
Read more Obituaries
However such was Geoff's humility, that not a lot of people were aware that he was also for 25 years, one of the unpaid volunteer pilots of the St John Ambulance Air Wing, transferring donor organs, such as kidneys, hearts, lungs and all manner of 'human spare parts' as well as patients and surgical teams all over Britain and the Continent. The co-ordination of human transplants never sleeps and Geoff saw it as a special achievement in humanitarian service to have delivered a combined heart and lungs one Christmas day, followed a week later, on New Year's Day, by transporting a surgical team complete with a child donor heart and lungs in the 'white cold-box with the large green cross'.
Geoff was decorated by the Queen at Buckingham Palace as an Officer of the Order of St John 'for services, above and beyond duty, to mankind'. Perhaps Geoff's loss to the medical profession was somewhat redeemed after all.
Geoff passed all his regular flying medical examinations, with associated X-rays, ECGs, etc, every year right up until he was 82 years of age. In 2022 his heart, as he described it himself, 'sprang a leak'. Not only did Geoff have heart surgery at the Jubilee Hospital, Clydebank, but he allowed the operation to be filmed or the Heart Hospital TV series. Geoff was operated on by the extraordinary heart surgeon, Angie Ghattas. She had been hoping to review Geoff's health this year.
Geoff Rosenbloom employed, nurtured and inspired hundreds of pilots, many of whom are now flying 'heavies' for airlines all around the world, and he will be sorely missed.
He is survived by his two daughters, Lizanne and Lucy, Lizanne's husband Gerry, and grand-daughters Leah and Lily, as well as his sister Jane and her husband Rod.
FRANK CANNON