TEST PILOT

The title A&AEE was granted officially as long ago as 1924, at a time when the nascent Royal Air Force was fighting for its continued existence: the Navy and the Army considered the RAF as a wartime expedient and wanted their individual Air Corps returned to their command. (The RAF had been formed from the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service in 1918, the exact date, 1 April, being considered by many as significant.) Owing to the skilled lobbying of Lord Trenchard, the concept of an Independent Air Force was eventually recognised and allowed to flower, on it must be said distinctly stony ground: what at the end of the Great War had been the largest and only Independent Air Force in the world with no fewer than 22,647 aircraft formed into 188 squadrons at home and overseas, had by 1923, in the post-war atmosphere of disarmament and retrenchment, shrunk to a mere ten squadrons composed almost exclusively of wartime aircraft. However, it remains true that in 1923 a committee under Lord Salisbury had proposed a ‘Fifty-two Squadron Plan’ of some 600 aircraft for Home Defence.

Desperate manufacturers, who had seen orders drop from 3500 machines a month to virtually zero at the war’s end, submitted their spindly biplanes to the newly named A&AEE for Service Acceptance Trials on that Establishment’s airfield at Martlesham Heath, a desolate windswept site surrounded by marshes and saltings on the east coast of Suffolk, near Woodbridge. The A&AEE had a small staff of test pilots to investigate the tendered machines and to report on their suitability or otherwise for the slowly expanding squadrons of the RAF. The test pilots were in the main drawn from the ranks of the service; at that time they would, to a man, have had operational experience during the late war, some no doubt as squadron commanders but glad to have dropped rank to fly as Flight Lieutenants in the post-war Air Force. The system of recruiting test pilots from RAF squadrons was to continue at Martlesham Heath until the outbreak of the Second World War. It had served well enough: until the advent of the new monoplanes, service aircraft of the 1930s were simple and undemanding machines with, as perceived by the Air Staff, simple and undemanding roles. In effect, the test pilots and their aircraft developed together. By the mid-1930s when new, high-performance monoplanes appeared – both the Spitfire and the Hurricane were accepted after testing at Martlesham Heath by the A&AEE – the test pilots, in many cases guided by those of the manufacturers, had acquired the skills required to evaluate them. The number of prototypes tested, even during the panic expansion years of the late 1930s when the German Luftwaffe was emerging as a very serious challenge to the RAF, was still low enough for new test pilots to be trained ‘on the job’ on a master/pupil basis.

The expansion of the RAF accelerated as the last years of peace dwindled and the number of aircraft requiring ‘Service Acceptance’ increased: there was still no shortage of young men eager to fly them, whatever the risks involved. The last words of Otto Lilienthal, one of the first pilots to die testing a prototype, were prophetic: ‘Opfer müssen gebracht werden’ (Sacrifices must be made). When the Munich crisis came in September 1938, despite Neville Chamberlain’s ‘Peace in our time’ assurances, it was realised that the isolated site at Martlesham Heath, selected in 1924 to keep prying eyes away from the aircraft being tested there, was in fact just about the nearest point of the British Isles to Germany, and presented a target of which bomber crews dream.

Britain declared war on Germany a year later on 3 September 1939; by that time the plans to move the A&AEE, lock, stock and barrel, to a safer location had been finalised. In passing, it is interesting to note that for some years between the wars, official thinking in Whitehall had considered that Britain’s only potential enemy was the old one: France. As a consequence many RAF airfields were located in the south of the country; one of them, Boscombe Down, was selected for the A&AEE. The idea that France would fall and place those southern airfields within Luftwaffe fighter and bomber range was never given any serious consideration; so the move – on 3 September – was made and the A&AEE settled into the base on which it is still to be found.

The winter of 1939–40 was one of the coldest on record; the two bomber squadrons that had been in residence, Nos 88 and 218, must have been glad to exchange the frozen airfield for their operational bases in France to fly the largely pointless sorties of the ‘Phoney War’. Tragically, when that phase ended with the German Blitzkrieg which was unleashed on the hapless French Army and the British Expeditionary Force on 10 May 1940, those two squadrons, together with No. 12, all flying their outclassed Fairey Battle bombers, would suffer the highest loss rate to be sustained by any unit of the RAF in Europe.

After the departure of the Battles, another unit, No. 58 Squadron, Coastal Command, was based on Boscombe Down for a short time during the worst of that first bitter winter of the war. The squadron was to fly convoy protection patrols over the Western Approaches but most of the time their sixteen Whitleys, dispersed on the open airfield, were simply frozen to the ground. After the bombers had been prised free, the coastal squadron departed and Boscombe Down ceased to be an operational airfield, becoming exclusively the province of the Ministry of Aircraft Production and their clients, the A&AEE. The tempo of test flying was soon to increase to a level unthinkable to old Martlesham Heath hands. Aircraft of all descriptions were being delivered from the new Shadow factories operated by the motor car industry; many of the aircraft being built had been ordered straight from the drawing board and showed it: most were constructed by a hastily trained workforce with a predominance of females who had never even seen an aircraft close to, much less helped to build one. Many of the men in the wartime factories were either unfit or too old for military service; the hours were long and the work for the most part dull and repetitive; there was a strictly enforced total blackout; from 1940 air raids disrupted production. All things considered, it is hardly surprising that among the many aircraft that came to Boscombe Down for testing, some were found to suffer from poor workmanship. All the aircraft entering service in the early years of the war were designed in the late 1930s, and the roles that they would have to fulfil would in many cases change radically; a number, like the ill-fated Fairey Battles, would be obsolete before they even saw action. Many aircraft were ordered without any clear idea as to how they could be used operationally. This was especially true of the machines bought (for hard cash) from the United States in the early days of the war. A substantial number of American aircraft arrived in England as a result of Britain taking over orders that had been placed by the French and Belgian governments before the occupation of those countries. In some cases – the Brewster Buffalo comes to mind – the Allied cause would possibly have been better served had the aircraft been delivered, as originally intended, to the quays of Antwerp or Brest to fall into the hands of the enemy. From whatever source, representative examples of the many aircraft ordered arrived at Boscombe Down to be tested and deemed fit or otherwise for service.

The Performance Testing flights of 1939 had, by 1945, become full squadrons: ‘A’ squadron with two flights testing forty modern fighters’; ‘B’ squadron, again with two flights working on twenty-four bombers, all four-engined; ‘C’ squadron, was responsible for the testing of twenty-three assorted naval aircraft. There was also ‘D’ squadron with two flights of medium bombers, mainly used in the flight testing of airborne radar and radio equipment and navigation and bombing aids on behalf of the Telecommunication Research Establishment (TRE) and a Communications and Special Duties Flight. Finally, there was the Intensive Flying Development Flight (IFDF), whose aircraft included a Lincoln Bomber and six Tempest fighters. The number of skilled test pilots and, in the case of the multi-place aircraft, aircrew required to test such a large number of aircraft must have been formidable indeed. These figures only apply to Boscombe Down; service test pilots were also working at Farnborough and the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment at Beaulieu. Military test pilots were also seconded to the aero engine companies and the aircraft factories for prototype and production testing, where their recent operational experience proved invaluable.

Once the Germans had defeated Poland, Belgium and France so easily, by the aggressive use of airpower brilliantly integrated with fast armour on the ground, it was obvious, even to the most obtuse of Whitehall Warriors, that the Second World War was, unlike the First, to be a conflict in which the key to success would be airpower. Without massive support from the air, no battle, whether on land or sea, could be hoped to be won. The Battle of Britain, fought during the long hot summer of 1940, was a watershed for the RAF. The warnings of a few prescient men during the last years of peace were proved true: the far-sighted provision of a radar-based ground control system, the excellent Spitfire and Hurricane fighters and, not to be forgotten, the fruits of Trenchard’s insistence on the highest standards of training, undoubtedly saved the country from almost certain defeat – by a narrow margin indeed. However, fighters are defensive. When the Air Staff had succeeded in disabusing the politicians of the idea that German factories, even if engaged in war production, were private property and therefore immune from attack, Bomber Command, instead of dropping tons of useless paper in the form of leaflets, turned to the offensive against Germany. It very soon became clear that aircraft performance, tactics, even in certain respects the training of aircrew (navigators in particular), required urgent revision. The rethinking of the Air Staff resulted in an unprecedented flood of new and replacement aircraft of all types. (During the war years, the RAF had placed on charge no fewer than 55,000 aircraft, serving 487 squadrons. Of that total 22,000 aircraft were lost or damaged beyond repair.)

