Willy Messerschmitt's fabled Bf 109 was manufactured in greater numbers than any other production aircraft. Almost 34,000 were built, usually referred to as the Me 109. At the time the aircraft was conceived, it was designated the Bf 109. B because the maker was located in Bavaria and F because the company was called Flugzeugwerke. It was only when Willy Mesheschmitt gained full control of the company that the Me prefix was assigned. Throughout the 30's and during the Second World War, Willy Messerschmitt endured a dogged relationship with Erhard Milch, who had gained high position with the fledgling state airline Lufthansa and later with the German Air Ministry, more often known as the RLM. A close friend of Milch, was killed piloting a Messerschmitt designed transport plane, the M-20, on its first flight. Milch was to blame Messerschmitt over the accident, a grudge that was to last for years. Fortunately, Messerschmitt had cultivated a relationship with Herman Göring, who ultimately became Milch's superior. To get his first Luftwaffe fighter contract Messerschmitt's Bf-1O9 had to compete with an advanced Heinkel design, the He 112. There's no question the Heinkel aircraft was the better looking aircraft, but and incidentally they when it came to the test pilots at Rechlin, they gave the 112 the better report, considerably better over the 109, but Udet decided that he was under pressure to produce numbers of aircraft rather than quality. And he realized quite rightly, that the 109 was far easier to produce in numbers than the 112, basically because the undercarriage on the 109 was an integral part of the fuselage. So the fuselage and the wings could be produced separately and then joined at a later date. In the end, the competition was won by the 109 and a legend was born. The 109 first saw service in Spain. Along with other modern German aircraft like the Stuka, the 109 was tested in actual combat conditions. The lessons gained would later be applied to a much larger conflict in the skies over Britain. In Spain it became clear that the 109 lacked range and endurance. Its slender lines made for greater speed, but left little space for fuel. One possible solution to this problem was to use the Bf 110 to tow the smaller 109 to the combat area, thus preserving its limited fuel for fighting. Novel though the idea was, the towing technique proved impractical for all the glider warfare. However, a few years later, when Germany was suffering from the relentless heavy bombing of the US 8th Air Force, the 109 was employed as a test aircraft in towing a unique glider fighter concept offered by the Bloom and Voss company. The BV 40 was a very low cost fighter glider that would have been coupled to a Bf 109. When the tiny Blohm+Voss design was in a position above the American bombers, it was released to attack them using its two 30 millimeter cannons and their limited stock of ammunition. The BV 40 was so small its pilot had to lie on a mattress in a prone position. However, the BV 40 relied upon its diminutive size to avoid US Gunners. Only seven BV 40s were built before the project was abandoned, probably because the ME 163 was a slightly more practical and self-contained concept. 109's were also pressed into service for clandestine missions, dropping spies and saboteurs behind enemy lines. Special capsules could be attached to both wings, each containing a single parachutist. An often overlooked feature of the 109 was its system of leading edge slats on the forward surface of the wings. These made for better handling and shorter takeoffs. Interestingly, the concept had been developed and patented by the British Handley Page Company and Messerschmitt had to pay for the use of the invention. The slats proved so successful that they were also used in Messerschmitt's 410 and legendary 262 jet fighter. The 262 had another link to the Bf 109, owing to the fact that the jet's nose wheel assembly is actually a single main wheel strut from the BF 109's narrow gate undercarriage. The 109's narrow gate undercarriage was always a challenge when it came to landing or take off, even under normal conditions. At one point in the war, the Kriegsmarine had high hope for its sole aircraft carrier, the Zeppelin. It was always assumed that the Zeppelin would be equipped with Stukas and 109s. The Stukas wide gate undercarriage would have been suitable for aircraft carrier landings. But the standard 109 arrangement was not. Accordingly, Messerschmitt set to work to modify the wings so that the wheels could function in a more stable, wide gate fashion. This aircraft was designated the ME 155. The Zeppelin never put to sea, and the 155 was abandoned, only to be later resurrected by the Blohm+Voss company. As a very high altitude fighter concept, but this came too late to help an ailing Germany. Messerschmitt followed the 109 with the Bf 110. Although this later became successful in several other roles, it was never suitable for the long range bomber escort mission. Messerschmitt quickly offered the 210 as an alternative. But this proved to be a failure and so the Me 410 was rushed into development. As a precaution in 1942, the company was ordered to develop a backup aircraft based on existing 109 parts and using two fuselages, which enabled the creation of a totally new aircraft employing a minimum number of new parts. The Me 109Z Zwilling was made as a single seat, very long range, heavy fighter. It might have shown great promise if the two prototypes had not been badly damaged in an Allied bombing raid. This loss demonstrated that Germany needed a homeland defender more than a bomber escort at this stage of the war. In addition, the Me 262 jet was close to delivery. And this groundbreaking design could have been a real game changer if they had arrived in time. Possible proof of the Me 109Z's viability came with the US North American P-82 Twin Mustang. Independently, the German designer of the P-82 chose to follow exactly the same approach as the Me 109Z. 270 Twin Mustangs were actually produced and served in Korea and the United States as night fighters. In another pairing, Bf 109s were flown with other aircraft during the Mistral missions. These occurred when Germany's fortunes were declining and the Wehrmacht were looking to develop a new type of flying bomb. The concept would use a disposable unmanned bomber. Filled with explosives but guided by a piloted109. Gliders were first used to prove this concept, but eventually 2 engine bombers were employed. The Bf 109 was produced in greater numbers than any aircraft in history, it served the Luftwaffe and other air forces well, and it proved more than an adequate fighter for Germany until it was supplanted by the FW 190. Even then, it remained in active service and production until the end of the war. The Bf 109 was one of aviation's great planes. He is one of the 20th century's greatest aviators. He has played a major part in the evolution of flight. And in the process set records that will never be broken. My father was in the Royal Flying Corps during World War One. Now originally he was a balloon observer, and that was a fairly hazardous occupation. And after a while he decided that it might be a little less dangerous if he became a pilot, so he'd switched to flying. He always encouraged me in this flying business, and he operated from an airfield fairly close to home at Turnhouse in Edinburgh. Well, there was an auxiliary Air Force squadron flying Gloucester Gamecocks. When I was, I think about 8 years old. He took me up in a Gamecock and sat me on his knee. And of course at that age I hadn't a leg length to reach the rudder pedals, so he let me handle the stick a little. We didn't do anything aerobatic. My father was in an organization. which was often set up after World War One of former combatants meeting to exchange their experiences and just generally socialize. In Germany, this group was led by Ernst Udet, the popular Great War Flying Ace. In 1936, Eric and his father visited its members in Berlin. We went with the joint purpose of watching the Olympics and enjoying the socializing with the former Luftwaffe and indeed Udet asked me if I'd like to go for a flight with him. And this was unexpected, but he took the time off to drive me down to an airfield called Halle, South of Berlin, where he had a Bücher Jungmann. He did a lot of maneuvers that really tested my stomach rather to their limits, but at about probably 100 feet he turned the aircraft upside down and we approached the whole way down, til I would say about 50 feet inverted towards runway. And I thought really this was my demise looming on the horizon, but at about 50 feet he turned it over, which with its wingspan, didn't give it too much clearance on the ground, and as we settled up upright, so to speak, he just flopped onto the runway and burst into roars of laughter, because he knew he'd frightened the life out of me. On the way home he said to me, you must work on your German and you must try and get into a flying organization. If you achieve something in Berties, Come back and see me. In 1938, the teenaged Brown revisited Germany, this time alone. I looked up Udet in Berlin. He'd given me his address and to my astonishment, he greeted me like a long