Wings on My Sleeve: The World's Greatest Test Pilot tells his story

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Okay, we're getting Brown's own appraisal of his work, but I've no reason to suspect that he may be overstating anything, and in actual fact comes across like quite a humble man for the most part. Eric Brown had a lucky life in many ways, flying more different types of aircraft than anyone before or since (he holds the Guinness world record) and living to tell the tale. Because of the scarcity of the special high-temperature alloys for use in their construction, the Junkers Jumo 004 engines had a life of only 25 hours – it was thus not known whether the engines were brand new or just about to expire. His flight test of this rocket plane, the only one by an Allied pilot using the rocket motor, was accomplished unofficially: it was deemed to be more or less suicidal due to the notoriously dangerous hypergolic C-Stoff fuel and T-Stoff oxidizer combination.

Wings on My Sleeve - Google Books

In 1939 Eric Brown was on a University of Edinburgh exchange course in Germany, and the first he knew of the war was when the Gestapo came to arrest him.This is the autobiographic career of Eric Brown, one of the most experienced test pilots in the world. In April 1945, Brown, who was fluent in German, had interrogated Josef Kramer, the concentration camp commandant.

Wings on My Sleeve by Brown Eric: Books - AbeBooks Wings on My Sleeve by Brown Eric: Books - AbeBooks

He believed that he survived the test flight partly because he was a shorter man, de Havilland having suffered a broken neck possibly due to the violent oscillation. Brown initially started his tests from a height of 35,000ft, rising to 45,000ft and during a dive from the latter he achieved a Mach number of 0.

I brought the airplane around; I guess it was a little hairy for the boys in the back because I was back over the initial contact in about forty seconds and in a Tracker, you had to crank it around a bit for that. Later, because of his earlier pre-war experiences in Germany, he becomes involved in the testing and evaluation of surrendered German aircraft including the jets and rocket powered examples that he is particularly interested in. David Tate reminisces about receiving his wings as a naval aviator, landing aboard aircraft carriers, flying naval jets, and participating in anti-submarine missions with the Royal Canadian Navy. The rocket-powered 163 was sensational, but, he wrote, “there was so much to get wrong and virtually no escape route”.