Warbird Information Exchange

One of the greatest test pilot's in history celebrated his 90th birthday on January 21st.

Eric 'Winkle' Brown was kicked out of Germany in 1939 (one of their biggest mistakes) and went on to fly more aircraft types than almost anyone else, and more importantly to us was the only person trained as a test pilot who flew ALL the major combat types of W.W.II from first to last (and hundreds of the weird and wonderful as well) and wrote up his reports and impressions. He is therefore the single most important resource for accurate first-hand account of these combat aircraft as they were.

He wrote:
Wings of the Luftwaffe
Wings of the Navy
Wings of the Weird and Wonderful 1
Wings of the Weird and Wonderful 2
Testing for Combat
Wings on my Sleeve

If you really want to know how they flew - US, Japanese, German, British, Italian etc, these are essential books.


Eric at the rollout of the Firefly Mk.I at Duxford (now at Yeovilton) late 1980s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_%22Winkle%22_Brown

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

Wasn't he the Comet test pilot?

Too young for the DH88 Comet racers, and John Cunningham was test pilot for the DH106 Comet airliner. However I'd be surprised if he didn't fly a Comet airliner at some point!

Or do you mean Me163 Komet? If so, as TriangleP said, he was the British evaluation pilot for the Komet. Didn't fly it under power, but even without that was enough.

Obviously the Luftwaffe use German test pilots...

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

Brown also made the first carrier landing in a jet (Vampire) December 1945 and has -- by a huge margin -- more carrier landings than any other pilot.

Doesn't Brown also hold the record for most aircraft types flown?

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"I can't understand it, I cut it twice and it's still too short!" Robert F. Dupre' 1923-2010 Go With God.

I had one of the "Weird and Wonderful" books as a child. Really good stuff.

I have some book writen by this great airman

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I'm sure he does.

From the Wiki link I posted above (easy to miss) my emphasis:


More in the link.

SaxMan - you're weird. Like me. I had them too. As a kid, I found them dry; as a writer, they're invaluable, and I'm sure a pilot would find them unbeatable insights.

TriangleP - I don't know why he's called 'Winkle'. It's probably after the small mollusc, as Eric's famously short - and the RN like deprecatory nicknames.

Regards,

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

He was the first person to land a twin on a carrier too.

And the first (and only) to land a P-39 on an aircraft carrier.

A P-39 on a carrier? Wow! Any pics of that?

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

I don't have one handy, but the test program is described by Brown in one of his books along with pictures. It was a Brit Airacobra I modified with a tail hook attached to the bottom of extreme aft end of the fuselage. The hook was stowed upside down along the bottom of the fuselage. He was only approved to do low approaches (if the aircraft went off the deck into the water, egress via the automobile-style doors was considered problematical) but he declared a non-existent emergency so he could make one trap. He then repositioned for a deck run without bothering to make a pretense of fixing a problem.