by Mike Brooke
C Flight Canberra B(I)8 WJ 643 airborne on a LOSSE sortie. (Author’s collection)
Me, about to start up Hunter F6 XG 290 at Farnborough. (Author’s collection; photo by Peter Gilchrist)
‘Jack’ Frost releases the first UK laser-guided bomb at West Freugh. (OGL (MODPE))
The team of the Air-to-Air FLIR trial at RAE Llanbedr in April 1978. Left to right: me, Tim Bowmer (FTO), Fred Mayhead (Trials Leader), Keith Hartley (Jaguar Pilot), Penny Wright (FTO), Paddy (Team Support), Sean Sparks (Nav). (Author’s collection)
Varsity WL 679 passes 100ft over a tank during the infamous infrared trial in Long Valley, Hampshire. (OGL (MODPE))
Me flying Buccaneer 2B (Special) XX 897 over the RRS complex at RAE Bedford. (Author’s collection)
The rather ugly nose of Canberra SC9 XH 132. (Author’s collection)
Comet XW 626 with the front half of the ill-fated AEW radar. (Author’s collection; BAe Photograph)
Me flying Canberra B6 XH 568 in formation with Comet XW 626 during its transit from BAe Woodford to RAE Bedford on 13 June 1980. (Author’s collection)
I lead a formation of four RRS Canberras on a multiple target trials sortie. (OGL (MODPE))
Foxhunter Radar trials vehicle Buccaneer XX 897 airborne. (Via Norman Roberson)
RRS Canberra SC9 XH 132. (Via Norman Roberson)
RRS Canberra B6 XH 568, with a Varsity in the background. (Via Norman Roberson)
The ETPS fleet, April 1981 (The single-seat Hunters had gone but the Hawks had not yet arrived). (OGL (MODPE))
ETPS Lightning T5 XS 422. (Via Allan Wood)
The ETPS line in mid 1982. A Hunter T7 can be seen in the foreground, with Hawks in evidence beyond. (OGL (MODPE))
A still from the video of an inverted spin in ETPS Hunter T7 XL 612, flown by me, chased by John Thorpe. (OGL (MODPE))
Me, about to fly in a Hawk with Lt Col Panato, Commander of the Italian Air Force Test Centre, during his visit to Boscombe Down. (OGL (MODPE))
Captain Debertolis returning the favour during my visit to the Italian Air Force Test Centre with a flight in a Aermacchi MB-339. (Author’s collection)
in the front seat of a Jaguar is OC ETPS Wing Commander R. Hargreaves, about to fly with USAF Captain Jay Jabour in July 1982 – when that idiot gets off the ladder! (OGL (MODPE))
Jock Reid looking relieved that I didn’t frighten him too much during my checkout in the Hawk! (Author’s collection)
Me and Captain Thomas of the French Test Pilots’ School about to fly the Nord 262, October 1981. (Author’s collection)
Me manning the Ground Pilot’s Station for an ETPS spinning sortie. (Author’s collection)
One of the Argentinian Pucarás arrives by air. (OGL (MODPE))
The rebuilt airworthy RAF Pucará in flight. (OGL (MODPE))
A photograph of Robert Finch’s painting of Lightning T5 XS 422 which he gave to Allan Wood following our 1,000mph flight. The inscription reads: ‘For Allan – as a reminder of your flight in XS 422 on the 25th of April out of Boscombe Down, flown by Squadron Leader Mike Brooke, RAF.’ We will both never forget that flight! (Via Allan Wood)
The three flights were flown in a specific sequence: the first with no G-suit, the second with a G-suit and the third with G-suit, pressure-breathing and the inflatable vest. Needless to say it got easier to stay awake as the trial progressed! And I think that Dave’s analysis of our blood samples proved the theory right.
I even picked up my own IAM trial. It was the assessment of a new flying helmet; always known to aircrew as a ‘bonedome’. This one was a bit like the full-face covering motorcycle and racing car drivers’ helmets. It had a hinged bar at the base that contained the oxygen mask and the two-tone visor came down and locked into place so enclosing the head totally. This sort of design had been seen before and in this form was known as the High Speed Anti-Blast helmet. It had a mark number, which I think was 6. My job was to fly with this device on my head and assess its use. Two advantages were seen for the helmet: it would give full face protection in the event of a high-speed ejection and the use of a filtered air system would endow it with a good level of anti-NBC24 protection when that was appropriate.
Having been issued with my shiny white ‘spaceman’s’ titfer, much to the amusement of some of my colleagues, I spent several hours sitting in as many appropriate cockpits as I could. Sadly that wasn’t many at Farnborough. What I discovered was that the lower part of the helmet obscured the view of much of the equipment on the cockpit side panels, to the left and right of the pilot. This was particularly bad in the Buccaneer. By then we had been allocated the use of a single-seat Hunter F6 and that was not much better. A lot of items that required numbers to be read, such as when setting radio frequencies or selecting multiple-choice switch positions, were nigh on impossible to achieve without error and too much attention being diverted from the paramount task of flying the jet.
Then came the flight trials, again with Lt Col Dave Root in Hunter XL 563. Once I had got the Hunter moving the very first thing that I noticed was that I could barely hear the engine. It wasn’t until then that I realised just how much I relied on the note of the engine to judge how much power I was using to move the Hunter on the ground. That was important because too much power could wreak a certain amount of havoc behind the aircraft and was not good for the health and safety of the ground crew and their equipment. As well as looking where I was going, I now had to keep an eye on the rpm gauge.
In the air things were better and in the Hunter T7 there was not much on my lower left or right that I needed to use or look at in flight. Two small problems did crop up during the flight trials. Both happened when I was flying with the helmet in its NBC configuration. For this the visor needed to be sealed to the helmet, so avoiding the possible ingestion of any nasties, so a large rubber device was pulled over the whole helmet, which overlapped the recessed rim of the visor by a few millimetres; inevitably this arrangement became known as ‘the Condom’. However, I now had to fly being unable to raise the visor. This gave me a problem for clearing my ears in response to the pressure changes during climbs and descents; I could not do the usual thing of pinching my nose and blowing down it to pop my eardrums back into place. Yawning and swallowing are alternatives, but they don’t always work. Something was going to have to be done.
The other problem came to light (if that’s the right term!) when we flew at low level under a large and very dark cumulonimbus cloud. The tinted part of the visor, about the upper two thirds of it, was now too dark for me to be able to continue to fly safely. I handed over to Dave until the light conditions improved. How this problem would be overcome was not at all clear (pun intended). And what about flying at night?
Other problems included misting of the visor, for which filtered air had to be provided and blown into the front of the helmet, the inability to take in-flight refreshments and blowing one’s nose. When I wrote my report I had no alternative to declare the Mk 6 HASB flying helmet unfit for purpose – in Test Pilot’s talk – unacceptable. The boffins at IAM mulled it over and finally decided to cancel any further development.
There were quite a few Hunters at Farnborough, but one of them was very special. So special that it had a unique Mark number – T12. It also had a unique colour scheme – all emerald green with white ‘go faster’ stripes; hence it was known universally as ‘the Green Hunter’. It was actually a modified F6 Hunter, tail number XE 531, which had a T7 cockpit grafted on, but it still had the bigger engine of the single-seater, giving it better performance than the other two-seat Hunters. On board the Green Hunter was a complex analogue computer system that was electrically connected to the right-hand pilot’s flying controls and the surfaces that they operate; this was known as Fly-By-Wire (FBW). The left-hand set of controls was connected to those same control surfaces in the conventional way. The Hunter had hydraulically operated lateral and longitudinal controls, whereas the rudder is manual (if that’s the right term!). The research that
this magic machine was under-taking was to do with the shaping and prioritising of control laws for the next generation of aircraft. There was also an alternative control to the usual stick; a very strange device on the right side of the cockpit. We called it the ashtray because it looked a bit like one. One placed one’s fingers in the recess at its back edge and then used them to control the aircraft in both pitch and roll.
