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Colonel Tony Uloth, soldier and pilot who served in Korea and tested an early microlight prototype – obituary

Colonel Tony Uloth, who has died aged 92, had a wide-ranging and varied career which included becoming a test pilot in bizarre circumstances.

In 1957 Uloth trained as an Army pilot, flying Austers. He qualified and was posted to 6 Flight Army Air Corps (AAC) at Middle Wallop, Hampshire. After transferring to the 10th Royal Hussars (10 RH), he took part in exercises to test the viability of integrating an innovative aircraft into a front-line combat unit to carry out clandestine operations.

The ML prototype was an early form of microlight aircraft. It consisted of a delta-shaped rubber, inflatable wing with a square laundry basket on wheels suspended underneath. A pedal-car crank, powered by the engine, worked a set of bellows which kept the contraption inflated. When not in use, the whole ensemble could be packed away in the laundry basket.

On its first test flight, at Middle Wallop in Hampshire, all Uloth’s verve and élan could not persuade it into the air until it reached the very end of the airfield. Its ceiling, he reported, was about 20 feet, it was slow, and it was described as having all the manoeuvrability of a flying dishcloth. After evaluation by the AAC, further production of the ‘Durex Delta’, as it was irreverently known, was not taken up.

Anthony Conrad Uloth was born at Redhill, Surrey, on May 30 1929 and brought up in Kent. His two Uloth uncles were awarded MCs in the First World War.

As a boy, he witnessed the Battle of Britain and the V-1 and V-2 attacks on the south of England. He was educated at Malvern College; the Radar Research Establishment having taken over their buildings, they moved to Harrow School and shared the accommodation. He was captain of boxing and in the school gymnastics team.

Provided by The Telegraph Tony Uloth

In 1947, he was called up for National Service. During training, he knocked out Bruce Kent (later a leading campaigner for nuclear disarmament) in a boxing match. He entered the RMA Sandhurst the following year. He was a Junior Under Officer, captain of the modern pentathlon team and in the Academy fencing team.

Commissioned into the 1st Royal Tank Regiment in 1949, he served in Germany before accompanying 1 RTR to Korea. In May 1953, in the 3rd Battle of the Hook, he was Mentioned in Despatches. After a posting to the Canal Zone he went to the School of Oriental and African Studies, spent a year in Turkey and passed the Army’s exam as an interpreter in Turkish. He subsequently acted as the president of Turkey’s interpreter on his state visit to Britain.

He served with 10 RH as adjutant in Germany and Aden and was a member of the Regiment’s squash, water polo and fencing teams. A return to Middle Wallop in a series of staff appointments followed. In his final appointment with 10 RH he commanded a squadron in Germany.

Provided by The Telegraph Escorting the Prince of Wales at the Royal Bath & West Show in the 1980s

In 1970 he was posted to Khartoum as Defence Attaché. Sudan had fallen very much under the influence of the Soviet Union; after a coup and counter-coup that deposed and then reinstated President Nimeiry, the Russians were expelled and Uloth became involved in setting up the British Army Training Team.

Two staff appointments followed, first at Middle Wallop on the Directorate of Army Aviation and then to HQ Nato in Brussels. In 1983 he retired from the Army after five years as Director of Overseas Defence Relations at the MoD, in the course of which he made official visits to Indonesia, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and back to Sudan.

He then became chief executive of the Royal Bath and West of England Society. Specialist agricultural shows were added to complement the annual show and revenue was increased by using the showground for a wide variety of events, from pop concerts to antiques fairs.

Provided by The Telegraph The ML prototype that was tested by Uloth

He retired from the post in 1992 but took up a part-time appointment as secretary-general of the European Association of Show Organisers. In the course of the next three years he set up meetings at London, Caen, Rennes, Frankfurt, Aalborg, Oslo and Braga.

Throughout his time in the Army and in retirement he was able to pursue his love of sailing, and crossed the Atlantic twice with the commodore of the Royal Cruising Club. In the winter he enjoyed skiing with his family and, in his late 40s, he completed the arduous Haute Route, a week-long ski and mountaineering trek from Chamonix to Zermatt.

His wife Margaret ran a horse-breeding enterprise and the family hunted from their home in Nether Wallop with various packs in the south of England.

In 1994, as result of another visit to Sudan, Uloth and two friends formed the Melik Society to try to restore and preserve the Melik, the last surviving vessel of Kitchener’s fleet of gunboats that played a prominent part in the reconquest of Sudan in 1898.

 Provided by The Telegraph Uloth meeting President Nimeiry of Sudan

He had been vice-commodore of the Blue Nile Sailing Club when the Melik was used as a floating clubhouse. The vessel lies beached on the banks of the Blue Nile but the Society has not yet succeeded in securing its future.

In retirement, Uloth took up sculpture and had some success with animal and portrait sculpture in terracotta, bronze and bronze resin. He published privately his own memoirs, and Riding to War, an account written by his father of his adventures in Persia and Russia during the First World War.

Tony Uloth married, in 1954, Margaret Colquhoun, whom he had met at a vicarage tea party. The vicar’s party trick was to pass around Oliver Cromwell’s skull. The skull, it was said, had been passed to the vicar’s family after it was blown down in a gale while it was hung on a pike on London Bridge.

She survives him with their daughter and three sons. Their eldest son served with the Royal Hussars.

Tony Uloth, born May 30 1929, died September 23 2021  

Reference: Telegraph: