David Whalley

Born: December 17, 1952;

Died: March 24, 2025.

DAVID ‘Heavy’ Whalley MBE, who has died, aged 72, from liver cancer, was, to many, a legend in the mountain rescue community, one who was involved in more than a thousand rescues and emergency call-outs.

He spent nearly four decades with the RAF Mountain Rescue Team and three years with a civilian team. Many of the incidents that he witnessed during his time with the RAF team stayed with him for the rest of his life – the RAF Chinook helicopter crash on the Mull of Kintyre in June 1994, for example, which claimed the lives of four crew and 25 passengers, and, several years before that, the tragedy at Lockerbie.

Even before news of the Pan Am disaster had emerged, December 21, 1988 was a far from ordinary day for Whalley, who at the time was 37 years old, and the full-time leader of the RAF Leuchars Mountain Rescue Team. “My girlfriend had left her husband and she arrived at my door at four o’clock. You couldn’t make it up”, he told the Herald two years ago.

“We got the call as soon as the plane went missing at about seven o’clock. Air Traffic Control at Prestwick had picked it up straight away, and a rescue control centre at Pitreavie, in Fife, sent out an alert. We were the nearest team and we were told that a jumbo jet had fallen out of the sky. 

“I briefed all of our team. We were hoping we would get survivors. We took about 32 people, a very strong team, a very good blend of youth and experience. Remember”, he added, “that we were used to trauma, attending to casualties on the mountains all over Scotland, but aircraft casualties were another matter entirely”.

At Lockerbie Whalley “did a quick recce [of the site] and saw the horror that was lying all around. I told the emergency services that we couldn’t do anything until the fires had been put down. We couldn’t do anything that night. As far as I could tell, there were no lives to save, and we would have to sit things out until first light”.

Read more:

Cairngorms mountain man on how he's preparing for his final journey

Lockerbie: 'We need all the helicopters: it's like Vietnam here'

Cyclists on journey to remember Lockerbie bombing victims

Poignant memories of RAF Shackleton crash

On his popular blog Whalley, which he continued writing until March 16 this year, would frequently recall the team’s experiences in the aftermath of the disaster, and wrote about the post-traumatic stress disorder that befell many of them.

David William Whalley was born in Ayr in 1952, the youngest of five children of Bill Whalley, a former Scotland cross-country runner and minister of Newton Wallacetown kirk at Newton-on-Ayr, and his wife Jessie (née Cavanagh).

From his parents he got an abiding love of the mountains. As he once wrote on his blog, “Arran is for lovers of mountains, nature  and memories and I have so many. The great cliffs were something else and with my Dad and Mum and the rest of the family we explored this incredible place. In the mountains we saw Eagles, deer, an albino stag and so much wildlife and, by the sea, so many seals and other incredible wildlife all over. We loved the Glens and rivers and the rowing boats at Brodick, every year we went and I loved this Island so much”.

By his own admission, however, he was something of a tearaway in his youth. “I was a bit of a troubled kid”, he told Cameron McNeish on the latter’s Roads Less Travelled series. “I was one of five and I was quite a wild child and I think it was either – I’ll be honest with you – go to jail or join up”.

He joined the RAF as a caterer in 1971, initially based at RAF Kinloss in Moray, though his real aim was to become part of the MRT, the Mountain Rescue Team. He was rejected at first because although he was very fit he was too short – 5ft 4in – and at seven-and-a-half stones too skinny, but he persisted and was eventually accepted. His size and his spirit earned him the nickname of ‘Heavy’.

“The team was hard to get into”, Whalley told the WalkHighlands site in 2022. “But food was very important for the team, and it didn’t hurt that I worked in catering”.

During his RAF career, he added, he attended not just Lockerbie and the Chinook incident but also the crash of a Shackleton aircraft from RAF Lossiemouth that crashed on Harris in April 1990, with the loss of ten lives. At that time he was leader of the RAF Kinloss MRT.

“There were the security aspects of a military crash, and the work of the Board of Enquiries, which for us could involve safeguarding the inspecting officers. Some of these incidents took days or longer. Many were tragic events, like the Wessex helicopter crash on Ben More that killed the Killin MRT leader. There were plenty of civilian aircraft crashes as well, like the Viscount on Ben More and some of the harder to reach places – one on Barra comes to mind”.

Whalley spent 37 years with RAF Mountain Rescue and three with a civilian team, Torridon and Kinlochewe MRT. A genuinely popular character who had time for everyone he met, he became a keen environmentalist as well as blogging on his ‘Old Man’s Thoughts and Tales’ pages. Over the decades he climbed widely at home and abroad – in the Alps, the Himalayas, India, Pakistan Tibet, Canada, Yosemite, Alaska and the Falklands.

In Scotland he ‘bagged’ the Munros seven times over. In late 2018, to mark the 30th anniversary of the Lockerbie tragedy, he took part in a cycle ride from Washington DC to Syracuse, where 35 of the victims had been studying at university. He was president of the Search and Rescue Dog Association Scotland, and early in 2023 he became the Fort William Mountain Festival’s 16th recipient of the Scottish Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture.

As he walked with Cameron McNeish for the Roads Less Travelled programme a few years ago, Whalley said: “When you find somebody alive is amazing. I just did a series of lectures and I met quite a few people we’d found and it’s wonderful. And you hear from them 20 years later, and what they’ve achieved in their life. So me to that’s great, and that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?”

In a tribute after his death, Scottish Mountain Rescue said: "Heavy dedicated his life to helping others in the mountains, giving countless years of service with unwavering commitment, skill, and compassion. He was a leader, a mentor, and a friend to so many in the Mountain Rescue community and beyond. His knowledge, experience, and kindness left an indelible mark on all who worked alongside him".

At The Herald, we carry obituaries of notable people from the worlds of business, politics, arts and sport but sometimes we miss people who have led extraordinary lives. That's where you come in. If you know someone who deserves an obituary, please consider telling us about their lives. Contact garry.scott@heraldandtimes.co.uk