Just as some Major League ballplayers don’t know much about George Herman “Babe” Ruth, some career naval aviators have never heard of Captain Eric M. Brown, Royal Navy. But the difference is one of scale—the Babe’s 714 career home runs finally were eclipsed by Hank Aaron in 1974. Nobody will ever log more carrier landings than “Winkle” Brown. When he died on 21 February at age 97, Brown left a legacy that exceeded his numbers. Apart from 2,400 “traps” on an enormous number and variety of carriers, he is frequently cited as flying more distinct aircraft types—not models—than any aviator.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1919, Brown grew up around aircraft. His father had been a balloon observer and pilot in World War I and became active in reunion organizations. Owing to Brown Senior’s connections, young Eric knew many of Europe’s prominent aviators and, ironically in view of future events, one of his favorites was Great War German ace Ernst Udet, whom he met during the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Inspired to learn German and to fly, Brown did both. He received his civilian pilot rating through the University of Edinburgh Air Squadron and was teaching in Germany when two SS men knocked on his door one Sunday in 1939 and politely informed him, “Our countries are at war.” Three days later the Nazis allowed him to depart, and Brown firewalled his MG roadster into Switzerland, “afraid the war would be over before I could get into uniform.”
Good News and Bad News
Back in Britain, the eager Scot was appalled to learn that the Royal Air Force (RAF) was backlogged and had no urgent need for his 120 hours of flight time. Then he recalled an “old boy” from his school who had become a Royal Navy pilot “flying from aircraft carriers at sea, and how exciting he made it sound.” Applying to the Fleet Air Arm, Brown was immediately accepted. That was the good news. The bad news: Naval flight training would take almost a year. Brown shook his head and chuckled at his naïve optimism: “I didn’t believe it. They badly wanted pilots, didn’t they?”
The Royal Navy training curriculum seemed tailor-made for Brown. His first instructor rated him “exceptional”—an accolade rarely given. Upon sewing his wings on his sleeve, Sub-Lieutenant Brown was designated a fighter pilot in August 1940. In the service, the slightly built, five-foot-seven Scot would acquire the nickname “Winkle” for the periwinkle, a small sea creature. The moniker remained with him for the rest of his life.
Brown cut his teeth on biplane Gloster Gladiators before reporting to No. 801 Squadron in the Orkneys north of Scotland. The Royal Navy had already lost the carriers HMS Glorious and Courageous, so no spare flight decks were available. Therefore, Brown’s first combat mission was a long, overwater attack on German forces in Norway, after which he went to No. 802 Squadron—the first to receive Grumman Wildcats, known to the British as Martlets (northern swallows).
Eric Brown described the Martlet as “the love of my life.” It was an aviator’s indulgence tolerated by his vivacious Irish wife, Lynn. However, the rugged little Grumman brought Brown back from an arduous combat tour, so the sentiment was justified. No. 802 became the world’s first escort-carrier combat squadron, flying from the 420-foot deck of the first “Woolworth carrier,” HMS Empire Audacity, on convoy escort in the North Atlantic.
Chasing U-Boats and Condors
From August to December 1941, the Audacity (converted from a German merchant ship) made three convoy runs to Gibraltar while protecting merchant shipping from long-range German bombers. The huge Focke-Wulf 200 Condor was the main adversary, not only sinking Allied ships but tracking convoys for U-boats. No. 802 quickly proved its merit, splashing at least five of the four-engine giants. Two fell to Sub-Lieutenant Brown, who emerged as the champion Condor killer of the war. Much later he said, “You get that exhilarating feeling that you’ve nailed him.”
But there were losses. Lieutenant Commander John Wintour, the popular squadron skipper, was killed while attacking a Condor, and another pilot was lost strafing a U-boat. And there was always the bitter North Atlantic weather. High seas and reduced visibility plagued the Martlet pilots, who on occasion managed to land aboard despite 50-foot flight-deck excursions.
