by Alec Brew
Robin Lindsay Neale is remembered by all who knew him as a charming and friendly man, with a marvellous sense of humour. He was an accomplished test pilot, and a great loss to the company.
CHAPTER 21
To Bale Out or Not to Bale Out
When something goes wrong in the air, pilots are often faced with making the decision of whether to try to land the aircraft, or to bale out. This is only usually an option with military pilots or test pilots, civilians rarely having the option of a parachute. Test pilots often have the added moral pressure of the requirement to bring the aircraft back at all costs, so that the defect, in what might well be a valuable prototype or experimental aircraft, can be more easily discovered and rectified in the future. The problem is to make a rational assessment in a tense situation without allowing bravado to overcome straightforward common sense. This is the story of Ben Gunn, the Boulton Paul test pilot who made each of the two available choices during his long and distinguished career.
Alexander Ewen Gunn, more widely known as Ben Gunn, was born on 24 June 1923 and educated in Whitehill in Glasgow. From 1942 to 1943 he attended the RAF Staff College Cranwell. He then went to No. 501 Squadron, flying Spitfires, and flying patrols over the beaches of D-Day amongst other sorties. He then moved to No. 274 Squadron, flying Tempest Mk Vs.
On VE Day he became a military test pilot at the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment at Boscombe Down. In 1947 he joined Course No. 7 at the Empire Test Pilots’ School at RAE Farnborough. Following graduation he became heavily involved with the test-flying of the rivals for the RAF’s new advanced trainer order, the Avro Athena and the Boulton Paul Balliol.
After both of Boulton Paul’s test pilots, Robin Lindsay Neale and Peter Tisshaw, were killed in 1948, test-flying a Balliol at Wolverhampton, Ben was seconded to the company to continue the programme. He liked the variety of aircraft he saw in the flight sheds at Wolverhampton. Apart from the Balliol prototypes there was a Fairey Spearfish, having a de-icing rig; fitted, Wellingtons being overhauled and converted to navigation trainers; Hornets having target-towing gear fitted; a Lancaster with a gust-alleviation system; and ‘behind the black curtains’ the first of two experimental delta wing jets under construction.
When JD North, the managing director of Boulton Paul, asked him if he wanted to become the company’s new chief test pilot, he said he would, but did not think the RAF would release him. One phone call from North and twenty-four hours later Ben was a civilian once more.
The delta wing jets under construction, the P111 and the P120, were in response to Specifications E.27/46 and E.27/49, as part of a Government-funded research programme into delta wing aircraft. The two aircraft were fundamentally similar, both being diminutive aircraft powered by a single Rolls-Royce Nene of 5100 lb st. The P111, which was ready first, was a pure delta with no tailplane but alternative wing tips of varying shape, and a tall triangular fin. Ben Gunn undertook taxiing trials on the grass runway at Wolverhampton, after which it was decided to change the nosewheel to a double-surface carrier type, but the first flight was made by Squadron Leader Smyth of the RAE Aero Flight at Boscombe Down.
Ben soon became involved in the test-flying of the little delta and found it hypersensitive. It had a theoretical rate of roll of 560 degrees/sec at 500 knots, which was ridiculous. A movement of the control column one inch to the side and back was enough to induce a complete roll. The problem was the early power-assisted controls that Boulton Paul had designed for the aircraft. Those early prototype PCUs suffered both by being too sensitive, and having no feedback to the pilot.
After the P111 suffered a wheels-up landing on 29 August 1952 and was returned to the company for repair, the opportunity to install a variable ‘feel’ system was taken. This meant that overly large movements of the controls could not be made, and the ‘flying on a knife-edge’ feeling was abated.
72. Ben Gunn in the cockpit of the P111 delta, outside the Boulton Paul flight sheds.
The second delta, the P120, was fitted with a swept fin, and had a delta all-moving tailplane, which operated as a trimming surface activated by a separate button on the control column. The pointed wing tips were moveable, for lateral and pitch trimming operated by further switches, on the port side console.
