December the 3rd, 1945.

English Channel off the aisle of White.

A tiny twin boom jet fighter climbs away from RF Ford near Little Hampton.

The pilot strapped inside the cockpit stands 5’7.

His call sign is Winkle, short for Periwinkle, the smallest sea snail in British waters.

The Royal Navy gave him the nickname because he’s the shortest pilot in the fleet airarm.

His name is Eric Brown.

He’s 25 years old and in the next 20 minutes he’s going to do something that every aviation engineer in Britain has declared physically impossible.

10 mi ahead HMS Ocean pitches through rough seas.

The stern rises and falls through a 24 ft ark.

Wind gusts hammer the flight deck.

The ship radioed Brown minutes ago, ordering him to turn back and wait for better weather.

Brown keyed his microphone and lied.

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He claimed he lacked the fuel to return.

He had plenty of fuel.

He just didn’t intend to wait.

The problem isn’t the weather.

The problem is physics.

Brown flies a modified De Havlin Vampire, Britain’s second operational jet fighter.

The engine is a Deavlin Goblin Turbo Jet producing 2,300 lb of thrust.

The aircraft has a top speed of 540 mph and a service ceiling of 40,000 ft.

On paper, it’s a remarkable machine, but it has a flaw that makes carrier operations suicidal.

The Goblin takes 15 seconds to spool from idle to full power.

15 seconds.

Every carrier landing for the past 25 years has relied on one thing.

Instant throttle response.

A seafire pilot approaching a carrier deck flies with his left hand dancing on the throttle.

Sinking too fast.

Crack the throttle forward.

Instant power.

Instant lift.

The propeller wash floods over the wings and arrests the sink rate in fractions of a second.

Deck fouled and you need to go around.

Slam the throttle to the stop.

The engine roars.

The propeller bites.

You’re climbing.

The vampire has no propeller.

The goblin has no instant response.

If Brown misjudges the approach and needs power, he’ll wait 15 seconds for the engine to deliver it.

At 95 mph on final approach, 15 seconds is an eternity.

At 95 mph over a 690 ft flight deck, 15 seconds is death.

And if the engine flames out, a real risk if he adds fuel too rapidly during the approach, there’s no way to relight it in flight.

A flame out means ditching in the channel.

Brown has already survived one ditching.

December 21st, 1941.

HMS Audacity.

U751 put two torpedoes into the escort carrier in the Black Atlantic night.

Brown went into the water in freezing darkness.

24 air crew were aboard.

Two survived the night.

Brown was one of them.

He watched 22 men die of hypothermia around him, their heads slipping beneath the surface one by one as they lost consciousness.

He has no intention of going into the water again.

The Admiral T told him his idea was impossible.

They said jets would never operate from carriers.

The throttle lag made it suicidal.

The approach speed was too high.

The stall margin was too tight.

The physics didn’t work.

Brown has a different opinion.

He’s made 1,500 carrier landings across 22 different aircraft carriers.

He’s landed a twin engine sea mosquito on a carrier, an aircraft the director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment said would kill him.

He’s landed a Bella Cobra with tricycle landing gear on a carrier by faking an emergency to get permission.

He’s flown 53 different captured German aircraft, including the ME163 Comet rocket fighter.

An aircraft so dangerous its own ground crew thought they were waving goodbye to him forever when he climbed in.

He’s cheated death 11 times in airplane crashes.

He believes the 15th time might be landing a jet on a ship.

HMS Ocean appears ahead.

The flight deck rises and falls like a seesaw.

Waves break over the bow.

Brown reduces power and begins his descent.

The vampire slows.

He lines up on the center line.

The batsman, Lieutenant Jim Pratt, his wingman from practice at RNAS Ford, stands at the stern with his paddles raised.

Brown flies the approach at 100 mph.

5 knots above what they practiced.

The wind gusts demand it.

His wheels touch the stern.

The arresttor hook catches the first wire.

The vampire stops.