By the end of 1942 the workload at Boscombe Down had become critical: apart from the new types from British factories and the constant modification programmes to existing aircraft, American types ordered under the provisions of Lend Lease in 1941 were arriving in large numbers. To try to alleviate the shortage of test pilots, the Commandant of the A&AEE, Air Commodore D’Arcy Grieg (who is best remembered as a member of the RAF’s High Speed Flight which won the Schneider Trophy) was asked by a former Commandant of the A&AEE, Air Marshal Sir Ralph Sorley, then Controller of Research and Development, Ministry of Aircraft Production (on behalf of which the A&AEE operated), to set up a test pilots’ school at Boscombe Down. The terms of reference were ‘to provide suitably trained pilots for test flying duties in aeronautical research and development establishments within the service and the industry’. It was a substantial remit for which there was no precedent: such a school would be unique for, at that time, no other existed anywhere in the world.

There was, however, a snag. They had previously been working together on a project which had become urgent: the clearing for service of the third prototype Avro York transport, LV663, which was required for the King’s Flight. The aircraft had been fitted out to a high degree of luxury by austere British wartime standards. Since the three Yorks had been constructed without official sanction, using a large percentage of Lancaster bomber components, a good deal of work was involved to ensure LV663 was suitable for the King’s Flight. The A&AEE acceptance trials were conducted between 30 April and 14 May 1943 and the test team, including the entire staff elect of the proposed test pilots’ school, flew in the VIP York, now rather grandly named Ascalon, on no fewer than sixteen test flights from Boscombe Down. Fortunately, Wing Commander Slee and Maclaren Humphreys had previously spent a long time drafting a syllabus for the test pilots’ course. The final test flight of the York was made, and it flew from Boscombe Down on 25 May to join No. 24 Squadron at Northolt, piloted by Wing Commander Slee who was to brief the York’s prospective squadron crew on the new aircraft. Exactly what next happened is now a matter of speculation; suffice to say Wing Commander Slee remained with Ascalon to pilot HM King George VI on an extended tour of the North African front.

Sammy Wroath was a remarkable man; he had joined the RAF as an aircraft apprentice at Halton in 1925, one of the first of Trenchard’s ‘Brats’, as they were known in the pre-war Air Force. Although Halton apprentices were trained primarily as tradesmen, a few, including Sammy Wroath, were selected to become pilots. He must have been a very good one for he later became the first sergeant pilot to undertake test flying at Martlesham Heath. At Boscombe Down he had risen to the rank of Squadron Leader and, on becoming the first CO of the still unnamed school, was promoted Wing Commander.

Sammy Wroath and Maclaren Humphreys took possession of a group of buildings situated on the south side of the airfield. Whether by accident or design, the school location was just about as far away from all the other A&AEE activities as was possible. The buildings were not ideal: they consisted of two Seco wooden huts, four Nissen huts, without which any wartime military accommodation was seemingly unthinkable, and, to look after the physical well-being of the staff and students, a brick-built washhouse adjacent to an air raid shelter. The latter was a most important consideration in early 1943, for the airfield had been bombed, though not heavily, in 1941–2, usually from single ‘Tip and Run’ Ju88s. (As it was to turn out, the only enemy aircraft to visit Boscombe Down from the beginning of 1943 to the end of the war were those which had been captured and sent there for evaluation.)

Hazel duly arrived at Boscombe Down. He soon discovered on meeting his fellow students that all seemed to have one trait in common: all were very capable pilots who had completed operational tours, yet strangely all had COs prepared to ‘let them go’, some with almost indecent haste. ‘Mavericks’ was the word Hazel used to describe his companions on the course. Hazel remembers that he was not really all that fit to begin the exacting course; he had an arm in a sling and had to walk with the aid of a stick because just before leaving Oakley he had fallen off a motorcycle, injuring his right leg, and then had fallen out of a Wellington, which fortunately was on the ground at the time, injuring an elbow.

The course of lectures began almost at once and that Achilles heel of the British educational system, the deficient teaching of mathematics, immediately manifested itself to the extent that, within the first week, no fewer than five of the students departed finding themselves unable to keep up. Hazel had worked for six years in insurance before the war and his maths was adequate; furthermore, D’Arcy Grieg had made an excellent choice in Maclaren Humphreys, who was to become a most popular lecturer. The syllabus which he and Wing Commander Slee had drawn up was to prove not only correct for Course No. 1 in 1943 but was, in essence, the one to be used for the following forty-three to the present day.