Eric "Winkle" Brown Britain's Greatest Pilot

Discussion in 'The War In The Air' started by Ron Goldstein, Oct 10, 2014.

  1. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Did anyone else see the documentary about Captain "Winkle" Brown ?

    If not, see it now on Catchup.

    The most amazing of men, a pilot in ww2 and a test pilot in the post war.

    Fascinating.....don't miss it !

    Ron
     
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  2. arnhem44

    arnhem44 Member

    I have seen it before..
    What struck with me most was this inexplicable death defying attitude in testing aircraft and landings at carriers where there were high risks of crashing.
    The same attitude as with characters like hanna Reitsch.
    You 'd expect that top pilots are protected by the RAF to teach and train new pilots and devise new systems, but no..be the first to step in this new flying monster and make it work... if not, well sorry for the pilot.

    He was lucky to be lucky all the time. :)
     
  3. Tony56

    Tony56 Member Patron

    I second what Ron has said - absolutely amazing programme, make sure you catch it.
     
  4. nicolaw

    nicolaw Active Member

    I saw this also, was fascinating
     
  5. Bernard85

    Bernard85 WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    good day ron golstein.yesterday,08:36am.re:britains greatest pilot.i have not seen the documentary.i tried google but they say you dont get the video outside u.k.i will try other source.thank you for posting regards bernard85,
     
  6. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Bernard

    Try this link:

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi45UWBj2Ug
    26 Jun 2014 - Uploaded by lord lucan
    Britains Greatest Pilot TheStory of Captain Eric "Winkle" Brown Captain Eric ' Winkle' Brown ...

    Best regards

    Ron
     
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  7. researchingreg

    researchingreg Well-Known Member

    It was a very good programme. It is nice to know that the Navy had the best WW2 Pilot.
     
  8. Gage

    Gage The Battle of Barking Creek

  9. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    Here is my favorite short of him.

    What a man.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXLcUKB-jws
     
  10. Bernard85

    Bernard85 WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    good day ron goldstein,ww2 veteran.today.12:47pm.thank you for your link,but it would not show the progran outside uk.so i asked google,they gave me a great selection.i am watching a 58 minute video of capt.eric winkle.thank you for your help.regards bernard85
     
  11. dbf

    dbf Moderatrix MOD

    The 3,000th edition of Desert Island Discs, featuring Eric "Winkle" Brown, is broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 09:00-09:45 GMT on 14 November - or catch up on BBC iPlayer
    [​IMG]


    Pilot Eric "Winkle" Brown holds two of the most startling records from the world of flying. And that's just a part of his extraordinary life.

    Brown's exploits run through some of the most momentous events of world history. He was at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, he interrogated Hermann Goering, helped liberate the Belsen concentration camp and by chance managed to sing with the Glenn Miller band.

    But his greatest achievements were as a Royal Navy test pilot. He mastered deck landings in the face of tremendous danger. Now 95, he is a hero among military pilots who fly far more safely thanks to the techniques and technologies he helped test.


    Flew 487 different aircraft
    [​IMG]
    Eric Brown at the cockpit

    Brown has flown 487 different types of aircraft - a current world record. Today's test pilots average fewer than 100 flights, says Rear Admiral Simon Charlier, former commander of the Fleet Air Arm. "Over 50 is deemed a large number. We can't imagine in this day and age how dangerous his job was."

    "They didn't have the advantage of high-tech simulators. He just had to look at the aircraft and think what he was going to do with it", says Mark Bowman, chief test pilot at BAE Systems.

    But aircraft Eric was testing were not just "difficult and novel to fly", they were also "genuinely and totally untested", says Charlier.

    He will have been flying the aircraft with "the benefit of a slide rule, not a bank of computers as we have now," says Bowman.

    Brown ensured he made lots of preparations for his flights. He survived so many of them thanks to his preparation and "incredible presence of mind", says the historian James Holland. The other pilots, "cavaliers of the sky, with a devil may care attitude would be out chasing girls and boozing. Eric wouldn't do any of that".

    [​IMG]
    Brown is second right in this photo, taken in 1944

    He was one of the first to attach notes to his leg, explains Holland. When you are testing so many aircraft you need to know "exactly which one you are flying".

    Brown last flew in 1994. Giving flying up was like "drug withdrawal", he says.

