Eric Brown

Royal Navy test pilot who flew more types of aircraft than anyone in the history of aviation. Born on 21 January 1919 in Leith, Scotland. In 1936 he went with his father to the Berlin Olympics, where he met Ernst Udet, who took him flying and advised him to learn German. The advice proved decisive. He read languages at Edinburgh University and was in Germany on an exchange when war broke out; the Gestapo arrested him, held him for three days and expelled him. He served in the Fleet Air Arm with 802 Squadron aboard the escort carrier HMS Audacity, covering Atlantic convoys. On 21 December 1941 Audacity was torpedoed; two of the squadron's pilots survived, Brown among them. From 1943 he was a test pilot at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. He tested the first jets, made the first landing of a tricycle-undercarriage aircraft on a carrier and the first landing of a jet on a flight deck. After the war he led the unit that flew captured German aircraft, including the Me 262 jet and the rocket-powered Me 163. His German allowed him to interview the enemy's designers and pilots himself — Willy Messerschmitt, Kurt Tank, Hanna Reitsch. He was also among the first British personnel into Belsen, and gave evidence afterwards. He flew 487 types and made 2,407 deck landings; neither figure has been surpassed. He died on 21 February 2016.