Please do more videos like this we these great pilots of yesteryear. There are not many of them left! I would love to see ret. Col. Bud Anderson interview like this about his test pilot days?

@@jeffallen3382 We have a few videos with Bud Anderson on the channel

@@Dronescapes thank you, I'll look for them.

@@jeffallen3382 here is a couple: kzfaq.infomuiAFLNcE1U and kzfaq.info/get/bejne/lcmpeMiqqbqZYpc.html

He was one of the best....Thanks Shoe🇺🇸

For my money he is the greatest. He easily stands with Doolittle, Yeager, Crossfield, any of the NASA people etc etc and had many totally unique experiences. The number of types, many of them death traps, the number of carrier landings will never be equalled. People will never agree on who was the best at anything but he has my vote.

Then they give a knighthood to Lewis Hamilton and Jimmy Savile

No 'probably' about it, undeniably the greatest test pilot of all time!

No doubt. M

Well, not enough planes to fly/try these days?! ^But YES! A bloody ballsy* person Eric was... *can you say that in 2024?

I'm your vintage and you're 150% correct. These men were in their 50s in the 1970s and were hugely insperational, calm, steady and poised. Some women as well, My Granny served as a nursing officer in the QUARNS and served in North Africa and Italy just behind the front. She was also torpedoed in the Mediterranean when RMS Strathallan was sunk and was stuck on a lifeboat for 6 days before rescued

@@HarryFlashmanVC test

👍

If there's one ability a test pilot surely has to have, I'd imagine it must be to very, *very* rapidly prioritise all of one's thoughts.

Absolutely

The Komet was so dangerous, even just filling the damned fuel tanks whilst it sat quietly on the runway could basically kill everyone instantly if you screwed up. In addition to the sheer toxicity of the propellants, there was an incredibly elaborate procedure for carefully approaching the plane from two separate directions in two separate propellant tankers that had to always be far, far away from each other, and extensively hosing down the plane, the refuelling equipment and the entire area before, between and after each each step of the operation, to make sure the hypergolic fuel and oxidiser couldn't ever possibly come in contact with each other, because if they did they would immediately combust. You would *not* want to try to land the thing with even a drop of that stuff still in the tanks.

In the early 90's I had a question about the flight characteristics of the 163, since I understood he had flown several. I wrote a letter addressed to him through The Imperial war Museum in London, expecting perhaps a form letter in reply. To my surprise, I received a handwritten note on his personal stationary describing the stall characteristics and control response of the aircraft flown by him at the time in Britian as a glider. A truly considerate man willing to share knowledge in a small way that was helpful to others.

@@bernieschiff5919 Impressive story. Eric Brown was a great person. Did you watch his biography on the channel, and his other videos? kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hrmCdMeL37jdk5c.html We will also feature, in the coming weeks, some never seen before interviews with him.

Tarzan, we have some exclusive interviews coming that were never shown before. They are from his biography documentary, but they are the original RAW interviews, digitized from Beta! Priceless. Did you watch his biography? Here is a playlist with all his videos, so far: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hrmCdMeL37jdk5c.html

His records are probably impossible to beat

@@johnconlon9652 do you remember his name?

@@johnconlon9652 Thanks anyway!

You are welcome George. Did you see his playlist? I would absolutely watch his biography, it is quite amazing: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hrmCdMeL37jdk5c.html

Did you watch his biography? We have a playlist about Eric Brown, and you can also find the documentary about him. It is very interesting: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hrmCdMeL37jdk5c.html

Agreed! Did you see his playlist? I would absolutely watch his biography, it is quite amazing: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hrmCdMeL37jdk5c.html

@@Dronescapes it’s simply mind blowing. It’s beyond belief unless you knew the man actually existed and had done all of that. What a life

He was, and he will forever be

Indeed Stuart!

And yet B liar got the knighthood!

👍👍

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Thank you Mike

@@Dronescapes you're welcome DroneScapes

Great person

You are welcome Leo

Glad you enjoyed it

I Cant imagine Captain Brown with blue hair wearing a twinset and pearls can you?

