A
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1953.
•
Cunningham Duke... Falk they go to high battle with the unknown -usually dressed in a lounge suit
In all things...
THE PIN-STRIPE PIONEERS there is
FTER a time a test pilot gets to be an instinctive type, Whlch is as well. He needs all the technical knowledge he can get nito his poor head,' of course, but nine times out of ten it will be instinct,
if anything, that saves his life.
What it comes down to is just a feel for aeroplanes, Sometimes, somehow, you know, almost the moment you ense her off the ground the first time up, that a new one will never give you any trouble.
That is a rare feeling, however. Aeroplanes which are pretty well perfect straight off the drawing board and out of the shops come along about as often as a case of Scotch.
Of the 54 prototypes I have tested, I can remem- ber only three that felt per- fect on the first flight.
The Spitfire was vine, The Viscount prop fel airliner, which nobody wanted then and all the world s buying today, wan another. And the Valiant, our still-secret super-bomber and the last prototype job I did, was the third
The Spit needed one minor adjustment; the other two didn't need touching before I them up a second time.
A BAD TIME
very well one acroplane 1 distrusted in- tensely from the first moment. She turned out to be the only one I ever abandoned upstairs.
I REMEMBER
M.130
WON
Chapter 3 of
HELL'S ANGEL
by MUTT. SUMMERS
blues told to Derek Moniy
when he became the first British pilot to break through the sound Dorrier. The plane he used on 108, the same tailless job which that trip was tho de Havilland killed another briliant Geoffrey de Havilland,
When
mon,
Derry went up to the barrier with all the care and caution in the work. He was no fool: he was far too good
pilot to take an uncalculated or un- necessary risk.
he was killed, his chief, John Cunning- finest pilots he hath ever known. ham, said he had lost one of the
"Cat's Eyes" Cunningham Is good enough Judge of that. The night-lighter nee-with three and a couple of D.F.C.s
rivets had started dropping out
Really, it was the other way: she chucked me, and gave me a pretty bad time as well. The D.S.O.9
171 experimental is one of those men who try of his fuselage. naval torpedo recve plane we their first take off while they are
still in their prams.
Cunningham knew what he wanted from the start. He took most of his education at de Havilland's technical school, went all through the shops, and then, as war came, Jonied the RAF
baled out only once—and
This in him doing It..
were building before the war. I. never liked her.
I kept on telling the designer the tail was 100 big.
The
I reinember his coming over to Vickers in those days to collert
a new right-fighter plane.
IL
Roly Falk (pictured here) for examplo... he crashed and it nearly crippled him...
the thing around with incredible skill at nought feet, giving # cracking good display.
There are others many of them.
So Colquhoun got his medal, and considering the courage and skill of the man, and the number of lives he most likely saved There is Neville Duke, modest through getting that machine and unassuming, who banged his down where the fault could be salute to Derry immediately after discovered, think he deserved he was killed. A Spitfire man, it.
Duke-D.5.0., three DF.Co brilliant, brave pilot.
Then there is Georgle Bulman, chief tost pilot
for Hawker's from 1825 to 1045. He was a natural pilot; he could fly any thing you gave him, anyhow, any way up, and he did. But only if he was wearing his own trilby hat. Don't know why. I sup pose it was comfortable.
THROWN CLEAR
was fitted with radar, bristling POLY" FALK is one of the
"Rharacters ali over with cannon and
in test flying machine guns and new gadgets. He was the chief lest pilot at the of all kinds, and John couldn't Royal Air Force. Establishment let it alone. He was out with it at Farnborough, and during the every minute he could get, mud war became our chief authority keen to know it inside out and on German planes. get it Bghting.
The war delayed his testing: fighting got in the way. But he has done some since. He did the prototype jobs on the D.H.110, the super-fighter which killed Derry, and the Comet, the fastest airliner in the world.
: isn't a bad record!
WING WENT
"BRUIN" PURVIS is another. Like most of us, he prefers "Bruin" — because of his flying in a good suit to overalis. gruffy voices the chief civil And Roly prefers a pin-stripe. test pilot at Boscombe, He did a
He con
ke By anything after speed test on the Spit once. looking at it
couple of minutes, had got her up to 420 miles an He was flown down to the South hour on the flat when his engine of France once, with a fighter falled. He just put her wheels escort, to pinch a four-engined down and brought her back as Well, I was diving her hard
German job a Condor, which our neatly as any landing I've ever one day at about 280 miles an
people wanted to
tel to look at. hour when it came ẾT.
soon. Not a seralch. After he joined us at Vickers It is whole_tail. Jabu_Rodeliffe_was_
life with plenty of a-few-years-ogo-he-had-a-bed-excitement.-It-is-lived-by-some- with me- "wonderful technical
smash. He was bringing a Wel- of the finest men anyone could bloke who was killed later
SHALL never forget Les lington in to land one day when hope to find. It is also a Job during testing on a Bristol Way-
Colquhoun and Roland Falk. something went
wrong.
She with a terribly high death rate. larer.
Les worked for me at Vickers, Feeling
into a
ONLY A MOMENT M.130 stened enly my hot Supermarine works down at I rushed across the field in tom belt when I ftow her. and Southampton. Well, one day he the ambulance, but the Wimpey held myself in with my spare was testing a plane, the naval was one burning hand on the edge of the open Attacker,
mess by the which had wing-tip time we got there, and we con- cockpit.
that fuldel Everything happened so quickly below decks
for easy storing centrated on getting the people
of an aircraft out of the house. 1 never knew quite the order carrier. It was a powerful type,
No one of things. There was a colossa!
jet. boise, the plane bunted,
threw me out,
as I did about the doing most of his 1ying at the led and burrowed
I hit my head a terrific crack
4
The house.
