Captain Eric Melrose "Winkle" Brown, , Hon FRAeS (21 January 1920 – 21 February 2016) was a British Royal Navy officer and test pilot who flew 487 types of aircraft, more than anyone else in history.
Brown held the world record for the most aircraft carrier deck take-offs and landings performed (2,271 and 2,407 respectively) and achieved several "firsts" in naval aviation, including the first landing on an aircraft carrier of a jet aircraft.
Brown flew almost every category of Royal Navy and Royal Air Force aircraft: glider, fighter, bomber, airliner, amphibian, flying boat and helicopter. During the Second World War, he flew many types of captured German, Italian, and Japanese aircraft, including new jet and rocket aircraft. He was a pioneer of jet technology into the postwar era.
In 1942 he married Evelyn, “Lynn”, and they had a son Glenn. Evelyn died in 1998.
Early life Brown was born in Hackney, in the East End of London, but was put up for adoption. At this time there were few places for adoption in London but more in Scotland and he was adopted by Euphemia and Robert Brown in Edinburgh. Robert was a former balloon observer and pilot in the Royal Flying Corps (RFC).
Brown's adoptive father later took him to see the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Hermann Göring had recently announced the existence of the Luftwaffe, and Brown and his father met and were invited to join social gatherings by members of the newly disclosed organisation. At one of these meetings, Ernst Udet, a former First World War fighter ace, was fascinated to make the acquaintance of Brown senior, a former RFC pilot, and offered to take his son Eric up flying with him. Eric eagerly accepted the German's offer and after his arrival at the appointed airfield at Halle, he was soon flying in a two-seat Bücker Jungmann. He recalled the incident nearly 80 years later on the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs,
During the Olympics, Brown witnessed Hitler shaking hands with Jesse Owens."BBC Two – Britain's Greatest Pilot: The Extraordinary Story of Captain Winkle Brown (at 05:35 of the documentary)". bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 1 June 2014.
In 1937, Brown left the Royal High School in Edinburgh and entered the University of Edinburgh, studying modern languages with an emphasis on German. While there, he joined the university's air unit and received his first formal flying instruction. In February 1938, he returned to Germany under the sponsorship of the Foreign Office, having been invited to attend the 1938 Automobile Exhibition by Udet, by then a Luftwaffe major general. He there saw the demonstration of the Focke-Wulf Fw 61 helicopter flown by Hanna Reitsch before a small crowd inside the Deutschlandhalle. During this visit he met and got to know Reitsch, whom he had also briefly met in 1936.
In the meantime, Brown had been selected to take part as an exchange student at the Schule Schloss Salem, on the banks of Lake Constance, and it was while there that Brown was woken up with a loud knocking on his door one morning in September 1939. Upon opening the door he was met by a woman with the announcement that "our countries are at war". Soon afterwards, Brown was arrested by the SS. After three days' incarceration, they escorted Brown in his MG Magnette sports car to the Swiss border, saying they were allowing him to keep the car because they "had no spares for it".Profile, afresearch.org
Wartime service
On returning to a United Kingdom then at war, he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve as a Fleet Air Arm pilot, where he was posted to 802 Naval Air Squadron, initially serving on the first escort carrier, , converted and thus named in July 1941. He flew one of the carrier's Grumman Martlets. During his service on board Audacity he shot down two Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor maritime patrol aircraft, using head-on attacks to exploit the blind spot in their defensive armament.
Audacity was torpedoed and sunk on 21 December 1941 by the , commanded by Gerhard Bigalk. The first rescue ship left because of warnings of a nearby U-boat, and Brown was left in the sea overnight with a dwindling band of survivors, until he was rescued the next day. He was one of the two out of 24 to survive hypothermia; the rest succumbed to the cold. Of the complement of 480, 407 survived.
The loss of life was such that 802 Squadron was disbanded until February 1942. On 10 March 1942, Brown was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his service on Audacity, in particular "For bravery and skill in action against Enemy aircraft and in the protection of a Convoy against heavy and sustained Enemy attacks".
Following the loss of Audacity, Brown resumed operational flying, being seconded to Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) squadrons flying escort operations to USAAF Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers over France. His job was to train them in deck-landing techniques, though the training took place on airfields.The training was in preparation for the Salerno landings. If the landings had been a failure, the squadrons would have had to be evacuated by carrier. As a form of quid pro quo he joined them on fighter operations.
this time to perform experimental flying, including batting in the much more experienced Admiralty Test Pilot Lieutenant Commander Roy Sydney Baker-Falkner flying the experimental Fairey Barracuda onto the deck of a carrier in the Clyde. Almost immediately he was transferred to Southern Italy to evaluate captured Regia Aeronautica and Luftwaffe aircraft. This Brown did with almost no tuition, information having to be gleaned from whatever documents were available. On completion of these duties, his commander, being impressed with his performance, sent him back to the RAE with the recommendation that he be employed in the Aerodynamics Flight department at Farnborough. During the first month in the Flight, Brown flew 13 aircraft types, including a captured Focke-Wulf Fw 190.
Brown was posted to the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough, where his experience in deck landings was sought. While there he initially performed testing of the newly navalised Sea Hurricane and Seafire. His aptitude for deck landings led to his posting for the testing of carriers' landing arrangements before they were brought into service. The testing involved multiple combinations of landing point and type of aircraft, with the result being that by the close of 1943 he had performed around 1,500 deck landings on 22 different carriers. In six years at RAE, Brown recalled that he hardly ever took a single day's leave. During carrier compatibility trials, Brown crash-landed a Fairey Firefly Mk I, Z1844, on the deck of on 9 September 1943, when the arrestor hook indicator light falsely showed the hook was in the "down" position, compounded by the batsman failing to notice that the hook was not down.Memories of a WWII Hero: Captain Brown's Story (film) The fighter hit the crash barrier, sheared off its undercarriage and shredded the propeller, but he was unhurt.
While at Farnborough as chief naval test pilot, Brown was involved in the deck landing trials of the de Havilland Sea Mosquito, the heaviest aircraft yet flown from a British carrier. Brown landed one for the first time on on 25 March 1944. This was the first operation on a carrier by a twin-engined aircraft for the UK, 2 years after the US B-25 Doolittle Raid in April 1942 which involved takeoffs from an aircraft carrier.David Hobbs: A Century of Carrier Aviation. Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley 2009, . Page 186The North American B-25 Mitchell had been flown off a carrier earlier during the attack on Tokyo led by James Doolittle; however the aircraft had been loaded aboard the carrier by crane.The Potez 56 made an arrested landing and a subsequent take-off on French aircraft carrier Béarn in March 1936. The fastest speed for deck landing was , while the aircraft's stall speed was . He also flew several stints with Fighter Command in the air defence of Great Britain. During this time, in mid-1944, Brown's home was destroyed by a V-1 "Doodlebug" cruise missile, concussing his wife and causing serious injury to their cleaner. At this time, the RAE was the leading authority on high-speed flight and Brown became involved in this sort of testing, flights being flown where the aircraft, usually a Supermarine Spitfire, would be dived at speeds of the high subsonic and near transonic region. Figures achieved by Brown and his colleagues during these tests reached Mach 0.86 for a standard Spitfire MK IX, to Mach 0.92 for a modified Spitfire PR Mk XI flown by his colleague, Squadron Leader Anthony F. Martindale.
Assisting the USAAF's Eighth Air Force
Together with Brown and Martindale, the RAE Aerodynamics Flight also included two other test pilots, Sqn Ldr James "Jimmy" Nelson and Sqn Ldr Douglas Weightman.Wings on my Sleeve p. 69 During this same period the RAE was approached by USAAF General Jimmy Doolittle with a request for help, as the 8th Air Force had been having trouble when their Lockheed P-38 Lightning, Republic P-47 Thunderbolt and North American P-51 Mustang fighters, providing top cover for the bombers, dived down onto attacking German fighters, some of the diving U.S. fighters encountering speed regions where they became difficult to control.
As a result of Doolittle's request, early in 1944 the P-38H Lightning, a Packard Merlin-powered P-51B Mustang and P-47C Thunderbolt were dived for compressibility testing at the RAE by Brown and several other pilots. The results of the tests were that the tactical Mach numbers, i.e., the manoeuvring limits, were Mach 0.68 for the Lightning and Mach 0.71 for the Thunderbolt; the corresponding figure for both the Fw 190 and Messerschmitt Bf 109 was Mach 0.75, giving them the advantage in a dive. However the tests flown by Brown and his colleagues also gave a Mach number for the Mustang of 0.78, resulting in Doolittle being able to argue with his superiors for the Mustang to be chosen in preference to the P-38 and P-47 for all escort duties from then on,Wings on my Sleeve, p. 70-72 which was available in growing numbers by very early 1944; for Doolittle's eventual move to air supremacy missions permitting the fighters to fly up to 75–100 miles ahead of the bomber combat box formations, instead of requiring them to remain with the bombers at all times.
Brown's first encounters with jet flight
Brown had been made aware of the British progress in jet propulsion in May 1941 when he had heard of the Gloster E.28/39 after diverting in bad weather to RAF Cranwell during a flight and had subsequently met Frank Whittle when asked to suggest improvements to the jet engine to make it more suitable for naval use. This resulted in the Gloster Meteor being selected as the Royal Navy's first jet fighter, although, as it turned out, few would be used by them. Brown was also selected as the pilot for the Miles M.52 supersonic research aircraft programme, and he flew modified aircraft incorporating components intended for the M.52; however, the post-war government cancelled the project in 1945 with the M.52 almost complete. On 2 May 1944, he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire "for outstanding enterprise and skill in piloting aircraft during hazardous aircraft trials."
Helicopters
In February 1945, Brown learned that the Aerodynamics Flight had been allocated three Sikorsky R-4B Hoverfly/Gadfly helicopters. He had never seen one of these machines, so a trip to Farnborough was arranged and Brown had a short flight as a passenger in one. A few days later, Brown and Martindale were sent to RAF Speke to collect two new R-4Bs.