Donald Healey

Born in Perranporth, Cornwall, the elder son of Frederick (John Frederick) and Emma Healey (née Mitchell), who at that time ran a general store there, at an early age Donald Healey became interested in all things mechanical, particularly aircraft. He studied engineering while at Newquay College. When he left, his father bought him an expensive apprenticeship with Sopwith Aviation Company in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, and he joined Sopwith in 1914 continuing his engineering studies at Kingston Technical College. Sopwith had sheds at the nearby Brooklands aerodrome and racing circuit.

Barely 16 when World War I started, he volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) in 1916, before the end of his apprenticeship, and earned his "wings" as a pilot. He went on night bombing raids, served on anti-Zeppelin patrols, and also as a flying instructor. Shot down by British anti-aircraft fire on one of the first night bombing missions of the war, he was invalided out of the RFC in November 1917 after a further series of crashes, and spent the rest of the war checking aircraft components for the Air Ministry. Following the Armistice, he returned to Cornwall, took a correspondence course in automobile engineering, and opened the first garage in Perranporth in 1920.

Donald Healey married Ivy Maud James (died 1980) on 21 October 1921 and they had three sons.