Posted on 07/22/2016 3:49:28 AM PDT by Winniesboy
Eric 'Winkle' Brown helped liberate Belsen, interrogated Goering - and test-piloted more planes than anyone on earth... This was not so much a flying display as a roll call of aviation history: Vampire, Sea Vixen, Martlet, Mustang, Tiger Moth, MiG, Hurricane, Lancaster... swooped in tribute to one of the greatest aviators the world has known. No one will ever surpass the records set by Brown, who flew more types of aircraft than anyone: 487.
During a long career in which he was torpedoed, helped liberate Belsen, interrogated Goering, survived 11 crashes, landed the first jet on an aircraft carrier and set the world record for carrier landings, Capt Brown won admirers all over the world...
Following his death at the age of 97, his friends had spent months rounding up as many different aircraft as they could for yesterday's memorial service-cum-display. Around 50 of them were on show .. just a tenth of what he flew between 1939 and 1970. If it had wings, Eric would be asked to fly it.
Hence the appearance of the RAF's last surviving Lancaster. Capt Brown was one of only two pilots who managed to roll a Lancaster — 'a four-engine Spitfire' — while testing G-forces for RAF boffins. Having been in charge of capturing enemy planes towards the end of the war, he ended up flying more Luftwaffe aircraft than almost any German pilot, even surviving a flight in a lethal rocket plane.
From the old Soviet stable came a Yak-3 and a MiG-15. After the war, Britain sent him on a diplomatic mission to fly with the U.S. Navy....
The U.S. would try very hard, in vain, to surpass his world record of more than 2,000 aircraft carrier take-offs and landings. To this day, no one has ever come close.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Wow! He flew a Komet? I bet just planning for that one flight could fill a book!
Lord, I feel so unnecessary.
He was a remarkable man in a noteworthy time. Thanks for posting.
TC
“Lord, I feel so unnecessary.”
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Yes, humbling, isn’t it? Well said ArtDodger.
And rest in peace Mr. Brown.
There was a documentary about him on Netflix I think.
There’s that word again. “Boffins.”
The dude rolled a Lancaster? Wow.
“Boffin” roughly equivalates to “nerd,” in the Queen’s English.
I thought it might mean “student” or bright person.
In this case, it means “engineer.”
My son would qualify.
“Boffin” roughly equivalates to “nerd,” in the Queen’s English.
I think they’re what my Navy pals called “twidgets”. Tech nerds.
Boffin is more accurately "a very smart technical expert", a scientist or engineer, without the "socially awkward" connotation of "nerd".
Salute!
But! If the Mail wished to use the term “technical expert,” or some such permutation, it would’ve done so. Thus follows the “nerd” implication.
Ping
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