As you may know, axial turbojets were riddled with insurmountable issues until the mid-50s, and that includes the infamous Jumo engines that powered the Me 262. Axial turbojets were, for a long time, unreliable and fragile, making them not viable for operational purposes (the Germans made a desperate attempt at that), Perhaps you are not aware that Whittle's centrifugal solution was precisely devised for that very reason...In 1929, therefore a decade before WW2. Unfortunately, Griffith, the appointed judge of his work, on behalf of the Air Ministry, dismissed his brilliant project and delayed it by 6 (endless) years until a group of private investors funded it in 1935. It took Whittle less than two years to create the first working turbojet in the world, in April 1937, well ahead of his German counterpart, Hans Von Ohain who not only had access to Whittle's work all along but was also fully funded by an aircraft manufacturer, Mr. Heinkel. It so happens that Griffith was incidentally the author of a seminal paper on axial compressors in 1926, so you can easily deduct that he had every interest in derailing Whittle. Whittle also achieved his goal with a ridiculous amount of funding, a mere £200,000 in today's money. Remarkable! Obviously, it is easy to deduct that the Allies could have had a less powerful turbojet, but a reliable one, and most importantly one very easy to develop, before the beginning of the war, not at the end. But that wasn't to be. As a reminder, Whittle's turbojet powered not only the first commercial aircraft in the world, but also the first military jet to fly on U.S. soil, and the first U.S. operational jet fighter, the P-80 in Korea, which battled the formidable MiG-15, also powered by a reverse-engineered Whittle engine (RR Nene). Whittle's engine was the first turbojet for both G.E. and Pratt & Whitney as well. Not bad for a young man who was ignored, ridiculed, and so broke that he did not have £4 to renew his patent, wouldn't you agree? By the way, in his thesis, he also theorized the advantages of pressurization, whereas someone like Von Ohain, for example, was completely oblivious to. He was an absolute genius, well ahead of his time. He just wanted his country to have the perfect transitional engine, at the perfect time, in the perfect place. His biggest mistake was not to be born into the establishment. I urge you to watch his biography: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fZaEZ5CJrJyVYoU.html We also have his exclusive interviews in other videos, and soon even Von Ohain's never released before interviews.

@@Dronescapes you've certainly done some homework. Not to take away from Whittle, but like any new tech, the axial flow engine had to start somewhere, but it lacked some refinements and improved metallurgy. The centrifugal engine was a stop gap solution and the F-80 in Korea was quickly replaced by the F-86 (1949) with the axial flow GE engine (or Canadian Orenda axial flow engine). USN was flying axial flow jets in the 40's. The Metrovick turbojet became the Sapphire of course, and powered many of the earlier jets. Axial flow was of course the more efficient turbojet/turbofan and likewise would have been a WWII player given investment of time and $$. Had the germans followed their original schedule and had access to strategic materials, their axial flow engines would have further dominated the centrifugal ones. It was nice to see the Brits not so far behind though and certainly well ahead of GE and Westinghouse. Have you seen the Metrovick engine at the aft end of the Lancaster in June 1943, then powering the Meteor to new speeds in Nov '43 ?

One should still wonder what would have happened to Whittle's engine if he had not been delayed (and virtually broke) for 6 endless years, from 1929 to 1935. You can argue that Britain would have probably not been able to build a great airframe, lacking the German knowledge they had thanks to their amazing wind tunnels, but they would have had a massive advantage when it came to jet engines, also considering how much easier it was to develop the centrifugal turbojet vs. the axial one, or how infinitely more reliable it was at the time. If you consider what Whittle achieved with comical funding, how long it took him once he had the money vs. what the Germans invested after the first flight, how many companies worked on it (BWM, Junkers, and Heinkel), and what they achieved at the end of WW2 (unreliable, short-lived engines). I am aware that they had to rush out the F-86 to combat the MiG-15, but it was more about the irony of both aircraft using the same derived engine. Obviously, the MiG had the upper hand (swept wings?). We are working on a documentary on the Lancaster + Metrovick, very interesting! By the way, Metrovick also opened its doors to the U.S. during WW2. Interestingly the German engines proved to be almost totally useless after the war, except for the French, and their squadron of German engineers working on it (120 people I believe) It took them several years, radical modifications, and the help of a U.S. company to make those axial engines properly work. Materials were only one of the many issues that had, although it is always cited as the main, and often sole issue. The Czech Air Force also tried to make sense of them after the war, as they had been assembling Me 262 for the Germans, but like the Soviets, they also gave up and ended up using the Whittle clones as well. It is safe to say that during the war Britain had no real interest in wasting resources on an unproven new engine, and it is interesting to note that they even issued a moratorium on R&D in the 30s, which affected Whittle, but also Griffith, his nemesis. That is how little they cared at the time for mainly strategic reasons. They had more important issues to think of, as the threat of an invasion was looming.

@@Dronescapes there was no threat of invasion in 1940, but the race for piston engine performance was certainly at the forefront.