Trials and Errors Read online

  A DEDICATION

  To the memory of

  Group Captain John W. Thorpe AFC, FRAeS, RAF

  John Thorpe and I pose before my final jet flight as a pilot in an ETPS Alpha Jet in March 2004. This was also our last flight together. John is the tall one! (OGL (QinetiQ))

  This book is dedicated to my good friend and fellow test pilot John Thorpe, aka JT. Although we both joined the RAF, as trainee pilots, straight from grammar schools and learnt to fly at the same Flying Training School, John was a couple of years behind me on that particular journey. It was the only time that he was behind me in anything – from then on he would always be out front. However, I did not meet John until June 1973 when we travelled together from our neighbouring RAF stations in the English Midlands to Boscombe Down in Wiltshire. There we would undergo two days of rigorous examination to see whether we were fit to be selected as student test pilots with the Empire Test Pilots’ School (ETPS). He was at that time flying the Harrier and had been on the very first Harrier squadron. We made that journey more in hope than in expectation.

  Indeed, after the two days of challenging academic tests, demanding interviews and nervous waiting we departed together with even less hope and no expectation. As we drove up the hill away from Boscombe, John put our thoughts into words:

  ‘Well, I don’t know about you but I don’t expect to be seeing that place again.’

  It was therefore with an element of shock and much surprise that we were both selected to attend the course; in the event, circumstances prevented me from joining the 1974 course, on which John was awarded the prize for Best Pilot; an indication of his outstanding mastery of the art of aviation. I attended the course the following year and John was by then a test pilot on A Squadron testing fighters and trainers. John was one of the two RAF test pilots who carried out the official Preview Assessment of the BAe Hawk trainer.

  I next came across him when I joined the ETPS staff in early 1981. John helped me enormously to adjust to this new job and made sure that I was fully comfortable with everything before students were allocated to me. Throughout our time together on ETPS I never experienced anything but kind concern, calm control, good humour and exemplary and consistent professional standards from John.

  Our paths crossed again, once more at Boscombe Down, in the late 1980s when he was now the CO of A Squadron and those extraordinary personal qualities came to the fore. He was an excellent leader and always set the highest standard for all in his unit, while maintaining an approachable and friendly demeanour.

  John continued to serve at Boscombe Down, as Chief Test Pilot, Director of Flying and, latterly, as a civilian test flying tutor on ETPS. He ended up serving at Boscombe Down for a total of nearly twenty years; which made his remark to me in the summer of 1973 all the more ironic!

  John Thorpe died, after fighting cancer, in December 2013 in Calgary, Canada, where he had made his home with his wife Jenny. He was, as they used to say in the Harrier force, a bona mate, one of the best I have known. I shall miss him.

  I would also like to remember two of my friends and colleagues who lost their lives during flight test activities. The first is Flt Lt Sean Sparks, RAF, with whom I worked at Farnborough and at ETPS. Sean died when the Jaguar in which he was flying crashed into the sea off North Devon after suffering a catastrophic birdstrike. The second is Lt Cdr Keith Crawford, USN, who was a fellow tutor of mine at ETPS. Keith died while testing a McDonnell F-18 Hornet from the US Naval Flight Test Facility at Patuxent River, Maryland. Both these men were good, reliable and true friends who loved their flying.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Once more I have been unstintingly supported throughout this project by my wife, Linda. She has put up with me spending many hours with my nose in my flying logbooks, typing one-fingered, and then she proof-read every page. She has corrected and advised even more thoroughly than she did during the production of my two previous books. I cannot thank her enough. However, if you do spot any errors please don’t blame her; the ‘book’ stops here – with me!

  I also want to thank the staff of The History Press for keeping me on their ‘books’ and doing such a good job of producing this volume. Thanks also go to several people who have helped, provided pictures and advice and helped me to produce something that would not have been as good without their input: John Bradley, Norman Roberson, Allan Wood, Norman Parker, Jenny Thorpe, Natasha King and the folks of the Photographic Division at QinetiQ Boscombe Down. Last, but by no means least, I want to thank Matt Savage of Mach One Manuals (www.mach-one-manuals.net) for providing the cockpit illustrations.

  CONTENTS

  Title

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction: What is a Test Pilot?

  Prologue

  Part 1: Learning to Test

  1 Getting Ahead of the Game

  2 And So to School

  3 A Plethora of Planes

  4 So Much to Learn

  5 Out of Control

  6 The Lighter Side

  7 Travelling Light

  8 Rocking and Rolling

  9 Beavering About

  10 A-Buccaneering We Will Go, Me Lads!

  11 Graduation at Last

  Part 2: Testing to Learn

  12 Farnborough

  13 Settling In and Dropping Fish

  14 Dropping Bombs

  15 Not Only Owls Fly Low at Night

  16 Varsities

  17 White Hot Technology

  18 Playing With the Navy

  19 And the Army

  20 Other Hotspots

  21 Over the Pond

  22 Becoming a ‘Truckie’

  23 A Miscellany of Work and Play

  Part 3: Researching Radar

  24 Into the Black

  25 A Unique Flying Machine

  26 Whirlybirds Are Go!

  27 Variety is the Spice of Life

  28 Fiasco

  29 Moving on Again

  Part 4: Back To School

  30 Back on the Learning Curve

  31 Tutoring and Other Flying Stories

  32 American Visits – USAFTPS

  33 American Visits – USNTPS

  34 European Tours

  35 Operation Corporate

  36 Anniversary

  37 Choosing a New Path

  Appendix A: A Brief Lesson in Aerodynamics

  Apendix B: Cockpit Illustrations

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS A

  TEST PILOT?