He was diving her pretty fast when one of the wing-tips folded up on him. Very neat, but
URING the four years after the war, out of 91 test pilots
employed by leading British air- craft manufacturers 23 were was hurt, but we killed. bundled a couple into the ambu-. None of those men were mad lance to be looked at by the fools, wanting to be dangerous doctor.
and take risks. They were firs) | The driver and I were just class. test pilots, which if it
saying, "What rokering means they
on the wing-whether the wings unasked for: not the right place getting in when, from the middle ea had come of then or came of for it. after I never found out and
of a hedge, came Roly's voice, Were There is only one thing for a rather petulant, don't much care-ant then I was floating down, very grace pilot to do when a wing goes about me?"
ful
semi conscious, scarcety aware of the bits of wreckage dropping around and punctur- ing my brolly.
That Job cost ankie,
had on bls upstairs. Bale out, quick. Les Colquhoun didn't.
Quite calmly, he brought the thing down and landed it.
FASTENED ON
+
careful Niera.
experienced, reliable, and very
of course, designers and manufacturers are always improving in technical know- ledge, but I am not all that sure
HE
selves.
By that I mean they can design
don't know how he made it, and E had been thrown cicar. In they can keep up with them- me a broken should be surprised if even he the ambulance we saw that n broken leg. and bad could explain just what he did one foot was almost torn off, concussion. When I came round to bring it off. He had so laterai Roly said very quietly, "If it's and build a plane to go through I was still holding the parachute co
CORITOL of the machine at all. Kot to come off, Mutt, I'd like to the sound barrier-they did it cord tight. They tell me that He rocketed her on to the know.
years ago but even today sull nearly everyone who bale out
ground at about 180 to 200 miles "I don't mind, but please tell no one knows exactly what and loses consciousness clings on
tures, und the doc, not to whip it off with supersonle speeds can do to a an hour, burst his
he wakes up.
There
to that bit of cord like life, until pulled up with feet to spare. out telling me." By a miracle machine or the man who flies |
NIGHTMARES
I insisted he be sent up for a
wo got hold of the only surgeon
George Medal. Authority sald in the country who could fasten
is
another factor. Flying at three or even four no; test pilets did not get G.M.s. It on again for him, and he did. hundred miles an hour.
SOTIC-
I said they did-or one did. Today he is walking about thing goes wrong u plot has a During the war Phil Lucas was without even a limp. He was moment, with luck, to think or THAT was my lucky day. When given one for quietly bringing flying the Avro delta Vulcan at at least give his instinct a a plane disintegrates like his aeroplane homo, after the Farnborough this year, throwing chance, and do something.
that one, the only thing you know about is noise, terrifying, screaming noise bursting your cardrums and waking you up in nightmare for weeks afterwards. And the only thing that can help you is luck-though even luck is doubtful factor these days,
when a pilot may be flying at the speed of sound.
doubt
John Derry knew anything about it at all when his plano disintegrated at Farn- borough last year.
it
Derry was one of those men you remember. It is a templa- tion to try picking out the best test plots of the last 20 years, but impossible. If a test plot toilly is any good, then the le very good indeed, and that la all there is to it. But some make a special kind of mark.
Derry used to work for me at Vickers before he joined de Havilland. He started his career as an air günner, in the RAF., changed over, to piloting fighters,, knd went through the RAF. tost pilots' school. It was a quiet chap, Immensly thorough, He wrote his own footnote to history in 1949-September: Góme
Marahat Stalin is seized with a slight pain in the pinny, Soviet doctors beg to be excused, collapse..
CHIN-MOSCOW
O
Flying now at six, seven, or There are still a number of eight hundred miles an hour, manufacturers who are willing to there is no time left for any puy an experimental test pilot thing but the most wonderful less than a thousand a year," in- luck even if the stress un asure him for no more than four plane at those speeds does not or five thousand, and tell him immediately magnify a minor he can have a pension at 85, It flaw into complete disintegration, sounds a bit off, but there it is. IT SAYS SOMETHING FOR You have, to be a test pilot, THE MEN AND FOR
THE to fall in love with the job.
THAT THERE ARE You can earn nearly as good NEVER ANY VACANCIES. IT money flying for the air corpora- SAYS SOMETHING, BUT 1 tlons or the RAF. And there DON'T KNOW QUITE WHAT.
ave been tested for you. you are much safer. The plones NEXT SATURDAY
After the sound barrier...What?
More, you get a pension at a reasonable age.
River incident ⭑
ROLEX OWNERS can be found an alt
parts of the wohl, and Rote watches are often subjected
some exule place. A letter frost customer once took us, tur instance, to "Sukkus, ̄ ̄ in ̈ ̈Pakistan," where” ahe ̄nille- long Barrage spans the River Indas. This particular customer was standing on the Battage when he had the nusfonunc to drop his watch over the parapet.
I fell twenty-seven feet, and dis appeared with a twinkle into twenty.
thres feet of water.,
The Baggage livers volunteered to search; it took then two hours of rooting about in thick mud before they bought to the surface the little mud-encrustel object that was the missing Oyster.
Was it damaged? No. Stoppet? No. Washed and dried, that Rolex was found to be completely intact and still going.
Ir-demonstrates the incredibly line workmanship of the run who made those pin-heal parts and set them in place. And it demonstrates, ton, the catraordinary "cificiency of the Rolex Oyster case the case that was designed fand developed by Rolex, the first, and will the foremost, waterproof case in the world.
Even if you and your watch lead the quieter of quiet lives, don't think that your watch needs no protection. There are so many enemies dust and dirt, water, perspiration-and they must be guaaled against. But you need have no worry if your watch is of the ume fine family as this old Indian 'campaigner, the Rolex that fell from the Indus Barrage.
}
latter
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