“Godfather” of Scottish skiing

Born: April 16, 1917

Died: March 12, 2017

HAVING survived the Second World War after his RAF Mosquito fighter- bomber was hit by German anti-aircraft fire, Glasgow-born Philip Rankin, who has died a month before his 100th birthday, went on to pioneer the Scottish ski industry, building the first ski lift at Glencoe with his own hands in the 1950s.

When his Mosquito was riddled with anti-aircraft shells over Nazi-occupied Walcheren in the Netherlands in late 1944, he nursed the plane back to ditch in the English Channel and was thrown through his canopy into the sea. He was lucky to be picked up – an air-sea rescue team followed his smoke trail.

It was initially thought he was paralysed. But his doctor at Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire told him the best form of physiotherapy for his back would be to walk up snow slopes wearing snowshoes or skis with skins on their base. “But by no means try to ski down,” the doctor ordered. The last part got lost on Mr Rankin.

Mr Rankin scrounged scrap metal from a Glasgow scrapyard, drove it to Glencoe and, with his mates, carried it up a Glencoe mountain to erect his dream, a ski lift, which opened in February 1956. Mr Rankin ran the Glencoe resort for the next 36 years and skied there himself until he was 83. More than 60 years on, Glencoe now attracts skiers from all over the world, bringing in at least £30 million to the Scottish economy, hence his well-deserved nickname: “Godfather of Scottish skiing.”

Philip Naismith Rankin was born at Eglinton Drive, Glasgow, on April 16, 1917, the youngest of three children, but brought up in Helensburgh. His father Robert Cecil Rankin imported cork from Portugal to make flotation devices. His mother was Madge, née Gibson. Philip attended Edinburgh’s Cargilfield Preparatory School, and later Clifton College in Bristol.

His first job was in his father’s cork business before he trained as a civil engineer in Glasgow, often working in the shipyards. After war broke out, he enlisted in the Royal Artillery but towards the end of the war the RAF were short of pilots so he trained, in Spitfires and Mosquitoes. He was based in Oxfordshire, Cairo, Calcutta and Rhodesia before being called up into combat action near the end of the war.

“I had a fine old first class tour of the world,” he recalled. “I must have been the most expensive and useless pilot in the RAF. I always arrived just after the battle was finished or left before it started. It wasn’t until 1945 that I first scratched the paint on anything.” Aerial reconnaissance, rather than dogfights, was his major wartime role and he was proud that “I never fired a shot in anger”.

But in fact, he more than scratched the paint on his Mosquito. He was photographing Nazi troop movements during the ground Battle of Walcheren – involving 1st Battalion Glasgow Highlanders – when his Mosquito was hit by an anti-aircraft gun. The gun was possibly hidden inside trains whose roofs suddenly opened to allow the Germans to fire at low-flying allied planes.

After the war, “there was a feeling of tremendous anti-climax,” he said. “I went from quite an exciting life to reverting to my destiny, alleged, of being a partner in a small Glasgow light engineering firm, which I found extremely boring. I went skiing, I think, to get away from the tedium. I was never more happy in my life than the day I threw my bowler hat over the suspension bridge into the Clyde and took to the hills.” He became a prominent member of the Scottish Ski Club and edited the club’s Journal.

Having studied Glencoe’s mountains in detail, he suggested in the Journal the idea of a permanent ski lift on the northern slopes of Meall a’Bhuiridh, where snow was likely well into the spring. “It has an ample corrie deeply scored with ravines, which collect such a mass of snow as to be virtually impervious to even weeks of thaw,” he wrote. It was also handy for the A82.

At first, his idea was widely seen as a joke. But, with the financial help of local estate owner Philip Fleming, Mr Rankin left his job as an engineer in Glasgow and headed for the hills along with volunteers from the Scottish Ski Club and Creag Dhub Mountaineering Club, many of whose members had worked with him as engineers in the Glasgow shipyards. They managed to acquire the perfect vehicle – an ex-military M29 Weasel tracked vehicle which happened to be a veteran of the Battle of Walcheren.

His vision for Glencoe led to a blossoming of Scottish skiing as further resorts opened at Glenshee, Cairngorm, Lecht and latterly the Nevis Range.

The same year as the first permanent lift opened in 1960, he married Gudrun (Goody) Weiland, a refugee from Soviet-occupied East Germany just before the Berlin Wall was thrown up.

They made home in Helensburgh, before moving to Ballachulish. She died in 2002 at 75 and they had no children. His brother and sister also predeceased him.

Mr Rankin served as managing director of White Corries Ltd, the original name of the Glencoe ski area, until he retired in November 1992, and skied there for the last time in 2000.

“His wonderful housekeeper Marie McLean and her husband David were the mainstay of Philip’s life after his wife Goody died and also spent hours sitting with him at the end,” said Mr Rankin’s lifelong friend Viki Sutherland, who also visited him until his death.

Last year, a new green run at Glencoe was named Rankin’s Return in his honour.

Phil Davison