Eric 'Winkle' Brown, the doyen of British test pilots, had an incredible life and was, in his later years, recognised as a national treasure. Paul Beaver has had unfettered access to Brown's personal archive, to recount a story "Winkle insisted could only be told after his death'! This much becomes apparent in covering such matters as how he was actually born in Hackney, rather than Scotland, and how he was put up for adoption at just a few months old. A project in which Brown was intimately involved, as project test pilot, was the Miles M52. In the chapter 'The Sound Barrier,' he reveals his thoughts about the supersonic flight and his bitter regret at the M52's cancellation that resulted in the "glittering prize of supersonic flight" being handed to the Americans, with the Bell X-1. As to the oft-discussed question of how far the construction of the flight-capable prototype (as opposed to the mock-up, which features in several contemporary photos) had progressed, there is no further elucidation. This is a question I posed to Brown on three occasions over a period of years. He was adamant that the aircraft was all but ready to fly "apart from the undercarriage"; with his closeness to the project, it might seem churlish to question this further.
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