  To design a flying machine is nothing. To build it is not much.

  But to test it is everything.

  (Otto Lilienthal, Pioneer aviator, 1848–96)

  From the very early days of flying someone has had to make the first flight of a new flying machine. Usually, in that now far off era of ‘stick, string and cloth’ flying machines, it was the designer. Crashes were common but not always fatal, so giving those pioneers the chance to change things and try again. Eventually, as men became more expert at aviating, pilots would team up with designers to do the dangerous bit on their behalf, usually for some sort of remuneration. And so the role and profession of the test pilot developed.

  As the aviation industry matured and aircraft companies proliferated, bold aviators, often men with a military background, were recruited to fill the posts of company test pilots. Many became famous in their, sometimes short, lifetimes. There were also skilled pilots in the armed forces who were selected to fly experimental aircraft and carry out research and development flights at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) and the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment (A&AEE), but the role of the test pilot was not formalised or standardised across the industry or within the services. However, events durin
g the Second World War brought an end to the DIY approach to test flying.

  On the day that the war was officially announced by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, 3 September 1939, the A&AEE upped sticks from its vulnerable east coast location of Martlesham Heath, near Ipswich, and moved west to the safer, more distant environs of Boscombe Down, on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. In 1942 the man in charge of clearing aircraft for service use, known as the Controller Aircraft, Air Marshal Sir Ralph Sorley, made a decision. He wrote to his fellow 1920s test pilot, Air Commodore D’Arcy Greig, then Commandant of A&AEE, ordering him to form a school to train pilots to become effective test pilots. So the world’s first such training establishment, the Empire Test Pilots’ School (ETPS), was founded, with the first course starting in April 1943. On that course were a mixture of civilian and military pilots.

  With the advent of the post-war jet era the image of the test pilot, always known in the trade as the ‘tp’, became crystallised in the public mind as a dashing character who drove a sports car, flew his jet in a business suit and almost always wore a bow tie. People soon thought that these cool and daring men flew their brand new jets with bravado and a white silk scarf to hand. That image has not really gone away. ‘How exciting!’ is often the response to the announcement that one is a test pilot.

  Well, sometimes it is, but not as often as folk would like to think. The description of ‘hours of tedium punctuated by brief periods of terror’ could be nearer the truth! These days the military test pilot, which is the remit of this book, never gets to fly the first flight of a brand new aeroplane or helicopter; that is the privilege of the company tp. However, during his career he may well fly many ‘first flights’ of new systems, weapons and equipment; however, much of the most futuristic research is done in very old and trusted aircraft. Therein lies the definition of another sort of tp – the experimental test pilot.

  There are also military test pilots whose work is concerned with the release of an aircraft to the customer – that is the branch of the armed forces that is going to use it. He has to be concerned with its safety and effectiveness for the role for which it was designed. Things have changed in the way that military test pilots work since I was last involved in the business, which is now over 20 years ago. The scale has reduced markedly and collocation, rationalisation and privatisation have all changed the face of military aircraft and systems procurement and assessment.

  But the basics of test flying should not have changed. Far from dashing into the air on a solo mission to ‘push the envelope’ the underlying principle is still a progressive approach, following an in-depth assessment of the potential risks and designing the optimum protocol. That way there should be no surprises; I was once told that the last thing a test pilot should be is surprised! Take it step-by-step and review before moving on. And most of all – BE OBJECTIVE. That means that any problem that turns up, especially in the areas of handling and stability, should be analysed carefully and not blamed on the pilot. That’s one of the reasons why service pilots often have disdain for a tp’s findings about their own ‘wonderjet’.

  However, the job of the military test pilot is, or should still be, both challenging and rewarding. I found it so – read on and judge for yourself!

  Whereas my story thus far, contained in the books A Bucket of Sunshine and Follow Me Through, has included some basic technicalities about flying, this tome will, by its very nature, delve a little deeper into the science attached to the art of aviation. So I have included, at Appendix A, some hopefully simple explanations of some of the technical terms this book contains. I know that for many readers, who have followed a similar path into test flying, this appendix could serve at best only as a refresher, if it serves any purpose at all!

  But there may be some, indeed I hope that there are many, readers who do not have a deep understanding of aerodynamics and the principles of flight necessary to follow fully all my tales. So to those folk I commend that if you get stuck on a word, phrase or symbol that really obstructs your reading do not hesitate to turn to Appendix A – ‘A Brief Lesson in Aerodynamics’.

