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Working with "Winkle" Brown
Nicholas Jones • Mar 12, 2021
Working With "Winkle" Brown
By Nicholas Jones, Producer of Eric Brown – A Pilot's Story
It's now five years since I woke up with the sad thought I would never again talk to my friend Captain Eric "Winkle" Brown RN. He had died unexpectedly on the previous weekend. Only days before, I had been planning with the Hatfield Branch of the Royal Aeronautical Society how I would support Eric when he gave their prestigious Geoffrey de Havilland Lecture. It was in Eric's busy diary for April 2016 and he was eager to go.
His death at 97 came as such a shock because he seemed indestructible. Certainly, we all expected to celebrate his 100th birthday in due course. I think Eric did too, for when I last met him a few months before he died, he proudly showed me his brand new Citroën convertible. He knew fortune tended to smile on him yet he accepted this with humility. When wondering how to end my feature-length documentary Eric Brown – A Pilot's Story I settled for this delightful comment of Winkle's: "An analyst, in nineteen-eighty something or other, looked at my career and said I had eleven death-threatening accidents. So to survive those, I can't complain!"
I got to know Eric when prepping my earlier documentary Whittle – The Jet Pioneer, a TV biography of Britain's genius of the jet. By then, he was one of the very few people left who had worked with Sir Frank. One of Whittle's surviving employees took me to Eric's Sussex home to introduce me. We arrived at noon, which for Eric was ideal because he could suggest a sherry. He had a 1960s-style small bar in his living room, a feature that fascinated me as a child back then when it was the height of chic. Once we began chatting, what struck me about Eric was how quickly he came to the point. I had asked him what he thought of the idea that Hans von Ohain was 'joint inventor of the jet engine'.
Eric would have none of it. He told me he had interrogated von Ohain in 1945 and found him cagey, not least on the subject of whether he had studied the 1930s Whittle turbojet patents. "There's a lot of PR behind Ohain", he said disdainfully – and he was right. Yet I quickly realised Eric had no animosity to Germans. He moved on to tell me about the trauma of the sinking of his carrier HMS Audacity in late 1941. We listened in silence as he recalled helping his flight commander tie together twenty four sailors in the freezing Atlantic using their life belt cords, only to watch them all succumb to hypothermia and drown. His description of this is one of the most moving parts of Eric Brown – A Pilot's Story. Yet despite his horrific wartime experiences, Eric loved Germany and its culture.
He met many journalists and film-makers in his later years but I was flattered to find I was one of the few he befriended. This led to our sharing many lunches, both while working on the film together and afterwards. It was during these informal occasions, usually in The Running Horse Tavern in the RAF Club, that I began to get to know the real Winkle Brown. Whenever we met, I would wonder what this dapper man would reveal that day, over his Spanish omelette.
We all know Captain Brown for his pioneering exploits and unbeatable records as a test pilot. But what was he really like? Certainly he was most co-operative whenever I filmed him or sought access to his picture archive. However, it was away from work, at our informal meals, where I felt I found the true Winkle. It always intrigued me when his conversation turned to people in high places.
He revered Her Majesty The Queen, whom he knew from his days as her ADC. One foggy night, we were the only people in the RAF Club's magnificent Cowdray Room, seated under a portrait of Elizabeth II. He caught my eye looking up at it and smiled. "Nick, she's a wonderful woman. And she proves the saying that no matter how good a life you lead, there's nothing you can do about your children". Eric also praised Prince Charles' talents as a pilot but was less convinced about Louis Mountbatten, whom he had known at the Admiralty. "If he hadn't been royal, he would never have got past captain", he said to me angrily one day.
Eric was very political. While no nationalist, he loved his native Scotland and respected Alex Salmond. He cared rather less for another Scot, Harold Macmillan. "As prime minister, how could he tolerate Lord Boothby in his party when he was his wife's lover?" Once, in 2010, Eric suddenly said to me "How on Earth does Labour expect to win with Ed Milliband?"
As I'm the husband and father of Spanish ladies, Eric often quizzed me about Spain. In 1945, after landing his Vampire on HMS Ocean – an event I joked made him the Father of Top Gun – Eric told journalists he had fought in the Spanish Civil War for the Republic. Seventy years later, he rather respected Franco "because he was a monarchist, like me". He had interrogated some of Franco's German allies in 1945. One was Heinrich Himmler, yet Eric held him in contempt. "In the end, he was a coward".
I once asked if he knew where Himmler was buried. "Yes but I daren't say". I think Eric feared Nazi loyalists turning up at his door to ask for directions. Being old-school, his address was in Who's Who.
In December 2015 Aeroplane Monthly published an article Eric had helped me write, about his 1945 pioneer turbojet deck landing. When I rang to say it was on sale, he told me he had fallen on the underground at Westminster Station and broken some ribs. Alarmed by his subdued tone, I asked how he was. "Just treading water, Nick". Such pessimism was most unlike Eric, and when I rang him on January 20th 2016 to wish him a happy birthday the next day, he sounded more ebullient. He was going to spend it in London as the lunch guest of the First Sea Lord.
In February, I relayed Eric's optimism to the Hatfield RAeS chaps and they were confident he would be able to give their de Havilland lecture in April. Yet shortly afterwards he fell ill and was taken into hospital. A few days later he died. In my next email to Hatfield I wrote "I am still in state of disbelief that this great man has died. He became such a part of my life".
I was quickly asked to write obituaries for Aeroplane and Flyer magazines and to step into Eric's shoes to give his de Havilland Lecture. It was a daunting task but I decided to present it as a tribute talk, supported by clips of his amazing testimony from Eric Brown – A Pilot's Story. Aware of how badly Eric was missed, I began by saying "It's most unusual to be giving a talk where I know both you and I would rather someone else were giving it, in this case Winkle Brown".
And so began my new role, of helping preserve the memory of Captain Brown. It joined my existing mission, to keep alive the legacy of Sir Frank Whittle. To pursue this work further, I've now launched this blog. Much of my career as a film-maker has revolved around these two men, whom I met often. I've acquired many insights into their lives, which I would now love to share with you via posts like this. It offers a unique way to bring alive history's greatest aero-engineer and its greatest pilot, patriots who symbolise my blog's theme of British Aviation Genius.
Finally, this year marks the 80th anniversary of the first flight of Whittle's jet engine, in the Gloster E28/39. Now is the perfect time for me to use this platform to launch a campaign for a statue to Sir Frank Whittle in London. Where better to place it than Trafalgar Square?
If you wish to buy Eric Brown – A Pilot's Story please visit this website's DVD store.