The P120 was moved to Boscombe Down for its first flight at the end of August 1952, which Ben was to make this time. Because of the aircraft’s high take-off speed it was not possible to undertake straight hops, the test-pilot’s confidence booster, but having flown the very similar P111 he did not expect any problems. His confidence was to prove misplaced.
The speed built up quickly after he released the brakes, but 20 seconds later Ben was exceedingly worried. After three quarters of the very long runway had been consumed, with the pungent smell of burning rubber seeping into the cockpit, and 175 knots indicated, the P120 was still very much stuck to the ground. Telling himself that the aircraft had been designed to fly, and fly it would, he made one last effort to haul it into the air.
With only a minimal amount of runway left, the P120 wallowed and staggered into the air, flashing right over the heads of some startled potato pickers just beyond the airfield. With the slowest rate of climb he had ever experienced, Ben decided to leave the undercarriage down and to make a wide circuit. It was clear that the all-moving tailplane had been set at the wrong angle for take-off. By trial and error, using the sliding button set on the control column, he adjusted the angle until the aircraft was flying more comfortably.
He still feared that the aircraft had a burst tyre. It was therefore essential that he make as smooth a landing as possible, even though he had to literally fly the aircraft onto the ground, though having adjusted the tailplane this was accomplished at a speed 40 knots less than that at which he had taken off. He was lucky, and although the nosewheel was badly damaged it had remained inflated, and the P120 was brought to a halt with the aid of the tail parachute.
As Ben said later, “If one believed the old sailor’s tale about bad launchings. . . it was certainly true of this aeroplane”
After the inauspicious first flight, tests of the P120 went very well. The flight speed was raised in increments of 15 knots, and he found the aircraft handled pleasantly. It was painted all-black in preparation for an appearance in to the 1952 Farnborough Air Show. Then on 28 August, after 11 hours, flying the P120 made its last flight.
The flight speed was raised to 435 knots, ‘which as it turned out was five knots too many’. With the test completed, Ben was over Lee-on-Solent and was turning back towards Boscombe when there was a loud buzz followed by the loudest bang he had ever heard in an aircraft. The P120 immediately went into a series of rapid rolls to port and into a dive, which caused him great difficulty in orientating himself. He shoved the control column fully starboard, but this only slowed up the rate of roll, so he put on full starboard rudder. To his relief the rolling stopped, but the aircraft was still diving rapidly towards the ground.
73. Ben Gunn flying the P120 delta on its penultimate flight.
With the controls in their present position; the aircraft should have been violently flick-rolling to starboard. However, when he pulled back the control column to haul himself out of the dive, the little jet began rolling to port again. The pitot head was pointing up at 45 degrees and the top foot was bent backwards, so he did not know his airspeed. On this occasion the trimming tailplane was to save the situation. He pressed the operating button a degree at a time, and slowly the nose came up, until, with full nose-up trim, he was once more looking at blue sky.
He called Boscombe to seek their help in getting him down, but realised he was on his own. At least he was now regaining some altitude and had a chance to assess the situation, but he had no idea what had happened. In fact, a severe flutter had occurred in the port elevon, which had snapped all the hinges. A junior test engineer at Boulton Paul had calculated that this would happen, but his figures had not been believed. It was fortunate for Boulton Paul�
�s reputation that the accident did not happen more publicly at Farnborough the following weekend.
‘How am I going to get this down ?’ thought Ben as he set course for Boscombe, and gingerly began a descent. Down to about 3000 feet, he decided to jettison the canopy to prepare for all eventualities. This was in fact the only way he had of removing the canopy himself, as it was normally screwed down by the ground crew before take-off. With the canopy off he could see the trailing edge of the port wing, which was torn and tattered, and he was beginning to realise what had happened. Over the hills south of Boscombe the air was a little more bumpy, and the aircraft began slowly rolling to port once more. As he had no more control left he decided the time had come to abandon any thoughts he had of making a landing, and reached for the ejection seat face-blind.
