World record-breaking Navy flying ace dies aged 97
HE FLEW 487 different types of aircraft – more than anyone else in history – and performed a record-breaking 2,407 aircraft carrier landings at sea and 2,721 catapult launches.
Yesterday, Captain Eric “Winkle” Brown, who was said to be Britain’s greatest aviator, died aged 97 at East Surrey Hospital, Redhill, after a short illness. Born in Leith, Edinburgh, in 1919, he became the Royal Navy’s most decorated pilot, flying every major combat aircraft of the Second World War including gliders, fighters, bombers, airliners, amphibians, flying boats and helicopters.
In an interview in 2014, he said: “A lot of people had the attitude of you live for today. I never took that attitude. I believed that self-preservation, up to a point, lay in your own hands.
“You knew you were in the game for risks, and my attitude was, eliminate them as far as you can.”
He specialised in trialling the landing arrangements on new carriers – his aviation firsts included the first carrier landing using an aircraft equipped with a tricycle undercarriage and the first landing of a jet aircraft on a carrier.
Nicknamed “Winkle” for his 5ft 7in stature, he once said: “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.”
He caught the bug for flying at the age of eight when his father, a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War, took him up in a biplane. He learnt to fly while studying at the University of Edinburgh.
He witnessed the 1936 Olympic Games during his trips to Berlin as a student and became a fluent German speaker, before being arrested by the SS and deported. Returning to Britain, he volunteered for the Fleet Air Arm.
During the Second World War, Capt Brown flew fighter aircraft and witnessed the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
He retired from the Royal Navy in 1970 and became director-general of the British Helicopter Advisory Board and, in 1982, president of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
Capt Brown wrote numerous books of his own and forewords for other authors on aviation, before and after his retirement. In March 2015, a bronze bust of Capt Brown was unveiled at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Somerset.
At his 97th birthday celebration in London on Jan 27 he was joined by more than 100 pilots, including the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir George Zambellas.
In 2014, the veteran was picked as the subject for the 3,000th edition of
Kirsty Young, the presenter, said: “When you read through his life story, it makes James Bond seem like a bit of a slacker.”