Then, on 21 December, the submarines took their revenge. U-751 torpedoed the Audacity that night, and the carrier sank fast. Brown was faced with a dilemma: Should he grab his logbook or the silk pajamas he had bought for his fiancée? Any aviator knows the answer—he grabbed both. However, he was unable to hang onto everything after hours in the freezing water. The future Mrs. Brown got another pair of PJs.
Bagging Traps
Following another squadron tour, Brown was posted to the Service Trials Unit, where he began bagging traps at a furious rate. Primarily concerned with American-built escort carriers, he qualified a variety of tailhook aircraft on each arresting wire of each ship in succession. It was no easy task when the small flattops had six or eight wires each. In one instance he logged 112 traps on the same ship—largely without a landing signal officer (LSO), as Royal Navy “batsmen” were unavailable or unfamiliar with the Sea Hurricanes, Seafires, Swordfish, and other aircraft he tested. Consequently, he qualified as a “batter” himself. He made about 1,500 landings on 22 carriers, and along the way he also made an enormous number of catapult launches.
Originally he had three pilots to share the work, but he dispensed with them because their landings on specific wires took too long. He recalled, “When on my own my trap rate on a selected wire averaged about 80 percent without a LSO, which I dispensed with largely because he was replaced too frequently or none was readily available in wartime.”
The world champion tailhooker explained his method in 2011, the centennial of U.S. naval aviation: “I employed a standard deck landing technique of never letting my approved speed creep above [stalling speed], then aiming for the wire beyond the one that was my target, and cutting the throttle as it disappeared from my forward view.”
By the end of 1943, Brown was thoroughly bored with the routine and welcomed a move to Boscombe Down, a leading flight-test base. Upon reporting, he was asked what he’d been flying and replied, “Single-engine fighters, sir.” Unimpressed, the CO said that Brown would be flying four-engine aircraft within a month. Odd work indeed for a fighter pilot whose sole experience with multiengine types was shooting down Condors.
Subsequent assignments offered an enormous smorgasbord of good deals. Absent an instructor, Brown taught himself to fly a Sikorsky helicopter by reading the manual and asking a sergeant how to start the engine. Despite being a navy pilot, Brown cadged a few missions escorting U.S. bombers and intercepted V-1 buzz bombs, though one of the early-model cruise missiles destroyed his house. Flying Hawker Tempests on anti-buzz-bomb patrol, one “doodlebug” blew up in his face. “I saw my engine was on fire outside but I didn’t know it was on fire inside until my feet cooked.” Standing in the cockpit, he barely got out by kicking the stick with one foot, which pitched him out.
Subsequently Brown checked out in the Gloster Meteor, Britain’s first operational jet. And as chief naval test pilot, he carrier-qualified de Havilland’s racy Mosquito fighter-bomber—a challenging project intended to put 27 “hooked” Sea Mosquitoes on board a CVE for a Doolittle-type raid on Japanese warships at anchor.
Postwar Testing
Winkle Brown added more exotic types to his logbook, notably commanding the RAF’s Operation Enemy Flight, that searched northern Europe for flyable Luftwaffe aircraft after VE Day in May 1945. His German fluency paid dividends as his crew retrieved everything from jets to flying boats. He flew 55 types of German aircraft, including the Messerschmitt 262 and Arado 234 jets, and probably became the only non-German to make a powered flight in the sensational Me 163 rocket fighter. With a corrosive binary fuel, the Komet was dangerous in any venue. Brown said: “It was a weapon highly lethal both to friend and foe. The Germans had short-circuited proper development and paid the price for their boldness.”
Brown recalled that most of the Germans he talked with were apprehensive at first, but as they realized the conversation was pilot to pilot, they opened up. Among those Brown met was aeronautical engineer Kurt Tank of Focke-Wulf fame. In 2012 Winkle told an interviewer, “It started out with me interrogating him but it ended up with him interrogating me as to what I thought of each of his aircraft!”