lost chum. Here we were in Nazi Germany. How was the feeling? It was one of excitement really, because everything was happening at that time in Germany and there were parades galore. And although this is all very militaristic to a young boy like myself that time. It was exciting stuff. There didn't seem to be any unemployment and for the young in the country there was almost endless aviation facilities. So that was Germany in 1938. Back in Scotland, Eric had by now progressed from Edinburgh's Royal High School to the city's famous university. Here he learned to fly. The University Air Squadron was connected at Edinburgh with the 603 Auxiliary Air Force Squadron and we were training then on what was a fairly new trainer, the Miles Magister, and after that lost the gauntlets. These were being supplied at this point to Auxiliary Air Force squadrons. It was a lovely airplane. There's a little gauntlet. An aerobatic gem, Really. It was a four year course, my honors degree in modern languages, the Foreign Office used to visit the university, the Languages Department, looking for possible bright boys to recruit. And I was asked if I would be interested in joining the diplomatic corps, and I said I was. Since German is your primary language, you'll have to spend at least six months in Germany. You will be sent to a school on our recommendation and you will teach English. In summer 1939, Brown went to Salem School near Lake Constance. It was really a delightful establishment. I'd gone up on the 3rd of September 1939 to spend the weekend in Munich. Delightful town. I have to tell you, and I was lucky boy in those days. I owned an MG Magnette. I'd taken that with me and it was parked in the courtyard, and at 6:00 o'clock in the morning of 3rd September there was a thunderous knock on my door. And in came a lady with two SS officers and said, our countries are at war and I'm afraid you'll have to come with us. And was taken to an SS jail. I wasn't treated badly at all. My concern was, here we are at very beginning of a war. How long is it going to last? Am I going to be here for the duration? On the third day, this young SS Lieutenant said to me, you're being taken as the Swiss frontier for an exchange through the Red Cross, which I was delighted. The only thing the SS would let Brown keep. was his car. Because we have no spares, I got to burn and the ambassador interrogated me there and told me that in the light of the fact that I was in the University Air Squad and I better get back as quickly as possible, this was the period of what's called the phony war. Well, there wasn't much activity going on operationally and I, being young and keen, found this very it's an inactivity, very boring, frankly. And about the middle of September the Royal Navy had an aircraft carrier, The Courageous sunk in the Southern Irish Sea and they lost most of the pilots in that sinking and a notice went up on the RAF Notice board. Saying that they are, the fleet air arm was short of pilots and if anybody would like to move over would they put the names down? I was accepted by the fleet air arm but them wanted me to do their course of training. This course began at Sydenham, near Belfast. It was here that Eric first met Lynn McCrory, his future wife. The training took Brown to various Royal Naval Air stations. It was over a year before I actually got a posting to a squadron that was going to go on an aircraft carrier. By the time I got my posting to my first squadron, the Americans had offered us a thing called the Drummond Wildcat on leased land. Now this was an exciting airplane for us because it was, if you compare it, probably up to the performance capacity of The Hurricane, which was the RAF's top fighter at that time. So it was very exciting to be drafted into a squadron that had this aircraft because it was a first class aircraft, rugged, good firepower, Specially built for deck landing. In April 1941, Eric and Lynn became engaged. The following month he was flying a Wildcat down from Scotland to Croydon for modification. I ran into atrocious weather and crept my way thankfully into RAF Cranwell to my utter surprise. There were just hordes of civilians around, so I wondered what was going on, but nobody would tell me. The next day, Cranwell's air traffic control asked Brown to perform some weather tests as the cloud base was low. From the air I could see this activity at one hangar. Finally, around about 7:00 o'clock in the evening it was beginning to lift, and there was furious activity at this hangar, and they eventually rolled out an aircraft alike of which I'd never seen before, because it had no propeller. Of course. This was Britain's first jet aircraft, the Gloucester E 2839. The pilot taxied out the runway and I watched this thing take off. It did a a fairly short flight before it landed very smoothly and a huge ward of people dashed over and surrounded it. And prominent amongst them was a a a Wing Commander in RAF uniform. And of course this was Frank Whittle. In summer 1941, Brown and his squadron transferred to HMS Audacity, Britain's first escort carrier. She had been captured from the Germans. It was originally a banana boat. Churchill put up the idea that if they just sliced the top of this vessel, put a flat flight deck on, we'd have a small carrier which would be ideal for escorting convoys. Now it was very basic, whereas a normal aircraft carrier these days had a. Flight deck of with a length of about 800 feet. This little vessel total length was 420 feet. It had only two arrestor wires and then an emergency arrestor wire, which we called the, for Christ's sake, wire. In the Firth of Clyde, Brown would make his first deck landing. Half of the pilots in the squadron had been on the bigger carriers before, and when they saw this small thing it must have frightened the life out of them. But to me, I had never seen an aircraft carrier before, so it was just another adventure and a challenge. And frankly I enjoyed it from the air it looked like a matchbox floating in the sea, but. I didn't find it in great trouble with it, frankly, and I did my four landings, I think it was, and um, that qualified me and we were off shortly into operations. The Audacity and its aircraft first accompanied a merchant convoy in September 1941. The ships sailed between Liverpool and Gibraltar. A strategic pillar of Britain's empire that was key to winning the war and keeping the country supplied. We knew we were going to have a rough time. The Bay Biscay has noted for its bad weather, heavy seas. Our real targets were the Focke-Wulf 200 which had been known as a civil airliner called the Condor, but had been modified into a very very potent four engined reconnaissance bomber. It was a great threat to the convoys giving their position to U-boat Wolfpacks which were around and they closed on the convoys and attacked mainly at night of course. On our very first voyage we came across the first of these. Two of our aircraft went up to attack. It had bombed the convoy and caused a few casualties. These were transported onto a hospital ship we had with us and in spite of it flying the Red Cross, the Condor bombed it. It was caught up by the first two Wildcats and the pair were our commanding officer and his wingman and the CO set the inner engine of the Condor and fire. He went in to have a closer look at what damage he had done and they opened fire and he turned away rapidly. But a cannon shell what cleans through the underbody of the aircraft and killed him. So we lost our CO within minutes of the first combat. How do pilots feel and react when they first see a UV? Well, of course it's a thrill because it's a dark, menacing shape. It really looks evil. It is electrifying. And you feel a little helpless. The first major attack I should say was made in a submarine was by our CO's wingman and he dived down on it. But they had manned their 20 mil on the the casing of the thing and actually shot him down and we found out later when his body was recovered that the shell. Had gone through and hit the stick. I later on found two U boats on the surface with a plank between them, well out from the convoy of course, and obviously one of them was in serious trouble of some sort and because they were moving across this plank and helping one another and when I caught them they. were still engaged in this and I killed quite a few of them walking or in this area. It is hard to imagine the reality of this kind of naval warfare. Deck Landing was a very difficult business to judge. I mean, the back end of the vessel, the worst we had was it was moving through an arc of 60 feet. Now that was virtually impossible for landing, but we were up there and had to get back. Bad enough for the pilots. But think of the poor ground crew. We had no hangar. These six aircraft were parked at the stern, tied down by cables at night, and were being serviced. The only time they were available for servicing, was in the dark at night. These troops were going around with a back end moving up and down, water pouring over them, slippery conditions with a small torch, with a piece of blue paper over the front to look in into the engine, etcetera. I think they were pushed to the limit. We knew as pilots that our life depended