Luckily, the spring ‘feel’ in the control circuit caused the control column to snap into the central, neutral position, so it did not remove his leg as he ejected, but this only helped turn the aircraft to the inverted position as he left it, ejecting downwards. As he was upside down, the seat’s drogue-chute did not work properly, and he was tumbling and falling with the ground rapidly approaching. He decided to pull the rip cord, to at least try and show those who investigated that he was conscious and trying to do something, even though this was contrary to the proper drill. After pulling it, he felt his lap-strap, and ran his fingers along it and turned the buckle. Luckily, the seat parted company enough for his parachute to Roman-candle, and almost immediately he crashed through a tree.
He found himself lying on his back on the ground, with blood all over his face. A twig had ripped up his nose and pushed off his helmet. He looked around and saw the parachute rip-cord alongside him, showing how close he had been to disaster. If he had waited to pull it until after he had parted company with the seat, he would have been too near the ground. He struggled to his feet, though he had had a bad crack on the ankle and had broken his arm.
‘Now we have Nemesis, Fate, whatever you like to call it,’ he said recalling it years later. He hobbled down the hill to a small cottage that seemed rather familiar. On the wall inside was a calendar featuring a Boulton Paul Balliol and North American T-28 flying in formation over the Grand Canyon. It was the Boulton Paul calendar for the year 1952! He realised that it was the cottage of one of his former colleagues at Boscombe, Pinky Stark. An old gentleman inside, who had heard the crash and was calling the emergency services, asked him if he was alright and offered him a drink. Ben telephoned Boscombe first, and then thought he had better go to the toilet and check for internal injuries before he took a drink. When everything seemed alright, he sank into an armchair, and a bottle of brandy was placed alongside him. By the time the ambulance arrived there was very little left in the bottle!
In one final postscript to the tale of the P120, Boulton Paul’s insurance company phoned him up shortly afterwards. They thanked him very much for saving them £750,000, which was the sum they were to cover the aircraft for from midnight the following Friday, so it could take part in the Farnborough Air Show. They asked him if there was anything he wanted. He said that as it happened there was, a shooting stick, so he could hobble about at the Air Show. They told him to buy the most expensive one he could find, and were happy to reimburse him. He therefore became the proud owner of a £750,000 shooting stick!
Ben had become the first person ever to eject from a delta-winged aircraft and only the fifth British live ejection ‘for real’ overall. A former colleague of Ben’s, JO ‘Joe’ Lancaster, had actually made the first ejection ‘for real’ from a British aircraft. John Oliver Lancaster had served in Bomber Command until 1943, when he went through the Empire Test Pilot’s Course at Boscombe Down. At the end of the War the general manager of Boulton Paul Aircraft, Ralph Beasley, secured his release from the RAF to serve as a production test pilot with the company, specifically to test-fly the Wellingtons, which were being overhauled by Boulton Paul and converted to navigation trainers.
Joe Lancaster left Boulton Paul to join Armstrong-Whitworth and was involved in the testing of their ‘Flying Wings’. On 30 May 1949 he had been flying AW52, TS363, a twin-Nene-powered Flying Wing, over Warwickshire at 5000 feet. Violent oscillations began, which continued during a rapid descent to 3000 feet. Unable to regain control, Joe had been forced to use the new Martin-Baker Mk. 1 ejection seat, which successfully removed him from the aircraft.
Six and a half years later Ben was to have a similar decision to make. This time he chose the different option, though the circumstances were not quite so fraught as Joe Lancaster’s experience, or the P120’s crash. From 1953 Boulton Paul became the prime contractor for all Canberra modifications, building one-off radar development aircraft and export prototypes, and undertaking modifications from the simple installation of new pieces of equipment to major alterations, including the design and production of the interdictor Canberra’s bomb-bay cannon pack.
To begin with, the company used the airfield at Defford in Worcestershire, Wolverhampton’s grass runways being unsuitable for Canberras. However, when Defford closed they opened their own Flight Test Centre at the former bomber OTU airfield at Seighford just west of Stafford. They had tested the runway with a Vampire, but this lifted the old tarmac off, and so they resurfaced and extended it. They also took over and refurbished the two surviving hangars and built another one.
