Guy Alcala wrote:

Peter Stickney wrote:


In article ,
"Keith W" writes:


Presumably that would be Captain Eric "Winkle" Brown RN who


had a long career after WW2 as a test pilot during which
he flew not only most allied aircraft but also most of the
German and Soviet types as well as being involved in
the early history of flying jets off carriers and the development
of the angled flight deck.

For values of "very early history equalling" "the first bloke to do
it".


Land on too. A Vampire, IIRR. And then he did the Flexible deck trials. Oh,
and he was one of the very earliest qualified helo pilots in the RN, who did
a lot of early research on vortex ring state in the Sikorsky R-4. IIRR, he
and another RN pilot's initial instruction on flying helos consisted of being
handed the manual for the R-4 by a US Master Sergeant, who then smartly
retired to a safe distance. Come to think of it, ISTR that the other pilot
was Alan Bristow. Brown also deck-landed a P-39, just because he wanted to.
Oh, and he holds the record for flying the most different types of a/c, 487
(that was his total as of 1988). Honorary fellow of the SETP (boy, is that a
list of international aviation royalty, past and present. See:
http://www.setp.org/HTML/Personnel/Fellows.htm )

Fellow and past president of the Royal Aeronautical Society, etc. He's a
small man in physical stature, but not in any other way.

Guy


He gave a talk at a dinner I once attended - some fascinating tales he told.

Including the time he was testing the giant six-engined BV-222 flying
boat. He read the manuals (he spoke German) and familiarised himself
with the systems etc. He had some German flight engineers aboard.

The flight took place on a lake - and as the machine gathered speed, it
got onto the step and hurtled towards the edge of the lake.

As he tried to ease back on the stick, he found it would not budge - and
he was rapidly running out of lake.

Fortunately he was able to close the throttles - and bring the machine
to a halt.

It transpires that the Germans had tried to sabotage the flight - by
leaving the control locks in place !!

He checked everything himself after that.

He told us that the one aircraft he regretted never being able to fly
was the Messerschmitt Me-163. The British Air Ministry would not
sanction a test flight - because it was considered too dangerous!

Ken