on these guys. During the convoy's return trip Brown's aircraft was hit by a Condor. This shell smashed through my windscreen and a large piece of the the glass from the screen came in into my mouth. I think this concussed me. Apparently my wingleader, I was the number two came alongside me, realised I'd been hit and was afraid that I would become unconscious and that would have been that. So he kept talking to me all the time, try and keep me going. He said I wasn't responding but appeared to be doing what he told me to do with the aircraft. And he talked me down onto the deck and I've no recollection of landing on at all. But I caught the for Christ's sake, wire. Brown suffered further injuries when landing. And was out of action until the convoy reached Britain, the Condor remained a huge threat. I then studied this aircraft very carefully to see where its armament was and how it could bring it to bare against an attacking aircraft. And I realized that there was no blind spot except from the front. Brown discovered there was a limit to how far the condors upper and lower front Gunners could move their cannon before they were in danger of hitting their own fuselage. This left the Condor vulnerable to a head on attack. On the second convoy to Gibraltar, Brown put his discovery into practice. When I eventually managed to get this aircraft into a situation. But he was nipping in and out of cloud. It was rather difficult to keep up with him. Eventually I made an absolutely flat attack. When I opened fire, I could see the pilot's windscreen shattering. As soon as I did that, it began to fall down in a very flat attitude into the sea to such a degree that two of the crew managed to crawl out of it, so they probably drowned there, I would think so. That was my first attack and I had a similar one the second time. The other guys quizzed me on this, of course, and they all adopted the same thing. We brought down four more using the head on attack. On reaching Gibraltar, the Convoy's escort fighters were flown into the colony's newly built aerodrome for further maintenance and to enable the pilots to keep in practice. Brown's convoy set back for Liverpool, commanded by Frederick Walker from Spain German spies noted its departure. After leaving Gibraltar, we were put under immense attack. We were a slow convoy, five lines of of vessels, about four or five in a line. Walker would put the carrier right in the middle line, so it was furthest away from attack. But our captain, who was senior to Walker, made his own decision. He decided that was putting the merchant ships. at too much risk. With a large number of Ubers attacking. So he came out into the open and decided he'd zigzag throughout the night, clear of the Convoy. We'd been doing that for maybe an hour or so, when a U-boat saw us, fired a random torpedo at us in the hope. Of having a strike because we were zigzagging at 14 knots. And as luck, his luck would have it hit our rudder. Carried the rudder away. The U-boat surfaced about 200 yards on our port side and we could see the captain of the U-Boat on quite clearly on the Conning Tower with the braid of his hat, and our captain called all the crew off the Audacity onto the flight deck. There was this uncanny period which may have been as much as ten minutes, where we were looking at each other, when one of the sailor's nerves broke and he rushed into one of our 22 millimeter cannon and opened fire that U-Boat. In retort, the captain of U-Boat fired four torpedoes, all of which struck us. And the entire bows carrier fell off. And of course, when they went, she tipped up immediately and as she did the cables holding down this the Wildcats in the back. All snapped. I'll never forget the twang as they snapped and they came rushing down the deck into 400 sailors and just wiped out dozens. of them. Knocking them over the side, killing them on impact and so on and so forth. Utter chaos. I realized what was going to happen, so I went immediately to the side and jumped off. This is the 21st of December and the Bay of Biscay wasn't going to be warm in there. I find myself with my flight leader. We were left for three or four hours in the water, he and I. Tied ourselves together and then got a group of sailors we were 26 in all and we all tied ourselves together with the bits of cord and string we had and obviously hypothermia was setting in and as they fell asleep they toppled forward and just drowned and of course they were dead weight and I'm afraid we had to be ruthless and just cut each one that drowned off. And after three hours, I'm afraid the only ones surviving was the flight command and myself. The reason being we had made wefts, which supported our necks, our heads kept. Them above water and it is a horrible thing to realize that your companions are just not surviving. The corvettes came back and they hoisted the side of the water. The captain, he was being hauled up when the line snapped and he went forward. And they think he stuck the the hull of the Corvette and knocked him unconscious because he just went in the water and vanished. While off duty, Eric and Lynn got married. Two months later, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for bravery and Skill in action against enemy aircraft during the Convoys. We were all recalled to reform the squadron with hurricanes at Yeovilton in Somerset, but just prior to embarking, I was told. That I was required to be kept behind for a series of trials of hurricanes and Spitfires on escort carriers. Now, why was I tossed into the test world? I didn't discover till later on that the captain of the Audacity had written. In my confidential report that I had a facility for deck landing and they should try and make use of this. That's why I was hauled out to see if a hurricane could be landed on an escort carrier and then a sea. Fire. Both trials were successful, so from then on I was allotted to this test unit called The Service Trials. Unit for the Navy. This was based at Crail in Scotland. Here, Brown rapidly expanded his tally of deck landings in his new role as a test pilot. He was also promoted to left tenant. By spring 1943, the Allied landings in Sicily were imminent. The role of the RAF was to attack land targets. But its pilots would need to return to aircraft carriers pending the capture of Italian air bases. This made it vital to train aircrew, both British and Canadian, in deck landing. I was sent to Kenley to teach the Canadians. They were not very receptive. They were heavily involved in their own kind of Wars with Spitfires and Canadians being what they are, the only way I could get them to agree to do some deck landing training was they said we'll do one for every sortie you do with us. So this was the deal. So I did a few what they called rhubarbs and things like this over in France. There were Shoals of 109s and 190s around so one had to keep one's wits about one to survive. Terrible thing to say, but I enjoyed it, frankly. And you're not supposed to enjoy wars, but there you are. It's ah the spirit gets to you. After 14 months at Crail, Brown was posted to the Test evaluation Squadron at Boscombe Down. I had been almost entirely a single engine. piston engine pilot and suddenly I was thrown into a place where twins and four engine aircraft abounded. I'd only been at Boscombe Down just a month when I got a phone call from the Admiralty. They rang me up and asked me if I thought it was possible to land a mosquito on a carrier to an engined aircraft. With all the brash confidence of youth, I said Oh yes, do that. And so they said, right, you're on your way to Farnborough. At the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough, Brown would become Chief Naval test pilot. I had never even seen a mosquito till I got to Boscombe Down. So I had to learn to fly the aircraft and work up on it to landed on a carrier. They called it Mission Impossible because the stalling speed of the mosquito with everything down was 110 miles an hour, and the boffins at Farnborough said that the maximum speed that the arrestor wires would accept a mosquito on a carrier was 86 miles an hour. Normally you land on with a little engine power as you come on to the Carrier, but with this I'd have to use almost half engine power and hang on the propellers and until I was about maybe 3 feet off the deck, then cut the engines when the aircraft would just fall out of the sky. So it was a quite a hazardous thing. And yet the trials went very successfully. Of course, the Navy were alerted to the fact that twin engines aircraft could be operated on a carrier, and they offered so much more potential. At Farnborough, Brown worked on many projects apart from naval test flying. The war in Europe had been basically at what we call low to medium level. That is to say, heights not much above 20,000 feet. This all changed in 1943 with the arrival of the 8th United States Army Air Force with the Flying fortresses because they operated at 30,000 feet so suddenly. The whole war was transformed into a high level war. Now once you do that, you run into problems associated with flying in thin air near the speed of sound. These problems created a phenomenon called compressibility. An aircraft sends a pressure wave ahead, which