I flew this wonderful machine only a few times; it was really the preserve of the A Flight guys, but every now and then they wanted a wider opinion of how the jet flew after yet another change to its FBW control system. I found the handling of the Green Hunter always exemplary, especially in turbulence and on the approach to land. I particularly liked using ‘the ashtray’ – real fingertip control for everything, including aerobatics and high-G turns. However, there was one ‘gotcha’ that the man in the left seat had to watch for. Because the top of Hunter’s stick is slightly angled (to allow a better view of the compass) it is easy, when holding the stick well back, for a bit of right aileron to be applied. When we did touch-and-go landings it was necessary to hold the nose wheel off the ground with a good dose of back stick, so giving rise in this jet to a problem.
Because the roll control law was what was termed as rate-demand any small amount of displacement would demand a small rate of roll. But with the main wheels on the ground no roll rate would be forthcoming. So the feedback loop would then demand more aileron and until full, aileron was applied. There was no indication of this to the man in the right seat, who was quite busy anyway, but if the man in the left seat looked down he would see that his control column was now fully deflected, because it was connected mechanically to the control surfaces. If nothing was done then everyone would get a severe shock once the Hunter lifted off and immediately tried to roll at a high rate very close to the ground. Hence during these touch-and-go landings the safety pilot had to watch the top of his stick and advise his companion if anything untoward started to happen.
Although based on an analogue computer the Green Hunter produced a wealth of data that related to and formed much of the UK research into FBW that followed using a digitally controlled FBW Jaguar and then BAe’s EAP (Experimental Aircraft Programme) research aircraft, which was an immediate predecessor of the Eurofighter. Sadly the Green Hunter met its end a few years later when the engine failed immediately after take-off; although the test pilots ejected one of them was seriously injured when he descended into the fireball.
On a lighter note, one day, I got a phone call from OC Flying, Wg Cdr David Bywater, asking me to go and see him. When I reached his office he showed me a colour photograph of a Nimrod painted in a bizarre red, white and blue colour scheme. This monstrosity – the colour scheme not the Nimrod – had emanated from HQ in London with the instruction that all MOD(PE) aircraft were to be henceforth painted in a similar manner; apparently high visibility was behind it. The basic scheme was that the whole empennage, the outer part of the wings and the nose were to be painted Post Office red and then the rest of the upper surfaces white and the lower parts navy blue.
‘I think that this looks really ugly and will detract greatly from the natural lines of our aircraft.’ opined the good wing commander. ‘You’re a bit of an artist, Mike, could you draw me a more aesthetically pleasing scheme, but using the basic arrangement of colours?’
‘Yes, I think so, sir. I certainly agree that this design does no favours for the aeroplane’s looks. Where did this come from? I thought that the latest thinking was that an all-black colour scheme was the best high visibility scheme.’
‘I think it came from boffins at the Royal Radar Establishment in Malvern. But we’ll have to go along with it as our lord and masters have so decreed. However, I think that a bit of adaptation will be acceptable. I’ll worry about that; you get your crayons out and let me have something in a couple of days.’
‘OK, sir, but which of our aircraft should I use?’
‘A two-seat Hunter.’
So I saluted smartly and went back to my office to start colouring-in. At least if the Boss caught me I could say it was official duty! A few days later I put a couple of schemes to the wing commander. ‘Thanks, Mike, that’s better. Leave it with me.’
A few months later Hunter T8 XF 321 went off to be painted and was returned to us looking resplendent in its conformal red, white and blue livery. This was the start of the programme to repaint all the MOD(PE) aircraft in what would quickly become known as the ‘raspberry ripple’ colour scheme. That summer the International Air Tattoo was held at RAF Greenham Common. The central theme was the Silver Anniversary of the Hawker Hunter and twenty-five Hunters were lined up in the centre of the static display. During the show there was to be a Concours d’Honneur with a prize going to the best turned out participant. Vic Lockwood had flown our uniquely painted Hunter there and at the party marking the end of the show he was summoned from the assembled company to go up to receive first prize from no less an aviation personage than Douglas Bader, the legless fighter ace. Fortunately Vic had not imbibed too much and accepted gracefully from the great man a painting of the all-red Hunter WB 188 in which Neville Duke had gained the World Speed Record on 7 September 1953. Actually the prize came in two parts because the artist, Wilf Hardy, was then commissioned to paint a picture of the winning Hunter in flight over its base. Eventually both paintings hung proudly in the corridors of EFS.
