The Desert Island hero
Still going strong at 95, air ace Eric becomes radio’s 3,000th Castaway... and recalls how he saw off the Nazis (and shared a joke with Goering)
‘Sent off into the big blue yonder’
HE was the Scots wartime air ace who became the world’s greatest test pilot.
Captain Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown shot down enemy aircraft, survived torpedoes and exchanged jokes – in fluent German – with Luftwaffe supremo Hermann Goering.
But the greatest claim to fame of the Fleet Air Arm’s most decorated officer was flying into the unknown, testing more aircraft than any other pilot – and making a record 2,407 landings on aircraft carriers.
Still going strong at 95, he undertook a less dangerous mission yesterday as Kirsty Young’s guest on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. It was a double celebration – of the 3,000th edition of the show and of an aviation pioneer still revered by pilots today.
The ‘castaway’ chose an eclectic mix of big band, military, opera, classic smooth and pop.
Born in Leith, Edinburgh, in 1919, he was captivated when he flew in a Gloster Gauntlet aged eight, sitting on the knee of his father, a former Royal Flying Corps officer.
‘Flying was in my blood,’ said the man who would, 30 years after his maiden flight, pilot Britain’s first supersonic aircraft.
During the Second World War, Captain Eric Melrose Brown joined the Fleet Air Arm and was posted to 802 Squadron aboard HMS Audacity. He had recorded his first ‘kill’ when, in December 1941, a German U-Boat torpedoed the carrier in the North Atlantic. He was one of only two survivors, saved by a lifejacket that kept him and a comrade upright in the freezing ocean.
Captain Brown still remembers how 22 other men in the water with them died, one after another, as they succumbed to hypothermia. ‘It was terrible,’ he recalled. ‘We were just cutting people off.’
But historian James Holland is convinced it was more than a lifejacket that kept him alive.
He said: ‘He was blessed with clear thinking, an analytical mind and rarely got scared.
‘He would see immediately how the situation was going to play out.’
Captain Brown was seconded to the Royal Aircraft Establishment to test new aircraft at sea. Few people today appreciate how much he risked his life every time he climbed into a cockpit.
Rear Admiral Simon Charlier, former Commander of the Fleet Air Arm, said: ‘The aircraft Eric was testing were not just difficult and novel, they were untested. We can’t imagine in this day and age how dangerous his job was.’
Captain Brown recalled: ‘ You are sent off into the big blue yonder, not sure where your carrier is – maybe 100 miles away in the ocean. It was Russian roulette. When landing on a carrier, you are essentially aiming for a small layby in the middle of a large lake.’
Some planes never found their way back because the carrier could not reveal its position.
Captain Brown built such a global reputation that the US Navy gave one of its pilots the task of breaking his record. ‘To his ever- lasting credit, he got up to 1,600,’ he said. ‘Then had a nervous breakdown.’
According to Mr Holland: ‘Other pilots had a devil-may-care attitude, out chasing girls and boozing. Eric would not do that.
‘He survived thanks to preparation and incredible presence of mind. He is easily one of the top five aviators of all time and certainly the best British one.’
For Captain Brown, fear was not an issue. ‘I react almost the opposite,’ he said. ‘If things are really difficult, I go ice cold and my brain seems to go up a gear.’
Fluent i n German, he was brought in at the end of the war to interrogate captured German air chiefs, including Goering.
Captain Brown said: ‘He was charismatic, very straightforward, answered all the questions. I asked him, “How did you see the outcome of the Battle of Britain?”. He said, “A draw”.’
After the war, Captain Brown continued to test aircraft. When he gave up flying in 1994, he described it as ‘drug withdrawal’.
He said: ‘It’s an exhilarating world to live in. There’s always that aura of risk – you come to value life in a slightly different way.’