opens the air for it to pass through. But to fly faster the aircraft must fly higher where the air is thinner. At high altitude, the speed of sound is less and these pressure waves do not have the time to open up the passage of air for the aircraft. Instead, they compress against each other. This compressibility builds up a barrier of air ahead of the aircraft. If you strike this barrier of air, it is literally like running into a brick wall and you get huge amount of vibration. And you get the worst thing is a vast change of trim. The aircraft suddenly goes nose down. In January 1944, General Jimmy Doolittle became commander of the 8th Air Force. At that time, they only had this fighter escort, either the P-38 Lightning or the P-47 Thunderbolt. He realized that the losses were still heavy. The crews on the Flying Fortress told them that they saw the German aircraft climbing up to attack and their fighter escort, which would be high cover. They were diving down to intercept the German aircraft, but just going straight past them and making a hole in the ground. What was going on? And of course the answer was they were getting into compressibility trouble. So General Doolittle came to us and said could we look into what was happening. We found that the German aircraft could fight up to a Mach number of .75, three quarters of the speed of Sound. They could actually maneuver at that speed. By contrast, the Lightning and Thunderbolt escorts could not operate beyond Mach .7 at high altitude. They were outclassed in combat. But by the grace of God at this point, there appeared on the horizon. The Mustang, which was an American fighter that had been useless at high altitude until they replaced the Allison engine with the British Merlin engine. The Merlin of course is a high altitude engine, transformed it completely and it could fly, actually combat fly at .78. So here we had the answer. So General Doolittle used nothing but Mustangs for escort. This saved the United States bomber force, frankly. Many years later when I was made an Honorary Fellow of the Society of experimental test pilots, Doolittle was my host at that time and he said would I take back to Farnborough but he's everlasting thanks for the job we had done for him. As the war ended, Brown was appointed CO of the captured enemy aircraft flight. In this role, he returned to Germany with three goals. One, was to find its supersonic wind tunnels two, to locate its advanced aircraft and hopefully fly them, and three, interrogate Germany's leading aero engineers and pilots. The biggest surprise we had was The Jets and the rocket aircraft were left totally untouched. Why? I've asked myself this many times and I only can only assume it was because they were so proud of their achievement that they wanted us to see this and see what might have been if they could have continued the war. Germany was divided into occupation zones. The main aviation research centers were in the British zone. And the one at Völkenrode had three supersonic wind tunnels. We were frankly shocked to find how far ahead of us they were. The Allies did not have one supersonic wind tunnel. Down in Bavaria we were alerted that there was a wind tunnel there which had been originally in Pinamunda. For Wernher Von Braun and this had an Airstream of Mach 4.4. Quite incredible. And if I think things had gone on unabated a bit further, I do think Germany would have been the first to have broken the sound barrier. The awful reality of Nazi Germany was soon apparent. I like the people. I had many good friends in Germany. But of course I was rocked back in my heels and changed a lot of my opinion after what I saw in Belsen in the background somewhere a. truce had been made with Germany about Belsen. In the camp we found 20,000 cases of typhus and I think the Germans were very frightened of this getting out into the population, which at that stage in the war would have been disastrous. So the deal was we could come in unopposed and we would take over and try to quell this typhus situation and the Germans would retreat back to their units to continue the fight against us. Strange arrangement, but that's how it was. And um what we saw there indescribable. The piles of bodies were bad enough, but it was the stench of the place that that I find so terrible. And of course we were a little worried about catching typhus. At Belsen, Brown was asked to interrogate the camp's boss and his mistress, Irma Grese. She had been the female camp Commandant Auschwitz. and was of course well known there for her exceptional cruelty. She really was the worst human being I have ever met. When I interrogated her, she wouldn't reply. She just sat in a chair, wouldn't reply, then suddenly leapt to her feet, gave the Heil Hitler salute and called out Heil Hitler and then sat down, refused to answer. anything. She was hung by Albert Pierrepoint they even when he put the bag over her head, she showed not a whittle of emotion. So these are the sort of people one can find in the nation, I guess. The Luftwaffe's jet aircraft were a revelation. The Me 262, without any question, was the most formidable aircraft of World War Two. For this reason. It had a lot of innovatory features and a quantum jump in performance. The innovatory features were of course primarily swept back wings. Secondly, axial flow, jet engine. Thirdly, heavy, very heavy fire power. four 30 millimeter cannon. It was the performance that rattled us because at this time the top Allied fighter was to the Spitfire Mark 14 for the top speed of 446 miles an hour when I tested the Me 262 at Farnborough. It had a top speed of 568 miles an hour. With this sort of fighter, you could conduct combat on totally on your terms. If you didn't want to engage, you could go off and leave everybody standing. The 262 was powered by an axial flu turbo jet, the Jumo 004. It was a beautiful airplane to fly. But it had very, very sensitive jet engines and when they were acting correctly, you had a great airplane on your hands. When they were temperamental, you had quite a difficult airplane on your hands. Brown himself captured an airfield stocked with another amazing German aircraft. Now there Arado 234 different propositions. Straight wing, same engines. But a reconnaissance bomber. But it was so fast, even with straight wings, that it could outrun any of any Allied fighter. And we know that it had taken reconnaissance pictures over Great Britain. Operating out of Norway. It was easier to keep serviceable than the Messerschmitt 262. I tended to fly the Arado more because we were getting war information on the engine out of it, that's what we really wanted at that stage. And Brown was also the only allied pilot to fly the most innovative Nazi aircraft of all the Me 163. You had swept wings on this. It was semi tailless. It had a rocket motor which was. unique in this sense. Rockets have been tried in the aircraft for years. Here was a rocket produced which was throttleable. The 163 in my opinion at the end of the day was a tool of desperation and its entire operational time. It killed 16 allied aircraft for the loss of 10 of its own. But The other side of the coin was they lost over 40 with operational accidents due to the high volatility of the fuels Used. Its main fuel was concentrated hydrogen peroxide. Now I know nothing more explosive. You had under full power, 120 seconds of flight, that was all. If you landed with as much as a cup full of fuel in the aircraft, the impact of touchdown, what would cause a violent explosion. Brown discovered the arms of the pilot seat were in fact hydrogen peroxide fuel tanks. If a bullet goes through in fuel leaks, it would take nine minutes to melt the pilot, but strangely enough at the end of the war, it was the aircraft that influenced world aviation thinking more than any other unit. In Germany, Brown was also busy interrogating the key players in Nazi aviation. In the whole of the American occupation zone, they hadn't a single Arado 234. And they were very keen to get. one. So they were given two. Then they came back to us and said the Secretary of State said we would very much like to have another two. And I hummed and hawed over this purely as a game and said we would like a quid pro quo. And they said, well what are you after? And I said interrogation rights with Göring. After a month, they agreed. I Interrogated him. I think if I recollect it was the 16th of June 1945 and I was given an hour, told I mustn't ask him any political questions because of the Nuremberg trials coming up. He was very affable and frankly I found him a charismatic rogue. I asked him what he thought the outcome of the Battle of Britain was? To which he replied that it was a draw and I said well how did you arrive at that conclusion? And he said, well, if you look at the official casualty lists on both sides, said there isn't much between them. Now that's not an unreasonable statement when you look at the casualty list. And he said secondly we withdrew, we were not defeated, we withdrew because Hitler ordered all the air units back to train for Operation Barbarossa, which was the invasion of Russia. Now that is also factually true. Now I would not like to tell the RAF that. By 1941, it had become