    World record for most aircraft carrier landings - 2,407

    As a naval pilot you are sent off into the "big blue yonder", says Brown. And you are "not sure where your carrier is - maybe a hundred miles away somewhere in the ocean". Some planes never found their way back, lost out at sea because the carrier could not reveal its position.


    As a naval pilot you are sent off into the "big blue yonder", says Brown. And you are "not sure where your carrier is - maybe a hundred miles away somewhere in the ocean". Some planes never found their way back, lost out at sea because the carrier could not reveal its position.


    [​IMG]
    A 1995 re-enactment of the first landing of a jet aircraft on an aircraft carrier


    Brown says it was a game of Russian roulette as at one stage "we had one incident every nine landings".

    When landing on a carrier, "you are essentially aiming for a small lay-by in the middle of a large lake", explains Bowman. "It is a three-dimensional problem through a fog, with none of the same visual references you get on land. It is one of the most demanding tasks you can do as a pilot."

    Any kind of landing was difficult, but designers had yet to fit planes to the task. Much of what is now designed into planes to make carrier landings easier comes from Brown and his peers.

    The US Navy were said to have given one man the specific job of breaking Brown's record. "To his everlasting credit he got up to 1,600 and then had a nervous breakdown," says Brown.

    Fear is something test pilots have to deal with on a regular basis. Bowman says that they look for pilots who can "compartmentalise the job at hand from the rest of your emotions".


    But for Brown fear was never an issue. "I react almost the opposite. If things are really difficult I go ice cold and my brain seems to go up a gear."

    The Fleet Air Arm's most decorated living pilot

    [​IMG]

    Captain Eric Melrose Brown CBE, DSC, AFC, KCVSA, PhD Hon FRAeS, RN is his full title. Charlier says Brown is one of the only pilots who - on top of all his campaign medals - has the Distinguished Service Cross as well as the Air Force Cross. "That is highly unusual."

    The fact "he is still alive and witness to all of this history is amazing", says Holland. He is "easily one of the top five aviators of all time and certainly the best British one".

    But it was for the love of flying which Brown continued to test aircraft. "It is that passion, the thought required and the interest in aviation as a totally absorbing subject that he would have strived for," says Holland. "Not the medals. He will have seen his colleagues in harm's way and wanted to minimise that."

    [​IMG]


    One of two people who survived the sinking of HMS Audacity

    [​IMG]
    HMS Audacity - Brown was one of only two survivors after its sinking

    Only Brown and a fellow pilot survived when the ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat on 21 December 1941.

    He was "blessed with clear thinking, an analytical mind and rarely got scared" says Holland. He would see immediately how the situation was going to play out and would act accordingly.

    Brown says he survived because of the type of jacket he had on. The puffy "Mae West" lifejacket kept him and his fellow pilot upright in the cold waters of the Bay of Biscay. But the 22 seamen they were tied to, with just inflated tubes around their waists, drifted into a hypothermia-induced sleep, fell forward and drowned. "It was terrible. We were just cutting people off," Brown recalls.

    He was very well "mentally and physically equipped to be adrift at sea", says Holland. As they died one by one, he knew to keep awake and to keep clinging on to the buoy.

    Interrogated Hermann Goering
    [​IMG]

    His fluent German and expertise on aircraft meant Brown interviewed many important figures during the war.

    He provided an "absolutely unique service," says Charlier. He was picked to interview captured Germans to "find out what it was like to fly one of their aircraft, what tactics they used and how they trained". His intellect and language skills at that time were "extraordinary".

    Brown would "talk to them as an airman", says Holland. "He didn't try and snarl at them. He spoke their language, knew the right questions to ask and got good stuff as a result."

    The so-called beast of Belsen, Irma Grese, was the "worst person I have ever met", Brown says. But Herman Goering was "quite charismatic in many ways". He was very "straightforward" and answered all his questions. "I asked him, 'How did you see the outcome of the Battle of Britain?' and he said, 'A draw'."

    He even interrogated Heinrich Himmler who, under forged papers, called himself Henrich Hitzinger. "Eventually he got mad with this thing, and he said, 'I'm Heinrich Himmler.' The warrant officer said, 'Yes and I'm Julius Caesar.' He didn't believe him at all."
     
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  12. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Grim news today, I'm afraid.
    I'd maybe say RIP', but it seems somehow inappropriate for a man who spent his career tearing up the sky.