Following this triumph, David Bywater then had another arty job for me. He wanted all our bonedomes painted in a matching scheme with the silhouette of a pterodactyl in a white roundel at the back. The pterodactyl was featured on the RAF Farnborough badge. I drew a couple of options, he then chose one and then I had to enter into careful negotiations to get the helmets painted. There was a question over the type of paint, because of the possibility of a reduction of structural integrity, but in the end at least the wing commander’s and my helmet were painted. I’m not sure many others were too keen!25
On even-numbered years Farnborough became the location for an International Air Show organised by the Society of British Aerospace Companies (SBAC). In 1976 everything kicked off about six months before the first week of September, when the show was due to be held. The terraced hill to the south-east of the main runway started to be furnished with blue and white striped tenting; these would become the company hospitality chalets. The main covered exhibition area, under a series of huge marquees, was taking shape at the top of the hill and lorries arrived on a daily basis loaded with metal crowd barriers. We carried on regardless.
But with three weeks to go our trials activities started to wind down so that by the beginning of the week before the show started there was to be no flying, other than the essential ferries from Transport Flight. The week preceding the show was reserved for visiting and participating aircraft to arrive and, for those displaying, to fly their individual routines so that they could gain approval from the Flying Control Committee (FCC). They were a group of experienced test pilots, led by COEF.
So our usual gainful employment as experimental tps was put on hold and we became general dogsbodies for the folks running the show. Mostly this meant driving out to meet and greet the visiting aircrews and get their baggage. Then we had to ensure that they had the required documentation – the most important of which was their insurance policy – guide them to the operations area, and then request those flying in the show submit their display routines to the FCC and agree a date and time for their practice.
It was great to meet all these pilots from other nations and chat to them about their aircraft. Two particularly delightful guys were test pilots from the Italian Aermacchi company: Ricci Durione and Franco Bonazzi. They were flying a pair of brand-new Aermacchi MB-339 trainers. When they arrived it was still only three weeks since the aircraft’s first flight, made by Franco. Rich Rhodes and I helped them familiarise themselves with Farnborough, the local area and the display regulations.
During this ‘work-up’ period I met many fam
ous test pilots: Paul Millet and Dave Eagles flying the Tornado, Duncan Simpson flying the Hawk trainer and John Farley amazing everyone with the Harrier. From the USA there was Pat Henry flying the new F-15 Eagle, the legendary Neil Anderson flying the very pretty F-16 Fighting Falcon and Hank Chouteau flying the still experimental YF-17. The American aircraft were presented in eye-catching red, white and blue liveries to celebrate the bicentennial of their nation’s independence. Then there was the formidable team from Dassault Aviation in France, led by their CTP Jean-Marie Saget. All of these doyens of aviation put on immaculate shows and, along with the rest, were cleared to fly in front of the trade visitors and the public during the week that followed. The last three days of the show would be the public days when items from a broader spectrum would be included; such as the Red Arrows, and the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight’s Lancaster, Spitfire and Hurricane. There was also the RN Historic Flight’s Fairey Swordfish and Sea Fury – the latter flown by Lt Cdr Pete Sheppard, whom I had last met when we were displaying our aircraft at Royal Danish Air Force Air Days in 1966.26
Of course there were many other lesser-known pilots working hard to show off their wares to the world. One of these was a particularly engaging character. I’m sad that I cannot now recall his name but he was a small, middle-aged Australian flying a small, boxy twin-turboprop transport aircraft with a STOL capability. The aeroplane was called the GAF Nomad and our Aussie test pilot managed a spirited but limited display every day. Each morning the pilots would arrive from their hotels, hopefully in time for the daily briefing, despite having to battle with the crowds making their way to Farnborough for the air show. On his first morning the Nomad pilot arrived and announced to us all: ‘The hotel I’m staying at doesn’t have coffee-making facilities in the room. I can’t get going without caffeine so I had to throw myself down the stairs to bump-start me heart!’