74. Ben Gunn with one of the many Canberras he test-flew for Boulton Paul.
Ben Gunn and his assistants, George Dunworth and John Powers, undertook the majority of the flight testing of the Canberras, which were many in number, and not without incident. On one occasion Ben was taking off at Culdrose in a minelaying Canberra, with a dummy revolving bomb-bay, and provision for further mines on the wing stubs. He was first on the runway that morning and disturbed a seagull, which was warming its feet on the tarmac. It flapped into the air and was sucked through the port engine, which stopped. Ben aborted the take-off but struck arrester gear beside the end of the runway, and came to rest overhanging the main road, giving a local bus driver quite a fright.
On a fateful New Year’s Day, 1959, Ben took off from Seighford in Canberra PR7 WH779. Boulton Paul had done all the camera installations for the PR3 and PR7 Canberras, as well as photo-flash development. He pressed the button to retract the undercarriage and then there was a huge bang, the sort of bang to instantly clear a Scottish test pilot’s head despite it being New Year’s Day. The undercarriage was only partially retracted and there had been a complete hydraulic failure.
With the help of the personnel in the tower he assessed the situation. The nosewheel and one mainwheel was up, but the other mainwheel was only partially up. With no hydraulics, Ben had no flaps so a landing would have to be at relatively high speed and a belly landing at that, with the undercarriage half down. An alternative would have been to fly to the coast, point the aircraft out to sea and eject, but he had on board a Boulton Paul technician not well versed in ejection procedures. In any case, the aircraft remained fully controllable and there was plenty of time to prepare for the landing, as he flew round and round Seighford using up as much of the fuel as he could.
Eventually he came in to land on the runway and shut off the engines immediately, skidding onto the grass and towards the hedge. Unfortunately, a large tree had been cut down in the hedge, but the stump was left. Sod’s Law being what it is, the Canberra was sliding straight towards it. With the wheels up and therefore no brakes, and with the engines shut off, Ben could do nothing, except sit there and wait for the crash. Both he and the technician were unhurt, and so they adjourned to the ‘Hollybush’ in Seighford and celebrated the first day of 1959 in a less destructive fashion.
75. Canberra PR7, WH779, on New Year’s Day 1959, the result of Ben’s forced landing with total hydraulic failure.
Ben continued test-flying for Boulton Paul until 1965, mostly Canberras of different Marks. The company also took on Lightning work from English Electric, especially the F3 developme
nt programme, but the Lightnings were flown by BAC test pilots. In 1965 the disgraceful cancellation of TSR2 had its effect on Boulton Paul, as the British Aircraft Corporation took back all the Canberra and Lightning work for its own divisions and the Flight Test Centre at Seighford was closed. Ben went to work for Rover Gas Turbines for a year, and then went to Beagle Aircraft. When that too was closed by a short-sighted Government he became manager of Shoreham Airport. He was one of that famous cadre of British test pilots from the 1950s who survived. He had lived through some of those heart-stopping inflight bangs, which are the dread of all test pilots, and made all the right decisions, whether to bale out or try for a forced landing.
CHAPTER 22
Down in the Yukon
Arctic air travel has claimed many aircraft over the years, even famous names like Roald Amundsen. In this region navigation was as difficult as it could be, before the era of satellite navigation. There were few maps, and there were the problems of the magnetic pole and the approach to a point where every direction is south. There is also the extra hazard of appalling weather conditions, and few weather stations to predict the weather ahead. The era of the jet airliner, for the first time meant that trans-Arctic travel became routine, allowing pioneering airlines like Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) to take the short cut from Europe to the west coast of America. For the light aircraft, however, flying in the Arctic was as dangerous as always.
In October 1967 three valiant flyers prepared to make the first trans-Arctic trip in a light aircraft, a twin-engined Piper Aztec. The route would take them from Alaska to Norway, via the northern reaches of Canada and Greenland. The three men were no amateur adventurers, they were professional aircrew with long experience of Arctic flying conditions. Though in part they were seeking the glory of being first, they were also attempting to pioneer a safe route between Alaska and Europe for light aircraft, which might become generally used in later years.