    List of aircraft flown by Eric "Winkle" Brown


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkMMUOp3Y4k
     
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  13. Gage

    Gage The Battle of Barking Creek

    RIP Eric Brown. We'll never see his like again. And no one will fly so many types.
     
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  14. archivist

    archivist Well-Known Member

    I totally agree with Arnhem44's comments - but you have to have the very best men to prove something can be done. I doubt if anyone would deny that he was the best of the best. He did it! He proved it could be done and now it is commonplace. The very best show the way to everyone and thus improve the overall standard by giving confidence to those who come along later
     
  15. Jedburgh22

    Jedburgh22 Very Senior Member

    Eric 'Winkle' Brown: Celebrated British pilot dies, aged 97


    • 52 minutes ago
    • From the sectionSussex


    [​IMG]Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage captionEric "Winkle" Brown was given the nickname "periwinkle" because of his diminutive heightOne of the most famous British pilots, Capt Eric "Winkle" Brown, has died at the age of 97.
    He was the Royal Navy's most decorated pilot and held the world record for flying the greatest number of different types of aircraft, 487.
    During World War Two Capt Brown flew fighter aircraft and witnessed the liberation of Bergen Belsen concentration camp.
    He died at the East Surrey Hospital, Redhill, after a short illness.
    A statement released by his family said: "It is with deep regret that the passing of Captain Eric Melrose Brown CBE DSC AFC is announced.
    "Eric was the most decorated pilot of the Fleet Air Arm in which service he was universally known as 'Winkle' on account of his diminutive stature.
    "He also held three absolute Guinness World Records, including for the number of aircraft carrier deck landings and types of aeroplane flown."
    [​IMG]Image copyrightImperial War MuseumImage captionCapt Brown flew 2,407 aircraft carrier landingsBorn in Leith on 21 January 1919, he was educated at Fettes College and the University of Edinburgh, where he learned to fly.
    He caught the bug for flying at the age of eight when his father, a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during WWI, took him up in a bi-plane.
    "There was no second seat, but I sat on his lap and he let me handle the stick," he told the BBC in 2014.
    "It was exhilarating. You saw the earth from a completely different standpoint."
    He retired from the Royal Navy in 1970 but became the director general of the British Helicopter Advisory Board and later the president of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1982.

    Landmark life
    • Flew 487 different types of aircraft, a world record that is unlikely ever to be matched
    • Piloted 2,407 aircraft carrier landings
    • Appointed MBE, OBE and CBE
    • Survived 11 plane crashes and the sinking of HMS Audacity in 1941
    • Met Churchill and King George VI numerous times
    • Was at the liberation of Bergen Belsen
    • Interrogated some of the leading Nazis after the war, including Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering and Belsen's chief guards Josef Kramer and Irma Grese
    [​IMG]Image copyrightBrown familyImage captionBrown, second right, with colleagues on a Spitfire in 1944[​IMG]Image captionEric Brown's life was celebrated by Desert Island Discs in 2014Capt Brown wrote numerous books of his own and forewords for other authors on the theme of aviation, before and after his retirement.
    In March 2015 a bronze bust of Capt Brown was unveiled at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Somerset.
    At his 97th birthday celebration in London on 27 January he was joined by more than 100 pilots, including the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir George Zambellas.
    In 2014 , the war veteran was picked as the subject for the 3,000th edition of Desert Island Discs, during which he was described by presenter Kirsty Young as a "real life hero" and a "remarkable, dare-devil".
    "When you read through his life story, it makes James Bond seem like a bit of a slacker," she sai
     
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  16. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    Great man. It's a sad day.
     
  17. bamboo43

    bamboo43 Very Senior Member

    :poppy: Captain Eric Brown :poppy:
     
  18. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    RIP Capt. Brown

    As said, his exploits will be difficult to replicate. Sad to see the era drawing to a close with the passing of these fine men. Modern day daredevils are a pale imitation.
     
  19. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    What a life !

    RIP "Winkle" Brown

    Ron
     
  20. amberdog45

    amberdog45 Senior Member

    RIP Eric Brown. The Audacity's first official journey accompanied the convoy my Uncle was lost on. Eric's action saved many other Merchant ships that day and so many others throughout the war. Thank you Eric.
     

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