The British hero who could have been the first man on the moon
... if he hadn’t been too patriotic to give up his passport
Eric Brown did not just witness history at first hand. He made it himself — at sea, in the sky and in one of the ghastliest places on Earth. This charming, fearless and extremely clever Scotsman will be chiefly remembered as one of the greatest aviators of all time, a man so revered in flying circles that he was even a hero to the first man on the moon, neil Armstrong.
For no one has ever — nor will ever — fly as many different aircraft as captain Eric ‘winkle’ Brown cBE DSc AFc of the royal navy’s Fleet Air Arm, who died on Sunday.
At the end of world war ii — during which he survived the Gestapo, the sinking of his aircraft carrier and several plane crashes – Eric helped liberate Belsen and bring some of the greatest ogres of modern history to justice. Thereafter, as a supremely gifted test pilot, he did much to give the west a crucial lead over the Soviet Union at the height of the cold war.
He was the first man to land a jet on an aircraft carrier (his feats are still studied to this day). But his expertise has benefited anyone getting on a plane today. As recently as ten years ago, he was still being consulted by Airbus on designs for its A380.
And now a new book reveals Eric might have been the first man on the moon had he agreed to accept U.S. citizenship. A fiercely patriotic former ADc to the Queen, he refused to surrender his British passport with the result that the UK has had to wait more than 45 years to hear the extra-terrestrial musings of Major Tim Peake instead.
Eric was extremely good company, as those lucky enough to have met him, myself included, will testify. There aren’t very many people whose passing at the age of 97 might be described as a ‘shock’. But such was the cheerful indefatigability of this wholly selfsufficient legend — who was driving himself around in a new convertible just last summer — that it was easy to imagine he would simply keep on going for ever.
That is why the world of aviation is in mourning. Less than a month ago many of Britain’s top pilots gathered to toast his 97th birthday. only last year, he was a guest at Downing Street and in the greeting line during the Queen’s state visit to Germany.
His family and friends are already planning a fabulous memorial service at the Fleet Air Arm’s Yeovilton home, though it also raises an intriguing question: how the hell are they going to organise a flypast for Eric?
it will be nigh on impossible to do justice to the career of a man whose three Guinness world records include flying 487 different types of aircraft, including several death traps and a captured nazi rocket plane.
He owed his love of planes to his father, a royal Flying corps pilot during world war i. Such was the rapport between Great war fliers that his father was invited to the 1936 Berlin olympics and took Eric with him. He met the gregarious Ernst Udet, a formidable fighter ace second only to Baron von richtofen. Eric was taken up for a stomach- churning spin in Udet’s stunt plane — and was hooked.
BAcK at Edinburgh royal High School, he excelled at languages and went on to study German at Edinburgh University. He also joined the university air squadron. in the summer of 1939, unaware of looming hostilities, Eric was on a teaching exchange in Germany, as he told me during our first meeting at his Sussex home ten years ago.
‘one morning, there was a knock and there was this SS officer who announced: “our countries are at war.” i was under arrest.’
He was held prisoner by the Gestapo for three days before being driven to the Swiss border in a student exchange. He dashed home to sign up as a pilot. The rAF was over- subscribed, but the navy needed pilots for its Fleet Air Arm.
with the Battle of Britain raging, Eric ended up in Scotland mastering a new American plane. He was part of a display laid on to impress winston churchill. Unfortunately, engine failure led to a forced landing in the sea in front of the Prime Minister. ‘ He did send me his condolences later,’ Eric added.
Known as ‘winkle’ due to his 5ft 7in build, Eric soon proved his worth at sea serving in HMS Audacity and received the Distinguished Service cross (the naval equivalent of the Mc) for gallantry. But in December 1941, Audacity was hit by a torpedo.
of 26 who survived the attack, Eric was one of just two fished out of the freezing sea alive.
During his convalescence, he married his sweetheart, Lynn, and made the first of what would be many trips to Buckingham Palace to receive his DSc. But his talent for landing planes in the trickiest circumstances had marked him out for special duties — as a test pilot.
when someone was needed to try a new catapult launch system for aircraft carriers or to see if it was possible to land a Mosquito at sea (it was), he was summoned — when he wasn’t commanding a canadian Spitfire squadron over occupied France.
As Britain came under attack from V1 flying bombs in 1944, he was part of the top secret unit charged with intercepting them. For the first and only time in his life, he had to bale out when the engine of his plane caught fire.
what happened next was pure Dad’s Army as he landed in a duck pond and was cornered by an angry bull. ‘The Home Guard wouldn’t go near it,’ he would chuckle. in the end, he was rescued by the farmer.
As the Allies fought through Europe, he was assigned to a special unit capturing and testing enemy aircraft. As a result, he had to try out everything from the nearsuicidal Messerschmitt 163, a rocket plane running on liquid explosive, to Himmler’s personal Focke-wulf condor with its luxury kitchen and armour-plated loo.
in 1945, he had just landed at an abandoned German airfield when he met an Allied unit heading to explore reports of atrocities at a nearby concentration camp called Bergen Belsen. with his fluent German, Eric was invited along to help with interpretation.
what he saw would mark him for life. ‘it was utterly, utterly horrific,’ he reflected on the same spot 70 years later. ‘Ten thousand bodies littered around and the survivors had been dehumanised. They were like animals.’
HE wAS one of a small group of survivors and liberators invited to meet the Queen there during last June’s state visit. what he would also remember to his dying day was the female camp commandant, irma Grese — ‘The worst human being i ever encountered.’
He would go on to interrogate other senior nazis, including Hermann Goering and Germany’s top plane designers, willy Messerschmitt and Ernst Heinkel, before returning to duty in the sky where he was charged with everything from researching why planes disappeared in storms to testing new gizmos called helicopters.
At one point, the U.S. navy charged one of its pilots with beating Eric’s record of 2,407 landings on aircraft carriers. The poor chap got as far as 1,600 before a nervous breakdown intervened.
The Americans were huge fans of Eric. A new book on the Space Shuttle, into The Black, by rowland white, reveals that, during the Sixties, Eric was invited to be part of the same X15 space rocket programme as neil Armstrong and his colleagues. But the precondition was taking U.S. citizenship. Years later, however, he would become good friends with Armstrong who hailed Eric as a ‘role model’. Praise indeed.
Did he have any regrets? According to his friend, TV producer nicholas Jones, who made the film, Eric Brown, A Pilot’s Story, Eric wished that he — and Britain — had been the first to break the sound barrier, instead of America’s chuck Yeager.
But it was impossible to meet this eternally cheerful, modest man and not come away humbled by the scale of his achievements, even if we now take them for granted. ‘Anybody who flies in a plane today — as a passenger or pilot — owes a great debt to the bravery and tenacity of Eric Brown,’ said his friend, defence expert Paul Beaver, last night.
Lynn died in 1998. But he is survived not only by his son, Glenn, his grandchildren, great grandchildren and his companion, Jean — but by a legacy which is beyond compare.