ERNEST BRIAN TRUBSHAW (1924-2001) BRITISH TEST PILOT Brian Trubshaw became one of the best-known test pilots in the world. He was the chief test pilot on the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic airliner and led the team which conducted the huge test flight programme from the British Aircraft Corporation/British Aerospace Flight Test Centre at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. Trubshaw and his co-pilot, John Cochrane, made the maiden flight of the British-assembled Concorde 002 from Filton in Bristol to RAF Fairford on April 9 1969. ‘It was a wizard flight’ he said later and acknowledged that ‘the eyes of millions of people all over the world were focused on us’. Born on January 29 1924, the son of Major H.E. Trubshaw, then managing the family tinplate company in Llanelli, Brian had been captivated by flying since the age of 10 when he saw the Prince of Wales’s aircraft land on the beach at Pembrey, Carmarthenshire, not far from the family home. Educated at Twyford preparatory school and Winchester College, he joined the Officers Air Training Corps and decided to make the RAF his career, signing up at Lords Cricket Ground in August 1942. After flying training in the United States he returned to Britain in December 1943 and joined Bomber Command in 1944, flying Stirlings and Lancasters. His flying skills were described as exceptional and in 1946 he joined the Kings Flight, then equipped with Vickers Viking transports. His first duty was on the 1947 Royal Tour of South Africa. Following further training at the Empire Flying School and the RAF Flying College from 1949-50, Trubshaw joined Vickers-Armstrong as an experimental test pilot in May 1950, under the legendary Mutt Summers at the company’s flight test airfield at Wisley, near Weybridge in Surrey. He began by flying the trio of Vickers aircraft that were among the pioneers of jet transport – the Rolls-Royce Nene-powered Viking, the first airliner to be powered exclusively by jet propulsion; the Rolls-Royce Dart propeller-turbine powered Viscount 630 prototype airliner; and the experimental RollsRoyce Tay-powered Viscount prototype. He remained at Vickers for thirty years, becoming chief test pilot in 1960, and director of test flights from 1966. Trubshaw worked on the development of the Valiant V-Bomber, the Vanguard, the VC10 and the BAC 1-11. His coolness in saving Britain’s prototype VC10 from disaster on an early flight test won him the Derry and Richards Memorial Medal for ‘Outstanding test flying contributing to the advance of aviation’ in 1965. Structural failure had been threatened when an elevator section broke loose and the aircraft shook ‘as though the tail was shaking the dog’. He could not read the instruments because of the violent motion but broadcast to base the nature of the trouble. However, he managed to land the aircraft with only half the elevator control, later describing this manoeuvre as ‘one of my trickier moments’. During the 1950s the British and French governments had been conducting studies into the practical possibility of supersonic transports and on 29 November 1962 both governments signed an agreement to ‘develop and produce jointly a civil supersonic transport, on the basis of equal sharing between the two countries’. The agreement contained a nobreak clause on the basis that it would not be reasonable for one partner to drop out in the middle of the programme, both sides having committed substantial resources to the programme. Development of the aircraft proved problematic, as costs rose from £140 million to more than £280 million. Following a change of government in the autumn of 1964, Roy Jenkins (Lord Jenkins) minister of aviation, informed the French that the British government wished to cancel the project on the grounds of costs. However, Harold Wilson, the prime minister, was warned by his attorney-general that unilateral withdrawal could result in substantial damages and the doors of the Common Market would be closed forever. Roy Jenkins came back from France with a bloody nose and Harold Wilson had to admit defeat! Concorde (the French having insisted on the final ‘e’) eventually went into commercial service on January 21 1976 when British Airways flew to Bahrain and Air France to Rio de Janeiro simultaneously. Trubshaw retired in 1986 at the age of 62 and was thereafter widely sought after as an aviation consultant, notably in charge of the flying displays at successive Farnborough air shows for many years.
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