Glen Kidston George Pearson Glen Kidston ( 23 January 1899 , Kensington , London , England – 5 May 1931 , Natal , South Africa ) was a record - breaking English aviator and motor racing driver . Kidston was a member of the well known Bentley Boys of the late 1920s , and possibly the wealthiest of that already wealthy set . His father , A . G . Kidston , was a grandson of the original A . G . Kidston who was a metal and machinery merchant in Glasgow with interests in the Clyde Shipping Company , local solicitors , accountants and banking interests amalgamated into the Clydesdale Bank . Andrew Bonar Law MP was a Kidston , by his mother , and Chancellor of the Exchequer during World War I , being briefly Tory Prime Minister in the year of his death 1923 ( " The Forgotten Prime Minister , the life and times of Andrew Bonar Law , 1858 - 1923 ( 1955 ) " ) . Kidston was one of the four , core Grosvenor Square - based Bentley team drivers , whose day - long parties passed into contemporary legend . A former Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy , he was torpedo ed three times ( in the consecutive sinkings of , and ) in the same morning during the action of 22 September 1914 against German submarine under the command of Commander Otto Weddigen as the fleet manoeuvered . Following repatriation he served in the dreadnought , , with the British Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland , running gunnery orders on open deck under direct enemy fire . Kidston grasped submarine tactics and served on several leading edge British submarines , including the notorious , that he served on ( Source : Family ) in North Sea trials . During the trials the " X1 " embedded itself in the seabed as its gauges were faulty , but was freed after a dangerous period on the sea bed . In December 1926 he received his command of the H - " class " submarine , the Beardmore - built , built at Portsmouth . Away from his duties as a submariner he was an early pioneer of naval flight ( Source : Family ) . Glen Kidston competed in numerous motor races including prestigious events such as the Monte Carlo Rally , Isle of Man TT motorcycle races , and Shelsley Walsh hillclimb . As a naval amateur he raced a Sunbeam motorcycle up the hill climb in Hong Kong and conducted speed trials on the sands , bringing the bike with him in his submarine which was patrolling the China Station ( Source : Family ) . Kidston entered the 1929 Irish Grand Prix Éireann Cup at Phoenix Park but was narrowly beaten by the Alfa Romeo of former Russian Imperial Guard officer Boris Ivanowski . This was achieved at the expense of Britons Glen Kidston and Henry Birkin , whose Bentleys were second and third respectively . He also owned and raced the first Bugatti in the UK and entered the Le Mans 24 hour race in 1929 and 1930 . On the second occasion he won the race , driving a Bentley Speed Six in partnership with Woolf Barnato , with the Bentley team delivering an epic 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 victory . In 1929 Kidston was travelling from Croydon to Amsterdam in a German airliner . 21 mins into the flight he sensed an imminent crash and assumed the safety position , likewise assisting his fellow traveller Prince Eugen von Schaumberg - Lippe . On impact , Kidston kicked out the fuselage whilst alight all over and doused himself in the wet grass . He re - entered the burning wreck to save the badly burned Prince who subsequently died ; the flames prevented him assisting others . Kidston fought through a mile of wood at night to summon help . As he flagged a motorist down , his clothes were still smoking . He rang the details to Croydon Airport personally before flying for a brief flight to rebuild his nerve . He was then hospitalised with extensive burns . Kidston was the sole survivor . ( Source : Canberra Times Friday 8 November 1929 , p . 5 ) . Kidston was a renowned big game shot and travelled on pioneering safaris in remote Kenyan districts . Films of these expeditions , of his early naval and other aviation and Bentley team work are held at the British Film Institute due to their quality and pioneering footage . In April 1931 , Glen Kidston completed a record breaking flight from Netheravon to Cape Town , South Africa . He completed the journey in just 6½ days , flying his own specially adapted Lockheed Vega monoplane and averaging 131 mph . However , Kidston was never to make the return trip . After earlier near misses in aeroplane , motorcycle , speed boat and even submarine accidents , Kidston was killed , only a year after his Le Mans triumph when his borrowed de Havilland Puss Moth broke up in mid - air while flying through a dust storm over the Drakensberg mountains . A memorial to him stands to this day at the place where his aircraft crashed , being an aluminium propellor set in stone to warn passing aviators . His gravestone at St . Peter ' s in Glasbury - upon - Wye on the Welsh borders , his childhood home , reads " Time and tide wait for no man " , with a sun dial ( Source : Family ) . News of Kidston ' s death broke in the London evening papers and both Margaret Whigham , later Duchess of Argyll , and Barbara Cartland , both amongst Kidston ' s lovers , claim in their memoirs to have fainted on leaving the theatre and seeing the headlines . Cartland named her first son Glen in his memory . The Hollywood femme fatale Pola Negri is also reputed to have known Kidston . He married Nancie Miriel Denise Soames in 1925 and had a son , Archibald Martin Glen ( 1927 – 1978 ) .