When he returned to naval testing, Brown seized an opportunity to take carrier aviation into the future. The U.S. Navy had operated the Ryan FR-1 Fireball—powered by a Wright radial engine and an anemic GE jet—on board ship. But the Scot was “terribly keen to beat the Americans in operating pure jets from carriers” and achieved his goal. On 3 December 1945, he landed a modified de Havilland Vampire aboard the light carrier HMS Ocean.
In 1947 Brown became the first naval aviator to command the Aerodynamics Flight at the Royal Aeronautical Establishment (RAE) Farnborough—Britain’s top flight-test position. In that capacity he proved the “flex deck” concept, landing a Vampire wheels-up on HMS Warrior’s cushioned rubber flight deck, snagging the single wire with an in-flight engagement. The flex deck remained a proof-of-concept evolution but demonstrated Britain’s continuing innovation.
The most advanced RAE projects concerned high-speed flight. Those were exciting days, with Brown conducting tests in photographing transonic shock waves and tickling the speed of sound in the de Havilland DH 108. But the work was extraordinarily dangerous: 25 percent of the unit’s pilots were lost. Test pilot Geoffrey de Havilland Jr., son of the famous British aircraft engineer, was killed in one, and a colleague, John Derry, nearly died in another—possibly breaking Mach 1 in uncontrolled flight. Brown pushed the little jet to Mach 0.985 at 45,000 feet. However, in denser air he lost control at Mach 0.88 and, fighting high oscillation and “murderous Gs,” he was resigned to awaiting his fate. Finally he saved the airplane when he regained control at lower altitude.
More Testing Perils
Brown’s last flight at Farnborough came even closer to disaster, though in a far less dramatic aircraft. The Saunders-Roe SR/A1 was a rare bird—a twin-jet flying-boat fighter. Upon landing, Brown clipped some debris in the water, capsizing the plane and leaving him inverted in the cockpit. He nearly drowned, barely reaching the surface in time for a launch to arrive. Lapsing in and out of consciousness, he finally came around in the hospital, “spouting water like a whale with someone giving me artificial respiration.”
Along the way, the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine was conducting some bizarre experiments. During physiological tests of high-G catapult shots, Brown volunteered his Norwegian elkhound, Chuck, who actually seemed to enjoy the experience. Thus encouraged, the Browns’ golden retriever, Winston, was subjected to maximum-G turns and emerged none the worse.
Brown’s six years at Farnborough went well beyond the usual tour. His return to the fleet heralded a happy reunion of sorts, when he assumed command of No. 802 Squadron, his wartime HMS Audacity assignment. Lieutenant Commander Brown made his 2,000th carrier landing during a 1950 Mediterranean cruise, flying Hawker Sea Furies from HMS Vengeance. Only Lieutenant Commander Bill Daily would match that record, but he later died in a traffic accident.
Stateside
Despite a return to operational status, test flying continued to beckon. Selected for a U.S. exchange tour in 1951–52, Brown moved to Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, the naval air test center, where he became a project officer on jet fighters. He and Lynn quickly became friends with Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Marion Carl and his wife, Edna.
Americans often fail to recall that the British pioneered every important aspect of carrier aviation, including angled decks, mirror landing systems, and steam catapults. For example, HMS Perseus arrived at Philadelphia in February 1952 to demonstrate the steam cat—at anchor. Brown climbed into his Grumman F9F Panther and took a 4.3-G shot at 126 knots, winding his way through the Navy yard’s cranes and chimneys. The locals were suitably impressed.
A more dramatic event occurred that April, when Brown paced Marion Carl’s Grumman AF-2 Guardian in spin tests over the Chesapeake Bay. The spin went flat and, at 3,000 feet, Brown called for his friend to jump. Aghast, he watched the antisubmarine plane impact the water—then saw Carl surface in the splash. The Marine’s parachute didn’t even swing once before it went in beside the aircraft. The timing could not have been closer.