clear that gas turbine Jet Propulsion was the future of flight. The aviation industry's next goal was to fly at supersonic speed. This was impossible on any piston engine aircraft because of the drag of the propeller. Farnborough had started, and indeed was the first research establishment in the world to start work on compressibility and transonic testing, and it started using the Spitfire 5 back in 1941. It's boffins realized they had the key to supersonic flight. So they issued a specification in 1943 for a supersonic research aircraft and they chose Miles aircraft to design, with the help of Farnborough, the actual aircraft. This was designated the Miles M.52. One has to say they made a very good job of it. It had a special engine. To be built by Frank Whittle, which was turbaned fan with reheat. We believe we could reach 1000 miles an hour and the aircraft had also a biconvex wing which was known as the Gillette Wing. And thirdly it had a flying tail. This folds the tail plane and its elevator into one solid piece. Which makes the aircraft more controllable as it nears supersonic speed. I think because of the impression that I made, or so I'm told, with getting the body on the deck, they thought we'll use this guy in the high speed flight. In 1944, Brown became the Navy's first pilot to fly a jet airplane. By contrast, no test pilot at Miles had yet flown one. I was chosen to be the pilot on it for the simple reason that the fuselage at the pilot position was only four Feet in diameter and you couldn't get a pilot in there with of more than five feet eight. In December 1945 when the aircraft was 92% ready for first flight. There arose a great problem that Frank Whittle, who was then running power jets, fell out with the establishment over the question of whether he or Rolls Royce should produce production jet engines, it was ruled that Rolls Royce should do it. He was so unhappy with this that he resigned from power jets a month and a half later. The M.52 was cancelled. I had already been given the date for the first flight, which was to be October 1946 at Boscombe. Down. There was no prior notification given either to Miles or to Farnborough, and I was hopping mad, frankly, when I heard the the decision. Nobody would tell Brown why the M.52 had been cancelled. About six months before the cancellation, the Ministry of Aircraft Production had ordered that we receive a visit from the Americans, that everything was shown to them, nothing to be withheld from whatsoever that would even be given copies of all the reports and copies of the design work, etcetera. Without this visit, the Americans would not have advanced through the Sound barrier with the X1 As early as they did, I think it was certainly well within our grasp and taken away and this is the galling thing for a reason that up to today we are not sure. Why it was done? Have you thought how your own life would have gone down a different Ave. perhaps? Perhaps I wouldn't have relished it to the same degree, I don't think. While waiting to fly the M.52, Brown had been working at Farnborough on another project that would further expand the military potential of jet airplanes. The then boss of the outfit said to me, you know, you should be thinking of getting one of these. Onto carriers. Brown could choose from 4 aircraft. There was E. 28/39, the Gloster. This was ruled out because it was really an engine test bed. There was the meteor, which was twin engined and really too big for the job. There was the Bell era Airacomet, the American one and then they left us with the only other alternative from the Dehaviland spider crab, which became the vampire. And we selected that. The vampire was a very, very docile aircraft, easy to fly and all handling characteristics very benign. The only problem we had was at that stage In jet development, the acceleration of the jet engine and the deceleration was very poor. What we wanted was throttle reaction on a jet like you have on a piston engine. The task would require a whole new technique. The essence of deck landing is lift control and you get that on a piston engine aircraft by Throttle movement. If you want lift, you just push up in the throttle. The airscrew will Rev up and you get lift from the wash from the propeller. If you want drag, what you do if you're getting too fast, you need drag. You just throttle back. In a jet, the only way you can get lift is by accelerating and getting more speed. And the only way you can get drag is from air brakes. So it's different technique altogether. Our big boost to all this was we were going to beat the Americans to it, which we did by nine months. On December 3rd, 1945, Brown landed the vampire on HMS Ocean by marrying the reach of a carrier with the power of a jet aircraft. This pioneering flight would take naval warfare in a new direction. As Britain adjusted to post war life, Brown pondered his future. During his fourth year at Farnborough. He had always been a reserved naval officer. Hawker were eager to hire him as a test pilot. I then approached the Navy and they said, Oh, Farnborough says you can't be released. You're engaged in one or two top secret projects and I said, well, you really are penalizing me for this, aren't you? And they said, well, we will try and compensate you by offering you a permanent Commission. And I said, right, I'm prepared to accept that. Peace and the gas turbine engine change the focus of test flying. The emphasis obviously went on to Civil Aviation. We wanted a new breed of civil aircraft altogether. The first jet airliners were now well on the way. They had no option but to fly at high altitude, so penetration of thunderclouds had to be looked at. But also a new phenomenon that was occurring up there called clear air turbulence. Here was a new environment for civilian passengers. The structural demands on a civil airliner become huge. Someone had to find out more about them. One of the most uncomfortable tests I've ever made my life is penetrating a Thunder head in a Spitfire. It is. a frightening experience. You are tossed around like a little light toy, and in addition, you're getting the full visual visual entertainment. Elmo's fire around the prop, lightning strikes on the fuselage, and lightning strikes that destroy your vision. You're at the mercy of the windsheilds that are occurring in those thunderheads, and sometimes you'll find yourself going up at a rate of 1000 feet a minute and couple of seconds later you'll be going down at a similar rate. Eric Brown's exploits in test flying took him to Buckingham Palace to receive further decorations, but the happiest occasion came in 1948. When his wife Lynn gave birth to a son. By now years of working at Farnborough had shown the fragility of life as a test pilot. After a while, you realize if you're going to stay in the job any length of time, you better think about survivability and the fatality rate at Farnborough amongst test pilots in aerodynamics flight was very high, 25%. wartime pressure for quick results had been a major cause of fatalities. We were jumping from one aircraft, one type of aircraft, to another. I've done as many as eight different types in one day, so preparation is vital. That requires time. And a lot of pilots prefer to use some time drinking at the bar. They were familiar with the aircraft when everything was normal, but when an emergency occurred, they hadn't boned up on what to do in these emergencies. Now, I always carried a knee pad with me. I want to take test results, but on the other knee I had a pad with the emergency drill, I think preparation contributed a large percentage to my survival. But another thing is I think my statue contributed to my survival because it's very noticeable that very tall people in airplanes run into a lot of bigger troubles than small pilots. In 1949, Brown again cheated death when a jet powered flying boat that he was landing in the Solent. Hit a floating mast that had broken off a yacht. After six years of test flying at Farnborough and the Lordships of the Admiralty decided I better go back to operational flying. Brown rejoined his old Squadron 802 as senior pilot. I find it very easy to integrate. I mean the flying was much simpler. But what I enjoyed tremendously was the camaraderie of squadron life. We were in the Mediterranean at that time and flying from what I call a fleet carrier wasn't a full size carrier. And the sea Furies, you forget that naval flying is very different from Air Force fly. You're in an environment which is basically hostile. The sea flying Single engine aircraft too. If anything happens, a ditching is inevitable. That is not an easy thing to do, particularly if the sea is rough. So the Air Force fighter pilot goes out, has his combat, comes back to his airfield. In the Navy you have your combat and then you've got to find your way home because unlike fighting over land, you are not allowed to contact your carrier in case you give its position away. Sometimes after combat you're quite disorientated and then when you get back you have the hazard of deck landing. But on the Nice side, I was fortunate enough to lead the Navy's piston engineer aerobatic team to give airshows when we got back to UK. Brown's next posting took him to