Winkle: The Extraordinary Life of Britain’s Greatest Pilot

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Discover the daring life story and astonishing adventures of Captain Eric 'Winkle' Brown - Britain's greatest-ever pilot The Winkle biography has its gestation in 2009 at what we all thought was Captain Eric Brown’s 90th birthday. We discussed a biography, and I followed it up a little later to get a typical Eric response: ‘of course, dear boy but start work after I have passed on.’ By the way, he was only 89. Before becoming one of Britain’s elite test pilots, Eric had a very full WWII combat career which included being shot up and making a forced landing with multiple injuries and also survived the sinking of his ship, HMS Audacity. Paul Beaver knew Eric Brown for nearly 40 years. In fact, Eric initially inspired Paul’s writing career, offering him expert advice on aircraft carriers and naval aviation for Ark Royal, his first book. The collaboration later included Eric’s foreword for Paul’s best-selling Spitfire People. As a well as being author, Paul has been a war reporter, journalist with Jane’s, a Parliamentary advisor and served for 27 years in the Territorial Army rising to the rank of Colonel in the Army Air Corps (V).

As befits a man who is both a Conservative MP and biographer of the political philosophers Adam Smith and Edmund Burke, Norman understands the interplay of power and influence innately. His debut novel channels the style and approach of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, depicting the bitter struggle for preferment and position between the scholar Francis Bacon and the lawyer Edward Coke in the Elizabethan court. Similarities to the murkiness of contemporary politics are surely coincidental. Act of Oblivion The big revelation is that Brown's origins were far more humble than he ever admitted. And in the class-conscious Royal Navy, that was not a career-enhancing situation. Especially when you are a Naval Aviator, the sort of person who had limited career prospects to begin with in the RN. (I will state categorically that had Brown flown for the USN, he would have made Rear Admiral. The only question is whether he would have retired as Commander, Naval Air Test Center - or as Commander, Naval Air Systems Command.) In the 40 years that I knew our greatest pilot, I always called him Eric, by the way, but of course the world knows him as Winkle, the shortest pilot in the Fleet Air Arm. When Eric was taken ill in 2016, I was the first outside the immediate family he called and so I feel the bond between us was strong.

1. He was at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, leading to a meeting with a German fighter ace

It was partly for his service on board Audacity that Brown was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. 6. He tested experimental Nazi planes He learned that there was a shortage of pilots in the Royal Navy and so, in 1939, Brown joined the Fleet Air Arm and began his illustrious flying career. An incredible life ... Brown took a secret to the grave that makes his story all the more remarkable' THE SUN

That was down to coincidence,” says Beaver. “He happened to fly to Celle, which is the nearest town, the morning that the British troops went in to liberate Belsen. There were rumoured to be some German jets nearby and he wanted to go have a look.” Riveting ... one of those must-read books, compelling and full of incidents that leave you gasping with surprise ... an incredible story' FLYER Sir Winston Churchill first became acquainted with Brown in the early 1940s. “One of the classics was that Churchill came up to Scotland to look at these new Naval fighters, the Martlets, and while flying there he was escorted by three of the squadron aircraft, with Winkle leading,” says Beaver.

The book does a pretty fair job of portraying Brown's personality. Highly competent, more than a little arrogant professionally, more at home abroad than at home. Not all that unusual for test pilots from the Golden Age of Flight Test (~1943-58). During the war, Brown’s fluency in German and expertise on aircraft made him valuable in interviewing many important figures, including captured German pilots – gathering crucial information about their aircraft, tactics and training. As a fellow airman, he knew the right questions to ask, consequently gaining invaluable insights.

In his book, Winkle: The Extraordinary Life of Britain’s Greatest Pilot – our Book of the Month for June 2023 – author Paul Beaver draws on Brown’s own papers and fascinating new research to uncover surprising new information, creating a definitive account of this globally revered, legendary pilot. Here we explore 10 interesting facts about Brown’s extraordinary life and flying career. 1. He was at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, leading to a meeting with a German fighter aceSome might say ‘The World’s Greatest Pilot’ but Paul Beaver, author of a new biography of Eric Brown called simply ‘Winkle’, said his publisher, Penguin Michael Joseph, vetoed that for the book’s cover because it might upset the Americans. Maybe, maybe not. Eric 'Winkle' Brown was Britain's greatest pilot. His extraordinary flying career saw him fight in the Battle of Britain, narrowly escape death on a torpedoed aircraft carrier, achieve a litany of new records and firsts as a test pilot, and fly more kinds of aircraft than any other pilot in history. The carriage filled with young children arriving in Scotland remains a poignant image. “Everyone wanted girls and he was, I think, the only boy on the train. It is very sad when you reflect on it now, but if it hadn’t have happened, I don’t think we would have had the same Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown.” Eric said the only thing that got him was when it came to being rescued. As he climbed up the side of the warship, he banged his legs because of the swell and took the skin off.”

Brown seemed a shoo-in to join the Royal Air Force during the Second World War but there was a hitch – when the 19-year-old aspiring pilot reported to the recruiting office in Edinburgh, he was told sign-ups were at capacity and there was a three-month wait. Of course, Winkle decides that flying the right way up is boring and so he leads inverted past the Prime Minister’s aeroplane, not realising that the Prime Minister’s private secretary has a camera and takes a snap.” With a life as remarkable as his flying, Brown faced imprisonment in Germany at the outbreak of WWII, and after the Allied victory his fluent German saw him interviewing senior Nazi officials and participating in the liberation of Belsen - an experience that haunted him for the rest of his life.

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On the morning of May 8, 1920, an overnight train pulled into Waverley Station in Edinburgh. A carriage had been chartered by the National Children’s Adoption Association and among the “unwanted” babies on board was a boy, only a few months old. The end product is ‘compelling, fascinating and frequently jaw-dropping’ says James Holland and who am I to argue? Another detail that Beaver disproved during his research was Brown’s claim that his father Robert served as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. “I did get his father’s military record and he was in the Royal Flying Corps, but not as a pilot – he was a labourer working on the observation balloons.” That particular incident took place in the skies above the Bay of Biscay in October 1941. Brown, then only 21, was in his Martlet fighter when he found himself face-to-face with a German Condor bomber, “a flying porcupine, with dangerous weapons facing in every direction”. During his flying career, Brown flew 487 different types of aircraft– many of them as a test pilot, when the designs were still mostly experimental and thus potentially very dangerous. (For comparison, today’s test pilots average fewer than 100 flights – any number over 50 is considered substantial).