Episode 40: April 2nd 2011: Gagarin in London : Captain Eric Brown

Scroll down for the options to play audio and video. On the third
of Gagarin’s five days in Britain, immediately following his
meeting with Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, on Thursday, 13th
July 1961, he had the only private meeting of his visit with
Captain Eric Brown, where the press was not invited, no photographs
were taken, and no official record was kept.  During this
“test pilot” to “test pilot” meeting, Gagarin clearly told Brown
that he had ejected from his spacecraft. Although not in the same
league as Brown, Brown considered Gagarin to be a test pilot. The
Soviets consistently maintained that he had not, but eventually, a
decade later, they conceded officially that Gagarin had bailed out
and landed by parachute. When I asked Captain Brown why he had
never published the details of his private meeting before, “no one
asked me before” replied. At the time, Captain Brown was the deputy
director of Naval Air Warfare, and the meeting took place between
him, his deputy and a colleague from the Admiralty who could speak
Russian, but that was kept secret from Gagarin and Belitsky. Brown
sought additional confidence that the translator was translating
sincerely. Captain Brown has had a unique career as a test pilot.
He had met many of the key players in aviation and rocket design.
Hanna Reitsch, Hermann Göring und Wernher von Braun. Brown’s
achievements as a test pilot were well established and it is
probably with the knowledge of his accomplishments that the Soviets
agreed to such a meeting. Brown still holds the world record in
deck landings (2407) and the number of aircraft types flown (487).
He also has several firsts (the first deck landing of a twin-engine
aircraft and the first deck landing of a jet engine), of which the
Russians and Gagarin would have been aware. By 1960, many of his
books were available in translation in technical colleges, which
young aviators like Gagarin would have come across. It is likely
that Gagarin knew of Brown and wanted to meet Brown just as much as
Brown wanted to meet Gagarin. Immediately following the war, Brown
was inevitably involved in supersonic flight testing, reaching
speeds up to Mach 0.9. He was testing a secret high-performance
aircraft designated as the Miles M52, which was suddenly and
suspiciously dropped in 1946. Had it not been, it was very likely
that Brown would have added first supersonic flight to his
collections of firsts. In the event, Chuck Jaeger in the USA
claimed that achievement in 1947. He is considered by some in
the aviation industry to be the greatest test pilot ever. An
extensive interview, recorded in his home on 19th January two days
before his 92nd birthday, is edited specifically for his
recollections about Yuri Gagarin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIvHDMRlVe4