Eric 'Winkle" Brown | His Best & Worst Aircraft

foreign [Applause] [Music] the ones that spring to my mind as the superb airplanes of World War II on the British side are of course inevitably Spitfire and the mosquito and the Lancaster these are the three that stand out in my mind I flew them all enormously amount of time and I thought they were absolutely Splendid airplanes there's no doubt about it germs of course could match us there are three brilliant airplanes on their side they had the wolf 190. they had the ju-88 and of course they're outstanding aircraft of World War II the messy Smith 262. well let's say outstanding I mean the most formidable but of course it outstanding is probably not the right word because it never was allowed to get to its full potential because it wasn't built in big enough numbers it was also wrongly used for the first year of its life because Hitler dictated it should be used as a fighter bomber instead of a pure fighter and then when it did come into its own as a fighter Germany was out of experienced Pilots that could handle this machine now the formal move 190 was a delightful airplane in every sense the word in birming had a fault it had a fairly vigorous storm but apart from that it was almost as um perfect as the Spitfire cook tank just to start off there 190 . I'm just surprised that's in the three German aircraft Union was outstanding you don't mention the 109. no I don't I didn't think I think the one or nine succeeded because in spite of itself it was not a nice airplane particularly nice airplane to fly many Germans will tell you it was but of course if you're flying airplane line after you begin to know it say and you accept it but you have to realize as a test pilot I was able to compare it for that vast range of aircraft and I certainly did not ever think it was a great airplane I think it was um a wonderful Workhorse in the war as a fighter aircraft but um it's problems where it had some nasty handling characteristics which were a disadvantage in combat it was a very claustrophobic airplane to fly tiny but and it was not an easy airplane to land in bad weather or anything like that um because the view was terrible and all together it had as I said was not the same class as the foxwolf 190. what was so good about them well the 190th was a beautiful aircraft to handle magnificent to fly and maneuver it um was very fast for the piston engine aircraft and it had a nice characteristics even to fly in bad weather one must realize that in Europe you have to account take into account very closely what an airplane can do in bad weather because the continent of Europe is not blessed with the weather for example that you find in the Gulf of Mexico and this the Americans find much to their cost when they came to Europe first so you have to assess an airplane in that respect and that's why I say the woofers are much nicer airplane to deal handling bad weather in the 109. you had specific designers of course whom we met frequently at farnborough brilliant men in this country too like so Sydney cam of Hawkers and many of these people were so easy to talk to they were they related well to test pilots all of them this was the the thing I found quite fascinating and interestingly enough I found absolutely the same when I went to Germany after the war I mean once we we'd captured a lot of these people like Kurt tank or a wolf woolly messerschmidt Dr heinkel I found them very easy to talk to because they could relate to Pilots so Sydney can was one of these people who had a wonderful eye for aesthetic form he could sketch his idea on piece of paper rapidly and it always had these smooth flowing lines which made you realize that the aircraft looked so good you felt it must fly right he so Sydney didn't suffer fools gladly um but he was a man who was been working under pressure most of his life pressure or War Etc to produce the goods and he always did it's wonderful in that respect the other great designer of course was um Mitchell of super Marines who again unfortunately died at an early age but a man much in the same stamp as Sydney Camp who produced the most magnificent Spitfire of course and uh didn't ever meet Mitchell but I knew his successor well Joe Smith but Joe's job was mainly developing the Spitfire so that it could achieve or keep up with the opposition throughout the war as you know many many marks models of Spitfire were built each of them going faster or going higher or having more Armament Etc that was Joseph Smith's task and he did it brilliantly so we had the right men in the right places I think was the man that I would put on the far with our Championship he was the chief designer for wolf now he was a remarkable man many ways because not only was he the chief designer he did all the initial flights and his own designs um so he was a qualified test fighter Act and he was really very highly thought very very fertile brain and of course he produced some magnificent aircraft Focus 190. and the 262 was William I would put in the same category as tank in the sets that um 262. was a way ahead of its time it had swept back of course much of that information came out of the um German research establishments as opposed to out of their the aircraft Zone um reset department so to speak it came out of the national Resource as opposed to the company resource now a lot done at Brunswick but mostly done at getting it foreign and the 262 had a lot of design carry often control and stability characteristics that were masked by its marvelous performance but it wasn't really a beautiful airplane to fly in some ways it had problems and um it could be a very lethal machine for example if one had an engine failure and takeoff uh when you go onto the bomber side I think the um the Yonkers team we didn't have much to do with them of course because most of them were trapped in the um the Russian Zone after the war Dr heinkel I spoke to quite a lot um strange interesting man because as you know it was a dude and he was preserved because Zuma have been usefulness to them the regime but uh he had a lot of administrative troubles probably because of the aspect uh but he he did design some very fine aircraft some researcher after the very first jet of course it ever flew was um the heikles uh he had a disastrous aircraft of course in the high court 177 but that was designed not so much under the age of direct ages of heinkel is under a Consortium of designers who were working for his firm and he was very scaring himself about this particular aircraft um but the I would say if Germany's real real strengths lay in their research establishments like getting in the size and Brunswick this is one of the real partly um just as much of the power of this country of course laying the reef um if you were in any trouble or any stage of the design process you had to come to fabra which was the fact of all knowledge really in this country for anything in order from Pure Pleasure Point of View yes uh I've often thought this side would say without any question in my mind the de Havilland hornet uh because it was a beautiful instinctively beautiful shape and I say instinctively when you approach it up and you get this feeling it's right or it's wrong and it just looked right it's a lot of airplane in the sense one man sits in it but it has that rare quality which so often is missing in aircraft it was overpowered this was delightful so that's an extent that um I used to give out of batik shows uh in this aircraft and do the whole show on one end and eventually do a loop with both feathered it was that type of airplane it was very very streamlined very very fast and if you dived it down obviously at full power when I see you doing both Phillips Skype on I mean you dive at it absolutely full power towards your point where you're going to start pull up just before you pull up your feather so you as you just come out of the bottom you're in the Feathering process and by the time you begin to pull up into the vertical your your eye actually feathered on both and it you have enough inertia there to carry us right through the loop with no problem at all and as soon as you've crossed over the top and on the way down you're on feather you can't air spare fuse and you're handy in your pocket the views of the Feathering but otherwise you've got a problem but it was that type of airplane delightful I wouldn't say it had the um Perfect Harmony of control but had very good Harmony of control I think this is what makes a pilot love an airplane there's a real beautiful Harmony of control you're having to talk reaction problems with the the engines yeah because they were handed you see yes each went the opposite direction this was another point of course you could um there was no takeoff swing no swing anything like that magnificent view which is only it was only equal later by Jets of course which tend to have a very good view anyway um but form a propelled out and quite unique they were just seeing between the two inches there and right on the very the very nose I must say it was a beautiful living here oh absolutely superb yes I think it's a shame they haven't preserved any I don't know of any I don't absolutely no I don't quite obviously yes and I'll learn video what I always consider a very beautiful airplane but it never went into production was the Martin mb5 Martin Becker five beautiful fighter aircraft but I just arrived too late at um the end of the war what about the worst towels yes again I haven't muched that saying I think the the GL 56 this tail is glider um which really I thought was a highly dangerous aircraft in the sense that it was difficult to get off the ground at all it exhibited um quite violent Tim change characteristics when one was trying to take it off it was the wing was circlassed the ground as it drooped that it there was a marked ground effect in other words the as you accelerated there was being cushioned between the runway and the wind as soon as you pulled out of this cushion you've got a violent change of Truth and it tended to dive you straight back into the runway and in fact often I've had the stick on the backstop absolutely nothing further to go and just praying that it would hit the runway um and once you've got through that situation you know that was at the beginning of your troubles um the type of testing we were doing we did a lot of stalling had a very violent self-induced storm so that when you began to pull the nose up it reached an instance at where it then took charge of the situation itself and even if you pushed the stick onto the dashboard you couldn't counteract this it reeled itself up to quite an alarming angle it doesn't sound much but I'm talking about angles of 14 15 degrees probably which are fairly alarming in there at that time at a store because the normal stalls around the back they'll sort of 11 degree Mark with them there that's a Wonder um and then when you felt you really did feel you were going right over onto your back it would suddenly unstore very violently and drop into a vertical position nose down so there was a fair amount of being thrown about in the cockpit going on and then when you had the landing situation you had of course thank you very much yeah uh you had the same in their Landing situation of course you had to reverse the takeoff you had the ground effect coming in again just when you were holding off and um like and you felt that all six but nice lactic it was suddenly get this violent change of triple critic and uh it could be a terrible mess of the final result yeah yeah um now the self-stalling characteristics more so violent that when we returned it um to General aircraft we understood when we got instantly that they had installed it to that debt but we gave them a very very full report on what was involved now they had as a test but at that time a very famous glider pilot called confelt Pollard man who had a great reputation in the gliding world and um he went up I think from lasham and intending to repeat some of these stolen characteristics fully aware of our report set but got into some sort of trouble London and there was a fatal accident I'm afraid sir in many ways it was um a repeat story of the DH 108 on the smaller scale [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Armoured Archivist

Views: 171,849

Keywords: Eric, 'Winkle', Brown, test pilot, Fleet Air Arm, Royal Navy, Royal Aircraft Establishment, DeHaviland, Hornet, Sea Hornet, Fw 190, Bf 109, Me 109, best, worst, favourite, hated, aircraft, fighter, bomber, prototype, World War II, War Thunder, World of Warships, Drachinifel, Dark Skies, Rex's Hangar

Id: 37cG_LcrNhI

Length: 18min 29sec (1109 seconds)

Published: Sun May 28 2023