  PROLOGUE

  When I was a lad in Yorkshire I was incessantly interested in things that flew. I watched birds. I watched aeroplanes. I went to air shows and often spent hours at the local aerodrome, now Leeds Bradford Airport, just taking in the exciting atmosphere of post-war aviation. There were the diminutive private aircraft as well as the DC-3s of the BKS airline company and a whole collection of flying visitors. An RAF Auxiliary Air Force squadron of Meteor fighters was also based there. To see them making formation take-offs and zooming off into the Yorkshire skies was the height of excitement for a 10-year-old. During those long summer days I used to put up my parachute-panel wigwam in the back garden, get a rug and lay out on the lawn with my dad’s best binoculars, an exercise book and a pencil to hand. Then every time anything flew within earshot or eyeshot I would record what it was, at what height I thought it was at and in what direction it was flying. Mostly these identified flying objects were DC-3s!

  My favourite Christmas and birthday presents were book tokens. Grasping them in my small sweaty hands I would then catch the bus into Bradford, walk up to a bookshop near the entrance to Kirkgate Market and buy the Observer’s Book of Aircraft for that year. When I had got that I would look for any other books about flying that I could afford. Otherwise I would scour the local library for similar literary content. Books about test pilots were particularly favoured; what excitement they contained. I wondered dreamily if one day I too could be a test pilot. Of course, I was naïve and in the full flush of that limitless, youthful expectation of what life could bring. Then every year, on one day in September, I would be glued to the small black and white TV in our living room for the two-hour broadcast of the Farnborough Air Show, with Charles Gardener’s wonderful commentaries: ‘… and over the Black Sheds comes ‘Bee’ Beamont in the Canberra’ or ‘from the Laffan’s Plain end here comes Neville Duke in the Hawker Hunter. You can’t hear him yet, but you will!’ And as Roly Faulk flew past in the Avro Vulcan, ‘Goodness me! He’s going to roll it!’ What I would have given to go there and see it all live.

  At the age of 11 I discovered the local Air Scouts, then later the Air Training Corps, so it was no surprise to anyone, my parents included, when I joined the RAF in 1962. I became a pilot and I flew the Canberra in Germany in the low-level nuclear strike and tactical interdictor roles. When that was over I became a flying instructor, first on the de Havilland Chipmunk and then on the Canberra again. But, in the mid 1970s, in order to achieve an ambition I had secretly held since my youth, I had applied for, and been accepted into, the ETPS. I also thought that it might break the cycle of flying old aeroplanes!

  So, thirteen years after taking the Queen’s shilling1 I was on the threshold of a new career. All that childish reverie of slipping the surly bonds of earth in a shiny, brand-new flying machine to climb aloft and touch the face of God was, perhaps, going to become a reality! Here I was, 30 years old and with 3,200 hours in my logbook, about to become a member of No. 34 Fixed Wing Test Pilots’ course at ETPS at Boscombe Down, in Wiltshire. Maybe my dreams could come true?

  Note

  1 Meaning to sign-on in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces.

  PART ONE

  LEARNING TO TEST

  1 GETTING AHEAD OF THE GAME

  So here I was on another threshold – the door to the ETPS Ground School. It was a cold January day at the beginning of 1975 and I had walked the mile or so down from my married quarter on the top of the hill on which Boscombe Down airfield is spread, like a concrete and grass tablecloth. I was chilled, not just from the weather but also from apprehension of what was to come. In the summers of 1973 and 1974 I had undergone the rigorous examination of the two-day selection procedure to get here not once, but twice. I had been successfully selected the first time but illness prevented me from attending the 1974 course.1 But, because the selection procedure was competitive, I had to d
o it all again in the summer of that year. Thankfully I was reselected, but with one proviso: due to my relatively basic level of mathematics I needed extra tuition before the course started in early February. Because I had joined the RAF at the minimum age of 17½, I had left school after just one year in the sixth form. I had, therefore, only an O Level GCE in maths, although I had subsequently completed one year of instruction in calculus.

  My results in the selection board maths paper had reflected my lack of depth in this area. So here I was, ready to receive special attention from the teachers of such mysteries as polynomial equations, differentiation and integration. I was not totally alone as a couple of other guys with a similar background and lack of achievement in sums were here for the same treatment.

  We were soon directed to the classroom. I noticed that there was a great view out to the north, over Salisbury Plain, beyond the busy major trunk route to the southwest, the A303. I wondered how often I would be looking at that view over the following year. But there was no time for that now. A shortish, balding man in a white coat entered and stood on the slightly raised ‘stage’ in front of a huge roller-style chalkboard. He had the air of a hospital consultant confronted with a small group of patients who were not going to understand a word of his diagnosis and treatment. He was actually Wing Commander John Rodgers, the Chief Ground Instructor (CGI). He started the morning in the way he meant to go on, taking no prisoners and rolling the blackboard at a frantic rate, while writing all sorts of barely comprehensible symbols and numbers in rapid succession.

  Later we would come to know, and sort of love, him as ‘Chalky’ and become well accustomed to his many catch phrases, such as ‘I’ve done nothing wrong’, usually to the accompaniment of erasing something from each side of an equation. There was also his uncanny knack of asking the only person who had not followed what he was doing to explain how he had arrived at some esoteric conclusion. Too often that would turn out to be me.