Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown obituary

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/22/eric-winkle-brown-obituary

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In the jet age, the period of time when technology could be heroic, Eric “Winkle” Brown, who has died aged 97, was the archetypal test pilot. He never achieved the celebrity status that was afforded some of his friends and contemporaries in the 1940s and 50s. Indeed, he was not the first pilot to survive the sound barrier, or be a martyr to high-speed flight, nor be a holder of the world air speed record. But Brown was a flier of extraordinary skill and versatility, one of those people whose attention to detail, powers of improvisation and raw courage transformed aviation.

Between the late 30s and the 80s, Brown flew 487 types of aircraft, more than any other pilot has flown, or is likely to fly, in history. He made a record 2,407 aircraft carrier landings and was the most decorated pilot in the Fleet Air Arm (FAA).

In 1940 he took part in the Battle of Britain in a 250mph Gladiator biplane. During and after the second world war, he evaluated and tested the majority of the allied and axis warplanes and some Soviet planes as well – including the MiG-15. In April 1945, Brown, who was fluent in German, interrogated Josef Kramer, commandant of Belsen concentration camp; two months later he was interrogating Hermann Göring.

Brown was the first FAA pilot to fly a jet, in December 1945, and the first person to land one – a de Havilland Vampire – on an aircraft carrier. In the 50s he passed Mach 1 (the speed of sound at any height) in American Sabre and British Hunter jets. In the 60s, he flew Chinook helicopters, Buccaneer nuclear bombers, Mach 2 Lightning and Phantom fighters – and was adviser to the Royal Navy on a (cancelled) aircraft carrier project.

His naval combat flying effectively began in 1941 with 802 Squadron in a Grumman Martlet – in his book Wings on My Sleeve (1961), he called it “a tough, fiery, beautiful little airplane” – from HMS Audacity, the world’s first “auxiliary carrier” (a converted German banana boat) on Clydeside-Gibraltar convoys. Brown shot down two four-engined Focke-Wulf Kurier bomber-cum-reconnaissance planes in head-on attacks, but, in December 1941, the Audacity was torpedoed. There would be a later stint with two Royal Canadian Air Force squadrons, taking in fighter sweeps over France, but his subsequent war service focused on testing – catapult launchers, deck landings but, most of all, aircraft themselves. In 1942, he received his first posting to the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough, and in January 1944, he joined the flight division of its aerodynamics department, where, as chief naval test pilot (1944-49), he flew seven aircraft a day.

The RAE was then a key centre researching flight at speeds approaching Mach 1. Thus did Brown dive a propeller-engined Spitfire at a staggering Mach reading of 0.86 (more than 600mph). Later, with the German surrender, he assessed that generation of jets that the Nazis had begun deploying during the last year of the war and became the only non-German to fly – as opposed to glide – the Messerschmitt 163. The rocket-powered 163 was sensational, but, he wrote, “there was so much to get wrong and virtually no escape route”.

One enduringly controversial project could have made Brown world-famous. In August 1944, he was briefed on RAE collaboration with the Miles company on the revolutionary M52 jet. In spring 1945, he wrote, the company was instructed by the government to hand over the M52 plans to the US. In February 1946, the Ministry of Supply cancelled the M52 when it was 82% completed. The M52 resembled the Bell X-1, in which, on 14 October 1947, Chuck Yeager of the United States Army Air Force became the first man to break the sound barrier, reaching Mach 1.07. On 10 October 1948, over the Scilly Isles, a pilotless, scaled-down M52 achieved Mach 1.52. “A fantastic opportunity had been missed,” wrote Brown.

He was born in Edinburgh. His parents came from the Scottish borders and his father, Robert, had served in the first world war as an infantryman and as a Royal Flying Corps (RFC) balloon unit battlefront observer and pilot. His mother, Euphemia (nee Melrose), died while he was at school. Brown won a scholarship to the city’s Royal high school, where he excelled academically, and in gymnastics and rugby. While at school, Brown accompanied his father to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. His father’s RFC background led to them meeting the aviator Hanna Reitsch and the first world war ace and senior Luftwaffe officer Ernst Udet who, taking Brown for a flight, ignited his interest in flying.

Brown read modern languages at Edinburgh, specialising in German, joined the university air squadron, and spent a year as an exchange teacher in France and in Germany, where he renewed his aquaintanceship with Udet and Reitsch. Meeting the latter after the war, Brown found that her fanatical loyalty to Hitler “made my blood run cold”.

He was still teaching at the outbreak of war, and was deported into Switzerland, complete with his MG sports car. Back in Britain, and having been told by the RAF that “there was no rush for my services”, Brown enlisted in the FAA. He was posted for fighter training to Belfast, where he met his future wife, Evelyn. He then moved on to Yeovilton, in Somerset, the Gloster Gladiator and his first encounters with the Luftwaffe.

From 1951 to 1952 Brown was resident British test pilot at the US Navy’s air test centre at Patuxent River in Maryland. In the late 50s he helped re-establish the West German navy’s air arm and he concluded his service as commanding officer of the RN station at Lossiemouth, in Morayshire (1967-70). His many honours included a DSC (1942), MBE (1944), OBE (1945) and an Edinburgh University honorary PhD (2007). His nine books include Duels in the Sky (1989) and Testing for Combat (1994). The vice-president of the European Helicopter Association – he had first seen Reitsch flying one in 1938 – Brown continued to lecture and write into his 90s.

“In an era of outstanding test pilots,” said the one-time Hawker chief test pilot Bill Humble, “‘Winkle’ was simply the best.” He was 5ft 7in – short for a pilot – which earned him his nickname and helped save his life when in 1949 he was flying the De Havilland 108, which he called “a killer”. This was the plane in which the test pilot Geoffrey de Havilland had died three years earlier when, at Mach 0.88; the plane slipped out of control. Propelled upwards, De Havilland had broken his neck on the canopy. “He was a big man. I was short,” wrote Brown. “… This was the moment of truth.”

Evelyn, “Lynn”, whom he married in 1942, died in 1998. He is survived by their son, Glenn, and by his partner, Jean.

• Eric Melrose “Winkle” Brown, test pilot, born 21 January 1919; died 21 February 2016