the United States Navy. After leaving Farnborough, the Americans had asked if I could go to America to their test center, Patuxent River. The Brown family crossed the Atlantic the traditional way. and took up residence at the US Naval Air Test Center in Maryland. Here he was able to fly the F-86 Sabre, then proving itself in Korea and complete some unfinished business. The F-86 was one of the most delightful jets. In fact, I can't as the most delightful to handle because it had almost perfect harmony of control. Now, harmony of control is what binds a pilot with this aircraft You feel you and the airplane are one, you're part of it. And this this Sabre has, absolutely. And also I have a great affection for it because it was the first aircraft in which I ever went supersonic. I'd done so much transonic flying That when I actually took the F86 through the barrier it really did exactly what I thought would happen. The only surprise was because one hadn't experienced it before was when you got through the barrier everything suddenly became dead smooth and all this vibration and porpoising and nose down trim the face all disappeared. And you were in smooth air. The Royal Navy wanted all career officers who were pilots to learn how to take control of the vessel. On return to Britain, Brown was posted to HMS Rocket, an anti submarine frigate based at Londonderry, to serve as one of the ship's officers. At the end of 1953 he returned to Scotland to command 804 Squadron at Lossiemouth, flying Hawker Seahawks. He was also promoted to commander and the next year the Browns moved to Wales, where Eric became air commander at Brawdy Station in Pembrokeshire. Brawdy was in the depth of Wales and of course it was fairly isolated, part of the country and subject to very nasty weather. It was coastal and we were on the top of a fairly high cliff, a difficult place to operate on. And to this day, the center of a mystery. Air traffic control alerted me that aircraft were reporting seeing a flying saucer and when one looked up anywhere on the airfield it was clear to the naked eye. There was something like an a saucer up there. So I said right, I'll take a vampire up and have a look at it and went up to the absolute ultimate ceiling of the vampire, which was just almost 40,000 feet and it was still above me. I didn't get close enough to put my hand in my heart and say what it was. Anyway, we recorded it, but I have an open mind on the flying saucers. In 1958, Brown's work once again took him back to Germany as chief of the British Naval Mission in Kiel. I went, really to build up the German Naval Air. Arm. Göring had insisted that everything that flies comes under his control. At the end of the war they were left high and dry of course and there's an effort to get them back into business. They appeal to NATO that if they could reform a German naval air arm that they would be happy to assign it to NATO. So my job was to take World War II pilots together with an intake of the new generation of post war pilots and meld them all together into a force that we could assign to NATO. Brown achieved this demanding task. The end of the day they were a very good fighting force and I was very proud to hand them over to NATO. The naval pilots had used British Seahawks as their jet trainers. When we finished, I recommended to them that they continue thereafter with Buccaneers, but the German manufacturers ganged up on the German services and insisted on having The F-104 starfighter. The reason for this was the German industry realized they had been out of the game and they wanted to get back into the Mach 1, the supersonic league in one jump. Now the services weren't happy with this. The German services would receive an allpurpose star fighter that weighed 1000 kilograms more than those in the USA. Also, the Americans realized this was a tricky ship to fly and they wouldn't let anybody touch it was less than 1500 hours. The Germans were sending pilots in with 400 hours, almost 150 crashed, of which 50% of the crashes were fatal. Disaster on every sense of the word. How did you find the star fighter to fly? Oh, it was. It was very tricky. You had tell you what's about you. It was tricky and bad weather, but if you had an emergency and bad weather on your hands, you really needed a Cracker Jack pilot there to deal with it. Working in Germany, Brown saw how the past could return to haunt the present. Dönitz had come out of his ten years in prison, a submarine ace up at kill where we were based had died. So there was to be a big funeral for him and the naval air arm were going to turn out. Back in Whitehall, it was felt diplomatic for Brown to attend. Dönitz went to the funeral and afterwards he came along and shook hands with every chap, and he'd gone three past me, and he realized I wasn't in German uniform, so he came back. And he said, you're British, aren't you? And I said, yes. He said, what are you doing here? And I said, well, I'm training the Naval Air arm and we've all come to pay our respects to a war hero. And he said, oh, that's very kind, thank you very much, and just went on when he got to the end of the line and before stepping into his car. They all broke ranks and rushed over to surround him. However, they knew they could not cheer a Nazi leader. They all took their hats off as they do for the normal three cheers and did this three times, but in complete silence. It's quite eerie. Towards the end of his time in Germany, Eric Brown was promoted to the rank of captain. When I returned from my posting in Germany to the Admiralty, I at first was made Deputy director of the Gunnery Division. I had a year of that, which was enough, and then became the Deputy Director of Air Warfare. Now this was a very interesting period because we were proposing to have a rule, if you like. Spring cleaning of the Fleet Air arm. We were proposing a new carrier and we wanted new aircraft. There was a tendency in the Ministry of Defense at this time to ask both the Air Force ourselves to use the same aircraft and they were trying hard to push on to us a VTOL version, the P.1154. An increased size Harrier really. To me, not a very impressive performance. We still had the Arc royal, the Hermes and the Eagle, so we were still in the big carrier game and I was quite determined I was not going to have VTOL. I wanted to have the fastest performance aircraft we could have and looming on the horizon at that time was this wonderful aircraft, the MacDonald Phantom. Twin engines, which is another good thing to have in naval aviation if you're spending your time over the Lonely Sea and tremendous performance, but above all tremendous weapon carrying ability. In its day it was head and shoulders above anything that was around. Brown pushed hard for the Phantom in Whitehall. The chief scientist at that time supported me and this was, I think, what tipped the scales, really, when we actually got it. It was everything I'd hoped for. I flew it in America, I flew it here, I flew it onto an American carrier and it was superb. What's it like to land run on a carrier the first time? Fast of course, but very easy to control. Very easy, apart from the high landing speeds, which you means you have to think a little bit faster. The Navy would be able to use The Phantoms for barely 10 years, and only on one carrier. Just before the Falklands crisis arose, the Arc Royal was scrapped, the Phantom brought out of service. We were left. Therefore, with the Harrier as our main strike aircraft, the carrier, for safety reasons, had to stand 70 miles off the Falkland Islands. This restricted the Harrier's capability. So the time it's got the 70 miles done, half an hour over the Falklands circling around waiting for Argentinian aircraft to come, then 70 miles back again, it is almost out of fuel. If we'd had the Phantom, it would have gone halfway to Argentina to kill the aircraft coming out to raid the Falklands en route. And I spoke to the commander of the Falcons campaign afterwards, and he felt that if he had had phantoms, this battle could have been won in probably a fortnight or a month. You're. Flying the Phantom just 25 years after flying a Gladiator. Do you ever think about that? Nothing accelerates technology, of course, like a war. And we entered it, as you so rightly say, largely a biplane Air Force, and emerged from it as a monoplane Air Force with a considerable improvement in performance. It is incredible the progress that was made because of the pressure of war. And of course, fortunately that was the genius of Whittle, arriving on the scene and coming at absolutely the right time to transform us from the piston engine era into the jet era. Without war to achieve, what we did would probably have taken maybe 20 years, instead compressed into five years. 