Tim Vigors

Vigors's account of his wartime experiences was published posthumously in 2006 as Life's Too Short to Cry: The Inspirational Memoir of an Ace Battle of Britain Fighter Pilot.

Vigors's account of his experiences in the war was published posthumously in 2006, 56 years after it was written, as Life's Too Short to Cry: The Inspirational Memoir of an Ace Battle of Britain Fighter Pilot.

Vigors, Tim. Life's Too Short to Cry: The Inspirational Memoir of an Ace Battle of Britain Fighter Pilot. London: Grub Street Publishers (2006). ISBN 1-904943-61-6

In 1990, Vigors became racing adviser to Cartier, helping to initiate the annual Cartier Racing Awards.

Vigors sold his share in the Coolmore operation and moved to Spain. He continued to work as a bloodstock agent and in 1983 returned to Newmarket, Suffolk, handling the syndication of the successful sire Indian Ridge and helping to secure High Chaparral's dam, Kasora, at auction for Sean Coughlan.

In January 1975, the Vigors and O'Brien partnership announced the amalgamation of the Coolmore Stud with the money of Robert Sangster and Magnier's Castle Hyde and Grange studs, creating Coolmore, Castle Hyde and Associated Studs. Coolmore became central to the transformation of thoroughbred horseracing, as Sangster, O'Brien and Magnier set out to capture the leading bloodstock lines, particularly of the stallion Northern Dancer, at increasingly dramatic auctions at the Keeneland Sales in Kentucky. Initially many of their most famous acquisitions, including The Minstrel and Alleged, trained to success on the track by O'Brien, were sold to American syndicates, but Coolmore soon began to increase the quality and size of its breeding operation. In 1982 their Be My Guest was named champion sire. Later horses, including Sadler's Wells and Danehill, have made Coolmore perhaps the most successful, and financially remunerative, stud operation in the world.

In 1973 Vigors paid more than £1 million for the stallion Rheingold, winner of the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. The Coolmore Stud also stood the American-bred milers, Thatch and Home Guard, both trained by O'Brien, while Magnier brought with him the sprinters Green God and Deep Diver.

Tim Vigors Bloodstock was one of the leading bloodstock operations of the 1960s. In 1964 Vigors paid 37,000 guineas for Chandelier, breaking a 10-year record at Newmarket's December sales. Two years later, again at Newmarket, he paid a record 31,000 guineas on behalf of an international partnership for a yearling colt by Charlottesville. He also bought the fillies Glad Rags and Fleet, who won the 1,000 Guineas in 1966 and 1967 respectively. He was friends with Arthur B. Hancock, Jr., of Claiborne Farm, and Ogden Phipps.

After retiring from the RAF, Vigors first set up a photographic agency in Ireland. He then joined the bloodstock auctioneers Goffs, leaving in 1951 to start his own bloodstock agency. Vigors was one of the first bloodstock agents to internationalise the racehorse breeding industry. In 1950 he was instrumental in the Irish horse Nasrullah, standing at stud in America at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky.

In the 1950s he also set up his own aviation company, based at Kidlington, near Oxford. The company specialised in providing private and executive planes and held the agency for Piper aircraft. The firm was taken over by CSE Aviation and Vigors returned to work in the bloodstock business.

In 1945 he returned to England. He retired from the RAF as a wing commander in November 1946. His final tally of combat victories was 12.

In 1945 Vigors's father had bought the 400-acre Coolmore farm in County Tipperary, where he trained racehorses. Vigors inherited Coolmore in 1968 and began the development of the farm into one of principal stud operations in thoroughbred horse breeding. In 1973 Vigors sold a 50 per cent share in Coolmore to the legendary Irish trainer Vincent O'Brien, whose Ballydoyle stables were nearby. The young John Magnier was brought in to run the farm.

Tim Vigors was married four times. In 1942, in the North West Frontier Province of India, he married Jan, with whom he had three daughters. They divorced in 1968 and that year Vigors married Atalanta Fairey, with whom he had a son. Atalanta Fairey was the widow of the aircraft pioneer Charles Richard Fairey. In 1972 Vigors married Heidi Bohlen, that marriage resulting in two daughters, and in 1982 he married Diana Bryan in Las Vegas.

In December 1941, 453 Squadron was posted to northern Malaya. Vigors had just landed at RAF Butterworth when the airfield came under attack from Japanese aircraft. Vigors ordered the squadron to scramble and retaliate. As they attacked a large formation of bombers, Vigors was shot through the left thigh and his aircraft was hit in the fuel tank. He suffered burns while baling out and landed in a mountainous area near Penang. Two Malay civilians found the injured Vigors and carried him to safety.

Through the summer of 1940, 222 Squadron flew from RAF Hornchurch in Essex. The squadron suffered heavy casualties and Vigors was himself twice forced to crash land. He once responded to a call for volunteers to intercept enemy bombers when still wearing his scarlet pyjamas under a green silk dressing gown, shooting down a Heinkel, and during night-time scrambles was in charge of attaching Douglas Bader's wooden left leg. By the end of September he had destroyed at least six enemy aircraft, with a further six probable successes. In October 1940 he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Vigors was posted to Singapore in December 1940, joining No. 243 Squadron RAF as a flight commander, flying Brewster F2A Buffalo fighters. In December 1941, he took temporary command of No. 453 Squadron RAAF (also equipped with Buffalos).

In January 1939 Vigors enrolled as a cadet at RAF Cranwell. He joined No. 222 Squadron RAF flying Spitfires at RAF Duxford in February 1940. He saw action over Dunkirk in May, shooting down his first Me 109 on 30 May, at which he felt the same satisfaction, his obituary in The Daily Telegraph recorded him saying, as if he had "pulled down a high-flying pigeon flashing across the evening sky with the wind up his tail". On 1 June he shot down his first Heinkel 111. He attended the Fourth of June at Eton having fought over Dunkirk that morning.

Wing Commander Timothy Ashmead Vigors, DFC (22 March 1921 – 14 November 2003) was a Royal Air Force fighter pilot and flying ace during the Second World War, in which he fought in the Battle of Britain and in the Far East. In civilian life, Vigors began the development of the Coolmore Stud that transformed the breeding of thoroughbred racehorses.

Vigors was born at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, on 22 March 1921. Although Vigors's father worked as a stockbroker, the family were landowners in County Carlow in Ireland and owned Tullamaine Castle stud in County Tipperary.