Oxford OXDR002 De Havilland DH.89 Dragon Rapide Passenger Airliner - Prince of Wales King Edward VIII (1:72 Scale)
"Of course, I do have a slight advantage over the rest of you. It helps in a pinch to be able to remind your bride that you gave up a throne for her."
- British King Edward VIII
The de Havilland DH.89 Dragon Rapide was a British short-haul passenger airliner of the 1930s. Designed by the de Havilland company in late 1933 as a faster and more comfortable successor to the DH.84 Dragon, it was in effect a twin-engined, scaled-down version of the four-engined DH.86 Express. It shared many common features with the larger aircraft including its tapered wings, streamlined fairings and the Gipsy Six engine, but it demonstrated none of the operational vices of the larger aircraft and went on to become perhaps the most successful British-built short-haul commercial passenger aircraft of the 1930s.
Pictured here is a 1:72 scale replica of King Edward VIII's personal De Havilland Dragon Rapide passenger plane. Edward VIII was the first monarch to become a qualified pilot. Sold Out!
Wingspan: 8 inches
Length: 5-1/2 inches
Release Date: December 2012
Historical Account: "Puppet King?" - On December 10th, 1936, King Edward VIII signed a document that stated he he had renounced "the throne for myself and my descendants." The following day he made a radio broadcast where he told the nation that he had abdicated because he found he could not "discharge the duties of king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love."
Edward moved to Austria and stayed with friends until Wallis Simpson obtained her divorce from her former husband. On June 3rd, 1937, the couple were married at the Chteau de Cand in France. The new king, his younger brother, George VI, granted him the title, the Duke of Windsor. However, under pressure from the British government, the king refused to extend to the new duchess of Windsor the rank of "royal highness".
Over the next two years Edward travelled extensively in Europe including visiting Nazi Germany where he met Adolf Hitler. When France was occupied by the German Army in 1940, Edward and his wife moved to Spain. In July 1940 the couple went to live in Portugal. Soon afterwards the Federal Bureau of Investigation received information that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were being used by the Nazis to obtain secrets about the Allies. On 13th September 1940, an FBI officer sent a memo to J. Edgar Hoover that: "An agent has established conclusively that the Duchess of Windsor has recently been in touch with Joachim von Ribbentrop and was maintaining constant contact and communication with him. Because of their high official position, the duchess was obtaining a variety of information concerning the British and French official activities that she was passing on to the Germans."
The British government also discovered that Adolf Hitler planned to make Edward the puppet king of the United Kingdom if the Germans won the Second World War. When he heard the news, Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, arranged for the Duke of Windsor to leave Europe and become the governor of the Bahamas.
After the war the Duke and Duchess of Windsor lived in France. Edward's book, A King's Story, appeared in 1951. His wife's book, The Heart has its Reasons, appeared in 1956. Edward, Duke of Windsor, died in Paris on May 28th, 1972.