Born June 20,1932, Gibbings grew up in the port city of Plymouth in southwest England, and received his secondary education at Plymouth Tech. In 1949, he joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) as an apprentice at No. 1 School of Technical Training at RAF Halton, and left the service as a navigator. In 1955, he joined Fairey Aviation to work on guided weapons. Later he had the good fortune to work in the small team led by August Stepan developing the Rotodyne tip jet and he would go on to fly in this revolutionary aircraft as well. While at Fairey he received flying tuition from Lettice Curtiss, one of the wartime Air Transport Auxiliary women pilots, using the Tipsy Trainer operated by the company's flying club. Moving to Yeovil when Westland and Fairey were merged, his flight test career continued and would be marked by many firsts. He was particularly pleased to have been one of the crew for the first flight of the WG.13 Lynx. Gibbings was to lead the early and formative development trials of electric rotor ice protection, Advanced Sea King trials (including experiencing the unplanned demonstration of the effectiveness of its flotation equipment off the coast of Marseilles), and the very successful flight test of the Westland composite main rotor blade for the US Navy's Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King at Naval Air Station Patuxent River.
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