The first jet has landed on an aircraft carrier.

The Admiral was wrong.

Brown is alive.

And he’s about to take off and do it three more times.

This is the story of the pilot who proved jets could land on carriers.

This is the story of a man who flew 487 different aircraft types, made 247 carrier landings, survived 11 crashes, interrogated Herman Guring, witnessed Bergen Bellson, test flew the most dangerous aircraft ever built, and set three world records that will never be broken.

They told him it was physically impossible.

He did it anyway.

January 21st, 1920.

Salvation Army Mother’s Hospital, Hackne, East London.

An unmarried mother gives birth to a boy.

She places him for adoption.

The National Children’s Adoption Association transports him north on a chartered train.

He’s adopted by Robert John Brown and Euphemia Melrose Brown, a devout Presbyterian couple living at 269 Leathwalk, Edinburgh.

Robert works as a lady’s tor.

They name the boy Eric Melrose Brown.

Eric will spend the next 75 years telling the world he was born in Leath Edinburgh in 1919.

He’ll never tell his wife the truth.

He’ll never tell his son.

He’ll never tell any interviewer.

Only after his death in 2016 will biographer Paul Beaver, granted access to Brown’s sealed papers, reveal the fabrication.

Brown appears to have changed his birthplace partly to qualify for the Scottish National Rugby Team.

The lie doesn’t matter.

What matters is the man Robert Brown raises him to become.

Robert served in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I.

He flew as a balloon observer and pilot before transferring to the newly formed RAF in 1918.

When Eric is about 8 years old, Robert takes him up in a Gloucester Gauntlet biplane.

Eric sits on his father’s knee.

The aircraft climbs over Edinburgh.

Eric watches the city shrink beneath him.

He decides in that moment that he will fly.

Robert enrolls him at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, on a scholarship.

Eric excels academically despite his small frame.

He stands 5’7.

He’s compact, wiry, built like a boxer.

He compensates with ferocity.

He joins the school rugby team.

He earns pocket money as a motorcycle stuntman, riding the wall of death at carnivals.

Reports claim he sometimes rode with a lion in his side car in 1936.

Robert takes 14-year-old Eric to the Berlin Olympics.

This trip will change everything.

Robert’s Royal Flying Corp background fascinates members of the newly disclosed Luftwaffer.

At social gatherings, the Browns meet Herman Guring himself.

The connection is purely through shared World War I aviator camaraderie.

Robert’s generation respects the enemy they fought in the sky.

But Eric meets someone far more important, Ernst Udet.

Udet is Germany’s second highest scoring World War I ace with 62 confirmed victories.

By 1936, he’s a rising Luftwaffer general.

He’s also a stunt pilot, arerobatic champion, and Bon Vivvon who drives sports cars, flies in Hollywood movies, and drinks champagne for breakfast.

He’s captivated by the sharpeyed Scottish teenager who hangs on every word about flying.

Udet offers to take Eric up.

They drive to an airfield near Hala.

Udet straps Eric into the rear cockpit of a Booker 131 young man trainer.

The engine starts.

They taxi out and Odette proceeds to throw the aircraft through every arerobatic maneuver in existence.

Loops, barrel rolls, hammerhead stalls, inverted flight.

Eric’s stomach climbs into his throat.

He grips the cockpit rim with white knuckles, trying not to vomit.

Udet approaches the field inverted.

At the last possible second, he rolls upright and lands.

They climb out.

Udet slaps Eric between the shoulder blades and gives him the old World War I fighter pilots greeting.

Hal unbin broken neck and broken legs.

Then Udet tells him something that will define the rest of his life.

You’ll make a fine fighter pilot.

Do me two favors.

Learn to speak German fluently and learn to fly.

Eric takes both instructions literally.

In 1937, he enrolls at the University of Edinburgh to study modern languages with emphasis on German.

He joins the University Air Squadron for formal flying instruction.

In February 1938, Udet invites him back to Germany for the automobile exhibition in Berlin.

Eric watches Hannah Reich fly the Fauler Wolf FW61 helicopter indoors at the Deutsland Hala.

He’ll correspond with Reich until her death in 1979.

In 1939, Eric returns to Germany as an exchange student at Schuler Schlloth Salem on Lake Constance.

He drives his MG Magnet sports car across Europe.

He practices his German.

He attends lectures.

He’s there when Britain declares war on Germany.

September 3rd, 1939.

The FES arrests him within hours.

They hold him for 3 days.

Then they escort him to the Swiss border and let him go.

They even let him keep his MG magnet.

Their reasoning, “We have no spares for it.” Eric drives back to Scotland.

Udet’s advice echoes in his mind.

Learn German.

Learn to fly.

He’s done both.

Now he’s going to use them to fight the country that taught him.

December 4th, 1939.

Eric Brown volunteers for the Royal Navy Fleet Airarm.

He receives his commission as temporary subie tenant A in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve on November 26th, 1940.

He’s assigned to 802 Naval Air Squadron.

His aircraft is the Grumman Martlet Mark1, the British export version of the American F4F Wildcat.

His ship is HMS Audacity.

Audacity is Britain’s first escort carrier.

She’s a converted German banana boat captured in the West Indies.

She displaces 8,000 tons.

Her flight deck is a matchbox.

She carries six fighters and no hanger.

The aircraft sit exposed on deck, lashed down with chains beaten by Atlantic spray.

Her mission is protecting Gibraltarbound convoys from Luftvafer, longrange maritime patrol aircraft.

Brown flies convoy escort through the winter of 1941.

The North Atlantic is a frozen hell.

The convoys crawl through mountainous seas.

Yubot hunt them.

Fauler Wolf FW 200 Condor 4 engine bombers shadow them from 10,000 ft.

Radioing positions to submarine wolf packs.

Brown develops a tactic.

The Condor has a blind spot.

Head-on.

The bombardier and navigator sit in a glazed nose with no forward firing guns.

The dorsal turret can’t depress low enough to cover the approach.

Brown realizes he can attack from 12:00 level and the Condor can’t shoot back.

He shoots down two FW200 Condors using this tactic.

There is only confirmed combat kills.

He doesn’t talk about them much in later years.

They’re not what he remembers about Audacity.

What he remembers is December 21st, 1941.

Convoy HG76 is returning from Gibraltar to Britain.

Audacity is screening the convoy.

The weather is foul.

Darkness falls early.

The convoy zigzags through the Bay of Bisque.

At 2012 hours, U751 puts two torpedoes into Audacity’s starboard side.

The escort carrier lists immediately.

The order comes, abandon ship.

Brown and the other air crew go over the side into the freezing Atlantic.

It’s pitch black.

The water temperature is just above freezing.

The convoy steams on.

Standing orders forbid stopping to pick up survivors in a yubot contact zone.

Brown wears a May West life jacket, the inflatable vest type that keeps the wearer upright.

Most of the other air crew wear simpler life jackets, just inflated tubes around the waist.

In the water, this difference becomes lethal.

Hypothermia works fast.

The men start losing consciousness within 30 minutes.

The ones with waist only life jackets slip forward as they pass out.

Their faces go underwater.

They drown.

Brown watches it happen 22 times.

24 air crew went into the water.

Brown and one other man survived the night.

A destroyer picks them up the following day.

Brown is awarded the Distinguished Service Cross on March 10th, 1942 for bravery and skill in action against enemy aircraft and in the protection of a convoy against heavy and sustained enemy attacks.

The citation doesn’t mention what he saw in the water.

70 years later, he’ll still wake up seeing faces slipping beneath the surface.

After recovering, Brown is briefly seconded to the Royal Canadian Air Force.

He flies escort missions for USAAFB17s over France.

But his extraordinary aptitude for deck landings honed on Audacity’s violently pitching matchbox deck has caught the attention of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnra.

In late 1943, he’s posted there to test navalized aircraft.

He starts with the Sea Hurricane, then the Sea Fire.

His skill is so exceptional that he’s tasked with testing the landing arrangements of every new carrier before it enters service.

By the end of 1943, he’s performed approximately 1,500 deck landings on 22 different aircraft carriers.

In January 1944, he’s named chief naval test pilot at RAE Farnburgh.

He’s 24 years old.

He holds this position because his predecessor was killed landing a sea fire on a carrier.

Test flying at Farn in 1944 means flying aircraft that want to kill you.

March 25th, 1944.

Brown becomes the first pilot to land a twin engine aircraft on a carrier.

The aircraft is Deavlin Sea Mosquito.

The carrier is HMS indehaticable.

The Mosquito’s landing speed is 86 knots.

Its stall speed is 110 knots.

These numbers don’t make sense.

Brown lands it anyway.

The RAE director watches from the island.

When Brown climbs out, the director tells him, “Frankly, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” April 4th, 1945.

Brown performs the first carrier landing of an aircraft with tricycle landing gear.

The aircraft is a Bera Cobra.

The carrier is HMS Ptoria Castle.

Brown gets permission by faking an emergency.

At General Jimmy Doolittle’s request, Brown and colleagues test American fighters in high-speed dives.

The Army Air Forces need data on compressibility, the buildup of shock waves as aircraft approach the speed of sound.

Pilots are dying in terminal velocity dives over Germany.

Nobody knows why.

Brown dives a P38H Lightning to Mac 0.68.

A P47 C Thunderbolt to Mac 0.71.

A P-51B Mustang to Mac 0.78.

The results help do Little argue for the Mustang as the primary escort fighter.

It’s a pivotal decision in the air war.

Brown also dives a standard Spitfire Mark 9 to MAC 0.86.

He dives a modified Spitfire PR Mark1 to MAC 0.92, nearly the speed of sound.

He’s selected as the pilot for the Miles and 52 supersonic research aircraft.

He believes it will break the sound barrier before Chuck Jagger.

The program is cancelled in 1945, but the most dangerous aircraft he’ll ever fly is still waiting.

April 15th, 1945, Northern Germany.

Brown is based at Fberburg airfield evaluating captured Luftwaffer aircraft for operation enemy flight.

He’s taken charge of 2,000 German personnel at a surrendered air base in Denmark.

He’s fing a radar R234 jet bombers across the North Sea to Farn.

His transport aircraft is Himmler’s personal Fauler Wolf FW200 Condor.

Brigadier Glenn Hughes, medical officer of the British Second Army, overhears Brown speaking German to ground staff.

Hughes realizes Brown speaks better German than his own interpreter.

Hughes asks Brown to come to a place called Bergen Bellson.

Brown drives 30 minutes.

He walks through the gates from his memoir 70 years later.

I saw for myself the pile dead and the still open graves.

I tried to speak to some of the silent shuffling ghosts of men in their striped rags.

They would listen, staring dully at the ground, then step aside and move on.

I had known the Germans.

I had been happy in Germany.

In the war, I had made excuses for them.

Blamed the Nazis.

There could be no excuse for this.

In a 2015 interview, the first thing that struck me as you walked in were these mounds of bodies.

I’m not exaggerating when I say they were as high as the ceiling.

The buildings were 30 ft by 16 ft and had been built to house 60 people.

When I went in, there were 250 people in them.

There were sometimes seven people to a bunk arranged on three tiers and the people in the ones above were defecating on those below.

Nobody could speak as they were too weak.

Everyone was either dying or dead.

He describes the survivors as zombies.

Their minds gone.

70 years later, he’ll say, “What was worse than the sights was the stench.

70 years on, I still can’t get it out of my nostrils.” Brown interrogates camp commandant Ysef Kramer, the beast of Bellson.

Kramer shows no remorse.

He claims he simply carried out orders.

Then Brown interrogates 21-year-old SS guard Irma Greece.

He’ll later call her probably the worst human being I ever encountered and the most evil person I have ever met.

He asks her four times if she has regrets.

Suddenly, she leaps to her feet.

She throws her arm up in a salute and screams at the top of her voice, “Hile Hitler.” She sits down.

They never get another word out of her.

Brown watches both of them hang.

In June 2015, aged 96, Brown returns to Bergen Bellson.

He accompanies Queen Elizabeth II during her state visit to Germany.

He spends 12 hours at Bellson.

Biographer Paul Beaver concludes those 12 hours shape the rest of his life.

After Bellson, Brown returns to capturing German aircraft.

He flies 53 different German aircraft types.

The Mesashmmit Mi262 jet fighter, the Hankl E162 jet fighter, the Arad R234 jet bomber, the Dornade DU 335 pushpull fighter.

He calls the MI262 the most formidable combat aircraft to evolve in World War II.

He says the HE62 has the best controls of any aircraft he’s ever flown.

Then he flies the Messmid Mi 163 Comet.

The Comet is a rocket powered interceptor.

It climbs to 32,000 ft in under 3 minutes.

Its top speed is 596 mph.

It carries two 30 mm cannons.

Its powered endurance is 8 minutes.

It’s also the most dangerous aircraft ever mass-produced.

The KT uses two hypergolic propellants, Castto and Teto.

If they touch each other outside the combustion chamber, they explode.

If they touch the pilot’s skin, they dissolve it.

The propellants have killed more Luftwuffer pilots during fueling and landing than in combat.

The aircraft has no landing gear.

It takes off from a wheeled dolly that drops away.

It lands on a retractable skid.

If the skid doesn’t extend, the landing ruptures the fuel tanks.

The residual propellants mix.

The aircraft explodes.

The canopy cannot be opened above 250 mph.

The KT flies at 600 mph.

If the engine doesn’t shut down, the pilot is locked in his coffin.

Brown signs a personal disclaimer for the German ground crew before climbing in.

He watches them standing at a distance, wondering if they think they’re waving goodbye to him forever.

He lights the rocket.

The KT leaps off the ground.

He reaches 32,000 ft in 2 minutes 45 seconds.

The fuel runs out.

The engine shuts down.

He glides back down.

The skid extends.

He lands.

Years later, he calls it one of the most dangerous aircraft ever given to a pilot to fly.

In effect, you were locked in your coffin.

He also becomes the interrogator of choice for captured aviation figures.

His fluent German, the skill Udette told him to learn 9 years earlier, makes him uniquely qualified.

He interrogates Herman Guring, Veron Brown, Billy Mesosmmit, Anst Hankl, Kurt Tank, Hannah Reich.

He never sees Udet again.

Udet has already shot himself in November 1941.

Despondent over the Luftvafer’s failures and his own diminishing influence, Brown carries Udet’s advice to his grave.

Learn German.

Learn to fly.

He did both.

Now he’s going to use them to prove jets can land on carriers.

The technique of carrier landing, refined over 25 years, depends on one thing, instant throttle response.

A seafire pilot approaching a carrier deck flies with his left hand on the throttle.

The approach is a continuous conversation between throttle and glide path.

Sinking too fast.

Crack the throttle forward.

The propeller RPM increases instantly.

Propwash floods over the wings.

Lift appears in fractions of a second.

Settling too fast.

Instant correction.

Deck fouled and you need to go around.

Slam the throttle to the stop.

The engine roars.

The propeller bites air.

You’re climbing before the bow passes beneath you.

The propw wash effect generates 18% to 30% of total lift at low speeds.

It’s the difference between landing and dying.

The De Havlin Vampire uses a De Havlin Goblin centrifugal flow turbo jet.

The engine produces 2,300 lb of thrust at 9,300 RPM.

It takes 15 seconds to spool from idle to full power.

There’s no propeller.

There’s no instant lift lever.

And if the engine flames out, a real risk if fuel is added too rapidly.

There’s no way to relight it in flight.

A flame out means ditching.

The approach speeds tell the story.

A Grumman Wildat stalls at 72 mph.

It approaches at 70 to 75 knots.

A Sefire 3 stalls at 78 mph.

It approaches at 81 to 92 mph.

Already dangerously tight, landing at just 1.05 05 time stall speed.

The vampire approaches at 95 to 100 mph.

Stall speed is around 90 mph.

But the critical difference isn’t speed.

It’s the complete absence of any ability to correct or escape.

HMS Oceanceans’s flight deck is 690 ft long.

At 95 mph, the deck passes beneath the aircraft in roughly 4 to 5 seconds.

If the pilot misses all the arresttor wires, the goblin won’t even reach half power in that time.

The US Naval Institute described it in 1957.

A propeller-driven plane slows precipitately with power reduction.

The engine and propeller acting as a braking device.

Likewise, when the throttle is firewalled, acceleration is rapid.

Without a propeller in front, the jet has a tendency to decelerate slowly.

Emergencies and waveoffs found early jet aircraft embarrassingly slow to respond to the throttle.

Brown himself explains, “Deck landing all depends on lift control given that the boat does not lie flat and still like a runway.

On a piston engine, throttle movement provides it.

Should you need lift, just open the throttle and as the aircrew revs up, the pilot gets lift from the propeller’s wash.

Landing the Vampire would require a whole new technique.

The Vampire does have advantages.

The twin boom design puts the engine in a compact central NL.

The exhaust exits through a very short tailpipe.

Thrust losses are minimal.

A conventional fuselage layout would require a long exhaust duct running the full length of the rear fuselage.

Friction and pressure losses would the already anemic goblin.

The twin boom layout also gives excellent pilot visibility through a large bubble canopy.

Critical for judging the approach to a pitching deck.

The aircraft has benign stall characteristics, a light buffet warning, then a straight ahead nose drop with no tendency to drop a wing, but the throttle lag remains.

Every naval aviation expert in Britain says it’s suicidal.

Brown disagrees.

The aircraft is LZ551/G, the second vampire prototype.

Originally a standard Vampire F1, it made a wheels up landing at RF Tangmir on June 6th, 1945.

It was sent to De Havland’s factory at Hatfield for repairs.

During repairs, engineers modify it for carrier trials.

Four changes, a V-shaped arresttor hook that retracts above the jetpipe.

40% additional flap area to reduce approach speed.

Long travel olio shock absorbers to handle higher vertical descent rates.

A new teardrop canopy for improved visibility.

Reddesated C Vampire Mark 10, the only aircraft ever to carry that designation.

It first flies after modification on August 23rd, 1945.

Preparation is methodical.

Arrest a wire compatibility tests at Farn in October.

Approach technique development at RNAS Ford with Brown’s designated batsman, Lieutenant Jim Pratt.

Brown flies with minimum fuel to keep the aircraft light.

No special deck landing tests are created.

Brown has 1,500 carrier landings across 22 different carriers.

That’s his preparation.

HMS Ocean is a Colossus class light fleet carrier, brand new, commissioned August 8th, 1945.

She displaces 13,190 tons.

Her flight deck measures 690 ft long by 80 ft wide.

She carries standard transverse arresttor wires.

Commanded by Captain Casper John, who will later become Admiral of the Fleet and First Sea Lord.

Ocean is positioned off the aisle of white in the English Channel.

December 3rd, 1945.

The weather is appalling.

The trial is nearly cancelled.

Brown is about to lie his way into history.

Brown takes off from RAF Ford near Little Hampton.

Immediately, HMS Ocean radios him.

Return to base and await better weather.

Brown keys his microphone.

He claims he lacks the fuel to return.

It’s a deliberate bluff.

He’s carrying minimum fuel anyway.

The carrier’s decks are hastily cleared.

conditions.

Rough seas with the stern pitching through a 24 ft arc.

Four°ree roll.

Gusty winds over the round.