After “Pax River,” Brown drew another fleet tour, commanding No. 804 Squadron with Hawker Seahawks. Then, in an ironic twist, Commander Brown helped establish the West German naval air arm in 1958–60. Next came a tour in the Naval Air Division of the Admiralty before returning to Germany as a naval attaché in Bonn. In October 1967, as a captain, he assumed command of HMS Fulmar, the Royal Naval Air Station at Lossiemouth, Scotland. Captain Brown’s penultimate assignment was as naval aide to Queen Elizabeth in 1969–70.
Retirement
After “retiring,” Brown kept busy with helicopter interests and by writing a series of well-received books. His memoir, Wings On My Sleeve, had been published in 1961 and remains in print. It was an unusual situation, as few Britons published books while serving on active duty. Always the linguist, he translated a 600-page German document on tail-less flight.
In retirement, Brown wrote an extensive series of articles for the British magazine Air International, providing detailed descriptions of the enormous variety of “aeroplanes” he had flown. Dozens of those pieces were published as anthologies in Wings of the Navy, Wings of the Luftwaffe, Wings of the Weird and Wonderful, and Duels in the Sky.
Winkle Brown’s esoteric knowledge of Luftwaffe aircraft led to some odd requests. He recalled a query from an author asking for detailed information on the Heinkel 177 bomber, which Brown gladly provided—only to learn that the four-engine Griffin served as background for a fictional pilot’s sexual escapades.
Brown served as president of the Royal Aeronautical Society in the 1980s, and in 1993 he was made a Master Pilot of Russia. In the United States he became an honorary Golden Eagle, a member of the Early and Pioneer Naval Aviators Association. He became close to astronaut Neil Armstrong—a fellow tailhooker—whose family originated near Brown’s native Edinburgh.
Asked the usual question about fear in the cockpit, Brown told an interviewer, “I don’t frighten easily, but I’ve certainly been pretty apprehensive sometimes about what might happen!” He added: “You’re in a game that you know is a risky business and . . . you try to minimize that risk. But if you’re not prepared to take it you’re in the wrong game. Enjoy your aviation but don’t take it too lightly . . . even the nicest airplane can bite if it’s not handled properly.”
Brown, the vastly experienced test pilot, believed that computerization has taken some of the fun out of flying. “We find ourselves in the hands of gadgets,” he lamented. He saw an even greater market for remotely piloted drones, mostly operated by youngsters who grew up playing video games. But he had a word of caution: “Let them fly a Tiger Moth”—a reference to the de Havilland biplane in which he trained.
Winkle Brown’s numbers defy easy comparison. He logged 18,000 hours in 487 aircraft types—not models—which is possibly a record. For instance, he flew 14 different marks of Spitfires and Seafires. He made 2,407 carrier arrested landings and more than 2,700 catapult launches—achievements recognized by the Tailhook Association in 1975.
Today, approximately 340 American pilots and 125 naval flight officers have qualified for membership in the Tailhook Association’s “Grand Club,” with 1,000 traps. The U.S. record for landings by a carrier pilot is 1,645, by retired Commander John Leenhouts, primarily an A-7 Corsair II pilot. Thus, Brown’s record is safe, especially today, when newly minted carrier aviators are unlikely to earn their 3,000-hour patch in any aircraft type.
Test flying “was something I had to do, otherwise my soul would never be at peace,” Brown once said. Indeed, during his six years at Farnborough he hardly took a day off, relishing his work and sharing his life with like-minded men who found their purpose in the airy ocean of the sky.
Sources:
Author correspondence with CAPT Eric Brown, 2011.
BAE interview with CAPT Brown, September 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQzVZde_Ms4.
Eric M. Brown, Wings On My Sleeve: The World’s Greatest Test Pilot Tells His Story (Shrewsbury, U.K.: Airlife Publications, 1978).
Tailhook Association “Grand Club” members, www.tailhook.net/GrandClub.html.