25 years after the British authorities had sent Brown to teach in Germany, he finally went there as a diplomat. In November 1964, he became the naval attache at the Bonn Embassy. That was a very interesting visit because it was a time of the state visit of the Queen, our first to Germany. The enthusiasm for her, it was incredible. Right along the Rhine they had painted on the banks of the Rhine. Welcome to our Queen. It gave me a chance to meet some of the new heads of State, for example the the new President Erhardt, who was the Chancellor. One really got into the inner circle there, and I think they were genuinely, genuinely working for a new Germany. Not many of them knew my background. They really didn't connect. I I didn't talk about it much and I didn't think it was the right thing to do in diplomatic circles because inevitably. They do not like to hear talk about the SS but what said If we had known then what we know now, we would certainly have not allowed you in your car out of Germany. In 1967, Brown returned to lossiemouth, this time as commander of its Naval Air Station. Two years later, he was made a naval aide-de-camp to the Queen. He retired from the Royal Navy in 1970. and went to work in the aviation industry. Captain Eric Brown is regarded as the Leading aviator from the Great Age of test flying, his work was crucial to Britain's defence. Yet this era has a wider legacy still. It paved the way to the safe flying that we now take for granted every day in Thousands of airlines. What do you think is it that makes a good pilot? Well, what a good question. To begin with, motivation obviously is the first. If you're not motivated, you're never going to want to fly. Secondly, you have got to believe that you're doing something that is going to take your full interest. You're not doing it because it's fashionable. or because you think, oh, you know, this is a good sideline to have with the girls or anything like that. The only way you take it further is either you go into Civil Aviation as a an airline pilot or you go into the services and then you're going to have to step up another gear and that means you're going to improve your skills, particularly in blind flying, and that is. usually a hurdle that brings a lot down. In War time, what is it that separates the good combat pilot from the bad? Oh well I think most of the really brilliant combat pilots were good shots. It was a hobby of theirs. For example, Johnny Johnson on our side was. A very good shot. Galland was and Bobby Hartman were both great shots with rifles. Every fighter pilot goes through this unless he's been a good shot. There comes a period just after you've qualified where your camera gun shots showing that you're not going to hit anything and suddenly when you're feeling pretty desperate about getting a hang of it all. It clicks. Is there psychological motivations? I think so to a large degree, yes, yes. An analyst in 1980 something or other looked at my career and said I had eleven death threatening accidents, so to survive those I can't complain. Well, the Messerschmitt 262, in my opinion, was the most formidable fighter of World War. They had the advantage of when they designed this of supersonic wind tunnels. That is clearly shown in the fuselage shape of the 262. They were also well aware of the advantages. of sweep back and easing your way through the transonic speed area. The aircraft was designed with these things in mind, so it was going to be a jump ahead of its time, so to speak. When I first saw it, I realized that this was a very different looking out then, but also. At that time I hadn't fully realized just the impact its engines were going to have because we are in the early jet stages in Britain were using engines operating on the centrifugal principle of Jet Propulsion. The Germans started off in that area as well, but they had a sector that went onto axial flow. And of course today, all of the attention is axial flow. They were on the right track right away. But having said that, that they're on the right track. I messed about for a minute because wasn't the right track at that time. I worked closely with Frank Whittle, who was invented or developed the jet engine and um I knew he knew all about the the axial flow engine and I said to him Frank, why have we gone since centrifugal when the Germans are going axial and he said because in the early stages of Jet Propulsion I want to give our Air Force an engine that is simple and reliable. Now how right he was because in the early stages, the German jet engines whereas Frank Whittle's centrifugal engine had an overhaul life of 100 hours, you overhauled it. The German axial flow jet engines have a scrap life of 25 hours. Because they didn't have the strategic metals to withstand the heat stresses at that time. So temporarily we were on the right track, but eventually of course the axial flow offered advantages and streamlining because for a given power you had the smaller compressor and turbine discs and also of course they had better specific fuel consumption and altogether they were on the right track there. But unfortunately, they weren't allowed. They couldn't go to the ultimate because, as I said, they hadn't the right metals. However as and airplane this was something quite electrified to fly the cockpit. There was nothing particularly unusual. It wasn't a cluttered cockpit, it was quite simple and it had the the functional things here. And the engine instruments on the right and a generally good view, good canopy view and being a tricycle, you had a good view ahead. So altogether they had had a lot going for it apart from this unreliability of the engines. Even when they were in the air, they were very sensitive to throttle movement. Excessive movement, either accelerating or decelerating, could flame out the engines. And it got so bad, in fact, that eventually the way the Germans were operating was to take off at full power. Then ease slowly back. The climbing power and never touch the engines thereafter until you are coming in to land. They took that risk and this didn't pay off I don't think because as I say although it has a scrap life of theoretically of 25 hours. But Adolf Galland told me at the end of the war that his unit flying the 262 jg44 at the end of the war was only having an engine life average of 12 and a half hours so it goes to show what the vulnerability of that was. Firepower on the serpent huge four 30 millimeter cannon. They had forgotten one thing, and we did the same with our initial Jets experimental jet aircraft. They had forgotten how to slow it down. They did not have dive brakes and this cost them a little because the aircraft was built mainly to deal with the B-17 Flying Fortress bombers and when you came in on a dive to attack them your closing speed was huge and You couldn't open fire because of the inaccuracy of the guns above 600 yards. So let's say you opened fire at 600. You had two seconds before you had to break away because your closing speed was so high. If that had dive breaks that could have doubled the closing speed now with a closing speed of two seconds. You're firing at random. You're not sighting, you're just pressing the button and hoping you're pointing in the right direction. With four seconds you can quickly sight, adjust, and fire. So it made a big difference. Now the ME 262 was, in my opinion, I stated this many times, the most formidable outcome of World War II. When you consider that at the end of the war, the top Allied fighter was the Spitfire Mk XIV with a top speed of 446 miles an hour. When we tested the Messerschmitt 262, it had a top speed of 568 miles now. This was a quantum jump in performance and it meant that 262 was virtually inviolate. It also handled quite well in the air. It had no nasty characteristics really, except if you lost an engine on take off before you reach safety speed. But apart from that I was very impressed. It had two shortcomings, but all the early jets did in our country, in America and in Germany. Firstly, the engines were very sensitive. It was slow to accelerate, to throttle movement and you had to handle them very carefully to avoid flaming them out. Secondly. We hadn't thought, all the designers hadn't thought of how to slow down these incredibly fast airplanes and no air brakes were fitted, and this made life very difficult. For example, for the landing you need some drag if you're going to land, and since there was very little drag associated with the 262, you had to do a long slow approach to landing. And this was an Achilles heel because The 8 USAAF Mustangs realize this, and the few 262s they picked off were usually in that phase of the operation. After three great airplanes I think the Germans produced in the war, I would say the JU 88, the Focke-Wulf 190 and the Me 262 was the three. The JU 88 in my opinion was a first class medium bomber. The JU 88G-4 for example had a top speed of 400 miles an hour. Which was six miles an hour faster than the 190 day four at that time, it's contemporary fighter, so it was a formidable area. and Also, the Germans had learned from the mistakes of the previous medium bomber, the Heinkel 111, where you had the crew separated by the Bombay, you had the flying crew up to the front. And the defensive crew in the back, but there could be a breakdown in communication and also there could be a breakdown in morale. If you have the two separated, they learn to put the four crew of the JU 88 into one glass house, I think you would call it on the fuselage. And the crews themselves were very enthusiastic about the airplane. I flew it quite a lot, that and the 188. The 188 had rather different rudder effect and I would say it had