Brown flies his approach.

He’s aiming for the third wire.

He’s practiced this with Pratt at Ford.

Catch the third wire on the upswing.

Smooth deceleration.

Safe stop.

He misjudges.

The hook catches the first wire.

Further off than intended.

He didn’t quite catch the upswing at the right moment, but the aircraft stops cleanly.

The first jet has landed on a carrier.

He taxes forward.

The deck crew unhooks the wire.

Brown advances the throttle.

The vampire accelerates.

The takeoff is revoly.

No torque.

No propeller slipstream trying to pull the nose left.

Clear view ahead with no propeller disc in the way.

The sea vampire launches like a scolded cat.

The senior officials aboard ocean are impressed.

They demand further demonstrations.

Brown lands three more times.

He increases approach speed from 95 to 100 mph to counter the gusty conditions.

He catches the fourth wire on subsequent approaches.

Better technique, controlled deceleration.

On the fourth and final landing, the tailown attitude combined with the deck’s pitching causes the trailing edges of the flaps to contact the deck.

The hinges shear, the trials end.

But history has been made.

Brown is candid about limitations.

The trials certainly did not prove jets could operate routinely from carriers.

He states that very few pilots could land a centrifugal jet on a boat because there was for now no solution to the problem of lift control and that the breakage rate would be too high for operational service.

The real answer, he says, lies in Rolls-Royce axial flow engines with faster acceleration.

But these are years away.

Nevertheless, the proof of concept is established.

Britain beats the Americans by 7 months.

The first US Navy purejet carrier landing is an FH1 Phantom on USS Franklin D.

Roosevelt on July 21st, 1946.

The press reaction is jubilant.

One paper proclaims Winkl Brown had proved that the jet plane, the fastest fighter in the world, can be easily handled on an aircraft carrier.

Brown’s OBBE citation February 19th 1946 for courage, exceptional skill and devotion to duty in carrying out the first deck landings of Mosquito and Vampire.

The success of these great strides in naval aviation has been largely due to his exceptional flying skill.

The aircraft itself LZ551/G goes on to further service.

rubber deck trials in 1946, landing wheels up on a flexible shockabsorbing surface on HMS Warrior.

Additional demonstrations on HMS Ocean in July 1946.

Arresta barrier trials at Farnra as late as February 1957.

It survives today at the Fleet Airarm Museum, Yilton, Somerset.

But Brown’s career is just beginning.

Brown’s career statistics stand alone in aviation history.

verified by Guinness World Records across three categories.

487 different basic aircraft types flown as captain in command.

247 fixed wing carrier deck landings plus 212 helicopter landings.

2721 catapult launches from carriers.

All three records remain unbroken.

Brown says they’ll never be beaten.

The unique circumstances, wartime variety, captured enemy aircraft, cold war experimentation, can never be replicated.

He logs over 18,000 total flight hours, more than 8,000 hours as a test pilot.

He survives 11 airplane crashes.

Biographer Paul Beaver estimates Brown Sheet’s death at least 23 times.

In 1950, he commands 82 Naval Air Squadron Flying Sea Furies from HMS Vengeance.

He logs his 20,000th carrier landing during a 1951-52 exchange tour at Naval Air Station Pukent River, Maryland.

He flies 36 types of American helicopters.

He demonstrates two revolutionary British innovations to the US Navy.

January 1952, he launches a Grumman Panther from the British steam catapult aboard HMS Perseus at Philadelphia.

No wind assistance.

The Americans are convinced they adopt steam catapults.

He also introduces the angled flight deck concept.

Within 9 months, USS Antitum is modified with the design.

These two British inventions along with the mirror landing aid make modern carrier jet operations possible.

Without them, aircraft like the F4 Phantom 2 could not operate from carriers without unacceptable accident rates.

Brown serves as chief of British naval mission to Germany from 1957 to 1960, reestablishing the German marine fleer as a NATO integrated force.

He briefly works as a test pilot for Faul Wolf.

