Famous Test Pilots Civil & Military

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Test pilot

A test pilot is an aviator who flies new and modified aircraft in specific maneuvers, known as flight test techniques or FTTs, allowing the results to be measured and the design to be evaluated.

Test pilots may work for military organizations or private, (mostly aerospace) companies. Testing military aircraft, in particular, is regarded as the most challenging and risky flying conducted in peacetime.

Qualifications

A test pilot must be able to:

Understand a test plan;
Stick to a test plan, flying a plane in a highly specific way;
Carefully document the results of each test;
Have an excellent feel for the aircraft, and sense exactly how it is behaving oddly if it is doing so;
Solve problems quickly if anything goes wrong with the aircraft during a test;
Cope with many different things going wrong at once.

Test pilots must have an excellent knowledge of aeronautical engineering, in order to understand how they are tested and why. Test pilots must be above average pilots with excellent analytical skills and the ability to fly accurately whilst following a flight plan.

 

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Francis_T._Evans

He explored the best way to recover from spins

 

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Charles Yeager in front of his Bell X-1 which broke the sound barrier in 1947

 

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Erich_Warsitz became the worlds first official jet pilot when he piloted the Heinkel He 178 in 1939

Replica of the He 178, the world's first Turbojet powered aircraft

 

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Glen Edwards

Edwards Air Force Base in California was named after him when the Northrop YB-49 he was testing crashed in 1948

In his diary he wrote about the YB-49 that it was "the darndest airplane I've ever tried to do anything with. Quite uncontrollable at times."

 

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Albert Scott Crossfield, the first pilot to fly at Mach 2 on a Douglas Skyrocket

 

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Test Pilot Schools around the world

Empire Test Pilots School, UK

U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School

United States Naval Test Pilot School

 

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Even in PIA after a Check-D (a complete overhaul) an aircraft must complete a Test Flight before it is brought back to service. A friend (an engineer in the airline) of mine had the chance to ride on such a flight....

He said the pilots were flying the plane as if they were motorbike stuntmen

 

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Neil_Armstrong, The first man on the moon was also a test pilot. Before that he served in the Korean war where is F9F was shot down.

 

[Chogy]

Can't leave out George Welch, who beat Yeager to break the sound barrier!

This may be new to some people... I was a bit surprised when I first learned of it, and it has fascinated me since.

The history books may be 100% wrong. Possibly suppressed or falsified for political purposes. Chuck Yeager may not have been the first man to exceed the speed of sound, and live to tell the tale. It may very well have been North American Aviation test pilot George Welch in the XP-86, the Sabre prototype.

Basic Welch background - Welch was a military pilot who managed to get airborne during the Pearl Harbor attack, and was an acknowledged expert pilot. He left the military in 1944 and was hired by North American, the famous makers of the P-51 Mustang.

The story in a nutshell: The U.S. army had millions of $$ into the X-1 program. Simultaneously, NAA was well along in its XP-86 effort. Welch was the test pilot on a flight in 1947 that preceeded Yeager's mach attempt. During the flight, Welch was examining the handling of the XP-86 in a dive, a regime later proven to exceed the speed of sound at the altitudes Welch was flying at.

The airspeed indicator wound up to about 405 mph, and seemed to get stuck there. Yet, there was no doubt that the XP-86 was still accelerating. Everything felt normal, until passing below 30,000 feet where a tendency to roll needed some minor correction. George pushed the nose over a bit more. Then, suddenly, the airspeed indicator jumped beyond 470 mph and continued to go up. Passing 25,000 feet, Welch eased back on the stick and pulled back the throttle. Once again, there was a bit of wing roll and the airspeed indicator jumped back from 520 to 450 mph (520 mph indicated translates to 720 mph true at this altitude, uncorrected).

Prior to heading back to North American to brief the engineers, George telephoned Millie Palmer. Excitedly, Millie related that a terribly loud ba-boom had nearly blown her out of bed. The time was noted and it corresponded to George’s dive. “Pancho”, Millie related, “is really pissed. You know how she feels about Yeager.” Apparently, Pancho claimed the boom was a result of mining operations going on 30 miles away to the north. Of course, no one had previously heard any mining explosions, nor could that account for rattling windows only on the east facing side of the Fly Inn. Welch chuckled and swore Millie to secrecy.

Many later analyses of this profile seem to verify that Welch had, indeed, exceeded mach 1. There are a large number of web sites devoted to the controversy. Many claim the Army refused to acknowledge the feat, and NAA kept quiet as well to keep their main customer happy.

In retrospect, it would have been a simple matter for Germany to have done this during WW2. Not with the Me-262, but with the V-2 rocket. It was within their capability to replace the warhead with a simple capsule and parachute, and launch a man into a sub-orbital flight that would have been hypersonic, over 2,700 knots.

It's an interesting story.

Was the X-1 first?, page 1

Yeager and Welch (C.C. Jordan)

 

[Jango]

Fascinating Chogy, we all know that facts can be changed or altered to suit a particular purpose.

 

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Fascinating Chogy, we all know that facts can be changed or altered to suit a particular purpose.

Speaking of claiming to break the sound barrier ...... Another Claimant is the German Me 262 pilot Hans Guido Mutke



The flight

On April 9, 1945, Fähnrich Mutke, part of the EJG2 conversion squadron, 3rd flight, took off from Lagerlechfeld in his Messerschmitt Me 262, marked Weiße 9, for a planned high-altitude flight. He was climbing through at an altitude of 12,000 m (36,000 ft) in near perfect weather with a visibility of over 100 km, listening to the radio conversations, when his chief instructor Oberstleutnant Heinz Bär detected a P-51 Mustang approaching the plane of another comrade, Unteroffizier Achammer, from behind.

Mutke went into a steep 40° dive with full engine power to assist. While passing through the altitude of 12,000 m, the Me 262 started to vibrate, combined with the plane swinging from side to side. The speedometer was stuck against its limit of 1,100 km/h (682 mph) (the maximum speed of the Me 262 is 870 km/h. The speed of sound is 1,062 km/h (670 mph) at an altitude of 12,000 m, depending on the environmental variables). The shaking increased, and rivets started popping out of their holes. Mutke temporarily lost control of his plane. He reported that with the speedometer still off the scale he attempted to recover from the uncontrollable dive by adjusting the main tailplane incidence of the Me262. Rather than just having an elevator flap, the Me262 could change the incidence of the whole tailplane, a design feature that was later added to the Bell X1. Most significantly, Mutke claimed that without decelerating, the buffeting suddenly stopped and control resumed for a few seconds but he had throttled back and his engines flamed out and after the short period of smooth flight, the buffeting resumed and craft began shaking violently again. He fought to regain control and re-light the engines eventually reducing the speed below 500 km/h. After a difficult landing, it was found that his plane was missing many rivets and also had distorted wings.

His Aircraft

 

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How could one forget the original test pilots of powered flight ... The guys who started it all

AND

GUESS WHO ???

 

[Abingdonboy]

Wright brothers of course (^^)

Another one, Baldev Singh,

Tarmak007 -- A bold blog on Indian defence: Sing is King! Baldy crowned HAL’s marketing boss

The fixed wing clan of HAL is sure to miss the soft-spoken Sqn Ldr (Retd) Baldev Singh (Baldy) in flying overalls, after he was formally crowned as the Company’s new marketing head. Baldy too will miss his undying tryst with the throttle. An HAL release says that he took over as the new Director Corporate Planning & Marketing on August 16 – to be seated at its HQ on Bangalore’s famous Cubbon Road – now defaced by the metro rail work. Baldy was Executive Director Flight Operations and the Chief Test Pilot (Fixed Wing), prior to the new assignment.
While the IJT-related incidents might have dented the spirit of Baldy and his team, insiders say that he has often kept himself out of the race from director-level opportunities in the past. “He was very much involved with the flying activities be it the IJT or Hawk. And, there could be other reasons, only he would know as to why he chose to stay away from holding top posts. Now, with him being appointed as the Director, he is sure to miss flying,” sources said. Baldy’s first task would be to chart a new flight-path for HAL’s marketing and corporate planning wings. With HAL sitting on a pile of projects, corporate planning becomes a vital cog in the wheel. He will also have to deal with an extremely mediocre head in Nayak, whose term will finally end on October 31 this year – a keenly awaited day by many in the Company. With defence minister Antony making a statement in the floor of the Parliament that the IAF is not trying to take control of HAL, it is now certain that a civilian is sure to take charge, try and save the sinking fortunes of the Company. By the time, hopefully Baldy would have got a grip on his men and machines!
THE MAN: Sqn Ldr Baldev Singh did early schooling in Bangalore at St. Joseph European High School and later joined St. Joseph College. He joined the National Defence Academy in 1970 and graduated from the academy in December 1972 and was commissioned into the Indian Air Force in June 1973 as a fighter pilot. After doing operational flying on Hunter, Mig-21 and Mig-23 aircraft, he qualified as a Flight Instructor in July 1983, and was posted to Air Force Academy at Hyderabad for Instructional Flying Duties on the Kiran Aircraft. In 1984 he did his experimental test pilots course and was deputed to HAL in 1986. He retired from the Indian Air Force in 1989 and joined HAL. He was involved with the LCA Programme from 1990 onwards and was deputed to the Aeronautical Development Agency for this purpose. On the LCA programme he worked extensively on the development and flight testing of the flight control laws of the Light Combat aircraft. He carried out the flight evaluation of these flight control laws at the Real Time simulator at BAE Wharton in UK followed by the flight evaluation of these control laws on the F-16, Lear Jet and NT-33 aircraft in USA. He holds a diploma in Aviation Flight Safety from the Naval Post Graduate College, Monterey Bay, California, USA. He has extensive test flying experience on five prototype programmes and carried out the first flights of the HANSA aircraft and the Intermediate Jet Trainer. He has a Total Flight Test Experience of over 6000 hrs on over 55 different types of aircraft. He is a Qualified Flying Instructor and holds a diploma in Aviation Flight Safety from the Naval Post Graduate College, Monterey Bay, California, USA.

this pioneer is sort of a celebrity in his own right:

Watch from 4.30-

 

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Old news but relevant

Pakistan Air Force test pilots, Squadron Leader Muhammad Ehsan ul Haq and Squadron Leader Rashid Habib flew two sorties of 30 minutes each in the skies of Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province, China. It signifies an important day in the history of aviation in Pakistan as on this day two PAF test pilots flew the newly manufactured single-seat JF-17 ‘Thunder’ prototype-1 aircraft for the first time. During flight, the pilots evaluated the flight performance of the aircraft in different phases of flight. After landing, both the pilots reported that they were extremely happy with the excellent performance of the aircraft in all phases of its flight.

PAF JF-17 Test Pilot