improved slightly over the JU 88, but a negligible amount there was. It still had been the good flying characteristics of the 88. In fact, slightly better, and I was very impressed with both types of aircraft, the Focke-Wulf 190 as a fighter was first class, there's no question of that. It was an outstanding airplane, and inevitably as the war progressed. There were attempts made to keep up with the hunt, so to speak, and give it a variety of roles, and there were many different. Marks. Of 190 and it eventually gravitated into the fighter bomber. In that role it was quite effective actually. Fighter bombers have a limited role. They are used against what I call targets of opportunity. You don't use them to come in and bomb an industrial layout. What you do is you use them. To. Shoot up trains or convoys you see on the road and from this way the fucker Wolf 190 was very effective again, so it was a versatile aircraft. and as it progressed, it eventually had an engine change, the Dora. The later Dora was a magnificent fighter with an engine change and not really any structural changes other than those to accommodate the engine. But what it meant was here was an airplane that could keep up with the hunt as the years of the war progressed. So from 1942 right up to the end of the war, the Focke-Wulf 190 was in the top grade of fighter or fighter bomber. The next series of films highlights the development and testing of the ME-163B. The B model was the ultimate version of the Me 163 line. This was the actual combat version of the aircraft. The vast majority of ME-163B flights were for development purposes. However, although the aircraft did finally see limited combat experience beginning in the middle of 1944, you'll note that there are significant shape differences between the ME- 163B and the earlier A model and the DFS-194. The landing gear is substantially more robust on the B model than it was on the earlier a model. Here we can see a couple of ground crew members wrestling the jettisonable takeoff gear into place. We can also see the extensible landing gear as well. The ME163B was a much larger aircraft than the earlier a model, where a pilot could easily just flop over the side of the canopy cell in the A model. A ladder was required for access to the cockpit on the B model. As the canopy closes, we can see an air vent at the leading edge of the canopy. You'll note also that the canopy is hinged to the side on the B model, whereas on the A model it was hinged to the rear. Here we see the servicing cart for the turbine being rolled away from the aircraft. There was a turbine inside the ME-163B which drove the fuel pumps. For the T-Stoff and C-Stoff propellants that powered the Walter rocket motor, we can catch glimpses of the extensible tail wheel at the after end of the Emmy 163B in some of these shots, this has changed from a tail skid on the A model on the early B models. This tail wheel was unfaired in some of the later B models that we will see later in this film. The fairing is constructed around that tail wheel to improve aerodynamic efficiency. As with the earlier members of the Emmy 163 family, including the D FS194 Climb performance for the B model was simply outstanding. Again, the aircraft was capable of climbing from a standing start to roughly 40,000 feet in three to 3 1/2 minutes. While the aircraft's performance was remarkable, this performance has to be balanced against the fact that it took a long time to prepare an ME-163B for flight. Unlike conventional combat aircraft used by the Luftwaffe, such as the Focker-Wulf 190 or the ME-109, you couldn't simply scramble an ME-163 to meet an oncoming threat after the aircraft came to a stop. Clearing it from the airfield was a major challenge. And a device was created to do that, the German name of which I won't even begin to try to pronounce. This device had airbags that were inflated under the wings of the aircraft, lifting it off the ground and enabling it to be removed from the field. It was later replaced by a device that used rigid arms instead of inflatable airbags in these head on shots of an ME-163B. There's a couple notable things here. First is the propeller at the very nose of the aircraft. This was used to drive a small electrical generator which would be used to power instrumentation in radios on board the aircraft. Also visible in those shots, just above the well for the landing skid was a small hole where a tow line could be attached. Most ME163 flights of. all members of the series were donning an unpowered mode glide flights generally using an ME-110 as a tow aircraft. Landing skid failures were fairly frequent with the comet. The landing skid was hydraulically extended and frequently that hydraulic system would fail. The next series of shots are going to give us some wonderful views of some of the interesting details on the ME-163B. Here very noticeable is a flap, an under surface wing flap that is partially extended. Note that those flaps fit onto the surface of the wing and are not recessed into the wing. Also notable here is the extended tail wheel. Note that this is a later ME -163B and that it has the fairing on the tail wheel. In just a moment we're going to get some very good shots at the aft end of the aircraft. You can see here that smoke is still pouring from the nozzle of the Walter rocket engine. We mentioned earlier that the takeoff roll was especially difficult for any 163 pilots. In addition to just the the sheer length of the roll. Directional stability was a problem during the early portion of the roll. Before the rudder became effective a device called the straw Rudder was tested on both the A and B models. That would fit into the exhaust of the Walter rocket engine to give the pilot a bit of additional directional control during the early takeoff role. Here we see the airbag version of the aircraft transporter in use. The next sequence of shots is especially fascinating because it gives us some glimpses of some of the more significant figures in the history of the ME163. The woman in this photo is Hannah Reich. She was a prominent test pilot in Nazi Germany, a personal friend of Adolf Hitler, and she had campaigned heavily to be given the opportunity to fly the ME-163. The tall gentleman with sunglasses and a protective overcoat on is Heinrich Dittmar, who was one of the early Test pilots very closely associated with the ME-163 program. We'll come back to the story of Hannah Reich in just a moment. Here we see some footage showing testing of a motor on an Emmy 163. Couple things are notable here. First, there's a protective cover that's been placed on the aft edge of the rudder. You can also see in several of these shots Mach diamonds in the exhaust plume that's indicative of the supersonic flow coming out of the engine. Here we have an ME-163B taking off from a paved runway. This would have been a much preferable experience for the pilots to a takeoff on an unimproved airfield. Another change that took place with the landing gear late in the program involved the landing gear. The early landing gear used on both the A and B models was rigid with no suspension. Not only were the takeoffs hard on the pilots, but they were hard on the aircraft as well. So eventually shock absorbers were built into that takeoff gear to protect both the pilots in the aircraft itself. Here we have an ME-163B on tow behind an ME-110 tow aircraft. Most ME 163 testing and training occurred not under rocket power but on towed flights. Let's move back to the story of Hannah Reich in the Emmy 163 again. She had campaigned fairly aggressively to be given the opportunity to fly this aircraft, and she ended up flying the comet a total of five times. On her final flight in the comet, the takeoff gear failed to release just after takeoff and she was forced to return to the field for a a very hard landing. Her injuries were such that she was kept out of the cockpit for the next 5 months and never did fly the comet again. The next series of films shows another individual who's very closely associated with the comet program. Rudy Opitz, he, like Reich and Dittmar, was a very experienced glider pilot and as such was especially valuable to the ME-163 program. Here we see him getting into an ME-163B. You'll note the machine gun protruding from the leading edge of the wing there. Also visible in many of these shots is the very thick piece of armored glass immediately in front of the pilot. Again, this was a combat aircraft at this point, and that piece of glass, along with an armored nose cone, was designed to protect the pilots as they flew straight at approaching Allied forces. In all likelihood, this is yet another test flight for the comet. You'll note the very large data acquisition camera that Opitz has bolted to his head there in many of these shots. That's a spring driven camera that the pilot can use to take photographs of the instrument panel during critical portions of the flight. It's certainly a far cry from the digital data acquisition equipment used on test aircraft today. And even a far cry from the the crude analog systems used in the late 40s through the 50s and 60s. If you enjoyed this video, Please remember to like and subscribe. As always, thank you for watching.