He commands HMS Fulmer RNA loss from 1967 to 1970.

He serves as naval a camp to Queen Elizabeth II in 1969.

He retires as captain on March 12th, 1970.

Post retirement, he becomes director general of the British Helicopter Advisory Board during the critical North Sea oil era.

He serves as president of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1982 to 83, the first and only Royal Navy officer to hold the position.

He’s inducted into the US Navy’s carrier test pilot hall of honor.

He’s the only non-American ever inducted.

He continues consulting.

He advises Loheed Martin on the F-35’s naval adaptation.

He advises Airbus on the A380.

He flies his last flight in 1994 at age 75.

But there’s one more dangerous aircraft waiting.

Brown is selected to test the Dehavlin DH 108 Swallow, a tailless sweptwing experimental jet.

He dives the aircraft at MAC 0.88.

It enters violent pitch oscillation plus 4G minus 3G 3 cycles/s.

His head whips forward and backward with brutal force.

Jeffrey De Havlin Jr.

was killed in a sister aircraft, likely from a broken neck during identical oscillations.

Brown survives partly because his shorter stature means his head doesn’t strike the canopy frame with lethal force.

He calls the DH108 a killer.

Nasty stall, vicious, undamped longitudinal oscillation at speed and bumps.

His successor at RAE, Squadron leader Stuart Müller Roland, is later killed in the same aircraft.

All three DH108 prototypes eventually crash fatally.

Brown’s decorations tell the arc of a career.

DSC in 1942 for convoy combat.

MBE in 1944 for hazardous flight trials.

OBBE in 1946 for the mosquito and vampire carrier firsts.

Air Force Cross in 1947.

King’s commendation for valuable service in the air in 1949.

CBE in 1970 on retirement.

Boyd trophy in 1948 for the rubber deck trials.

Founders’s medal of the air league in 2015 presented by the Duke of Edinburgh.

He writes extensively.

His autobiography wings on my sleeve remains the primary source for his life story.

Kirsty Young introducing him on the 3000th edition of Desert Island Discs in November 2014 says, “When you read through his life story, it makes James Bond seem like a bit of a slacker.

Other major works, Wings of the Luftwaffer, his technical assessment of 53 captured German aircraft.

Wings of the Navy, covering 30 Allied carrier types, Jewels in the Sky, matching Allied fighters against axis opponents.

Wings of the Weird and Wonderful, two volumes on experimental aircraft.

Eric Winkl Brown dies on February 21st, 2016 at East Surrey Hospital, Red Hill Surrey, exactly 1 month after his 97th birthday.

His 97th birthday celebration in London just weeks before draws more than 100 pilots from around the world.

Admiral Sir George Zambellis, the first seaord, calls him the most accomplished test pilot of his generation and perhaps of all time.

Astronaut Tim Peak calls him the greatest test pilot who ever lived.

The trajectory from Brown’s December 1945 proof of concept to modern carrier operations is direct.

His landing demonstrated the possibility.

The steam catapult, angled flight deck, and mirror landing system, all British innovations he personally helped demonstrate, provided the engineering solutions.

By summer 1950, most US Navy fighter squadrons had converted to jets.

By July 1950, F9F Panthers were flying combat from carriers in Korea.

By 1955, the modern jet aircraft carrier had fully emerged.

Brown’s favorite summary of his own approach to flying.

Learn her and then concentrate.

Concentrate.

Concentrate.

Three world records.

Unbroken.

Unbreakable.

487 aircraft types.

2,47 carrier landings.

11 crashes survived.

He received arerabatic instruction from a Nazi general.

Survived a torpedoed carrier, interrogated Hermagrazi at Bergen Bellson, flew a rocket plane to 32,000 ft in under 3 minutes, proved jets could land on ships when every engineer said they couldn’t.

Then he spent the next 70 years insisting the record would never be broken.

Because the world that made it possible could never exist again.

They said it was physically impossible.

He did it anyway.

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