User:KreyszigB/RolandBeamont

Intro ...
Wing Commander Roland Prosper "Bee" Beamont, CBE, DSO & Bar, DFC & Bar (10 August 1920 – 19 November 2001) was a British fighter pilot for the Royal Air Force and an experimental test pilot during and after the Second World War. He was the first British pilot to exceed Mach 1 in a British aircraft in level flight (P.1A), and the first to fly a British aircraft at Mach 2 (P.1B).

During the Second World War service in the Royal Air Force, he flew more than five hundred operational sorties, He spent several months as a Hawker experimental test pilot developing the Hawker Typhoon and Tempest, and was responsible for introducing these types into operational squadron service. He pioneered the ground attack capabilities of the Typhoon and led the air to air campaign against the V-1 flying bomb

In 1945 he commanded the Air Fighting Development Squadron| at RAF Central Fighter Establishment, before leaving the service in 1947. During his subsequent career as English Electric Aviation chief test pilot (and later for BAC), he directed the flight test programmes of the Canberra, the Lightning, and TSR.2. making the maiden flight of each type.

In 1955 Beamont was appointed flight operations manager and in I960, a special director of English Electric Aviation and flight operations director in 1965. When he retired from test flying in 1968, he had flown 167 different types during a total of 5,100hr and 8,000 flights—of which more than 1,100 were supersonic. He set three Atlantic records in the Canberra, including Britannia Trophy for the first double Atlantic flight in one day. in 1971. he became Panavia flight operations director, responsible for the testing of the Tornado, he retired in August 1979 following the maiden flight of the first production Tornado. After retirement he contributed to aviation journals and wrote a number of books about his experiences.

Beamont was a careful flyer who thought deeply about the capabilities of the aircraft he flew. It was a source of quiet pride to him that he had never broken an aircraft, nor had to bale out or eject. Even when shot down he had brought his Tempest in to the best landing possible in the circumstances and got out, free of injury.

Lightning
The Englsh Electric P.1 was to be the RAF's first Mach 2 interceptor and to achieve that speed it was a radical design with a 60° wing sweep. To gain relevant experience, Beamont flew the Short SB.5 fitted with the 60° sweep wing and Hunter II(WB202) (with the AS Sapphire Engines in April 1953. He made 23 test flights in the SB.5 up to May 1954.. In July, Beamont was put in overall charge of flight test work at Boscombe Down when the P.1 was moved there prior to its first flight. He made a number of short hops in the P.1A during during taxi runs between July and August. The first flight had bee originally scheduled for the 3 August, but Beamont accidentally triggered the engine bay fire extinguishers while reviewing the check lists, causing a delay while the engine bays were cleaned. On 4 August 1954 he made the first flight,  which he described this as "classic technical success", albeit with a complete breakdown in radio communication between the pilots and ATC. One week later during its third flight, WG760  achieved achieved Mach 1 in level flight for the first time. He followed this with a period of development flying  in which he explored the envelope of the P1 culminating in a flight to Mach 1.5 in February 1956-

On 4 April 1957 He made the first flight of the P.1B (XA847, fitted with Avon engines, exceeding Mach 1. On the 25th November he reached Mach 2, the first time in a British aircraft

TSR2
TSR-2 was conceived as a low-level supersonic interdictor aircraft. By September 1964 the flight test programme was 18 months behind schedule, the undercarriage was complex and unreliable; the engine development (Bristol Olympus Mk.320) had been delayed by a series of catastrophic failures. When the airframe was ready for flight, the cause of the engine failures had not been rectified. . On the 26th September 1964 a meeting was held at which the airworthiness of the engine was debated. As the test pilot, Beamont was allowed to decide if it should be flown the next day. He stated said that "...in view of the mounting political pressures on the programme, it might be acceptable to take this level of risk for one flight only. But if we did then ... we do not fly again until we have fully adequately modified engines for the programme". Beamont made the first flight from  Boscombe Down the next day (27 September 1964).The initial 15 minute test flight was with the undercarriage down and engine power strictly controlled. Despite this, Beamont noted that it was an impressively precise and controllable aeroplane.

Over the following three months the engines were modified and the undercarriage cleared for retraction, allowing the second flight to take place on 31 December 1964. Running short of day light, Beamont took off at 2:40 pm. Once airborne he noted poor forward vision, which he initially thought was due to glare from the low sun until he realised that his instrument panel also appeared blurred. Realising this was due to high frequency vibration affecting his eyes he throttled back No. 1 engine, determining the engine speed range over which this vibration was a problem. This problem forced Beamont to land XR219 with asymmetric thrust.

Beamont was unable to retract the undercarriage satisfactorily on the third and fourth flights. On the fifth flight the undercarriage bogies jammed in a vertical orientation. He understood that this could cause a catastrophe on landing and offered the project navigator, Don Bowen, the opportunity to "use the Martin Baker Mk 5 ejection seat. Don Bowen declined. Beamont was confident in the XR219's precise flying, so made a long approach at low decent rate (0.12m/s) and successfully rotated the bogies on landing.

On the tenth flight Beamont successfully retracted the undercarriage, he cycled it twice and took XR219 out to 500kts in stages He was so confident in its handlign that he brought it down Boscombe's runway at a 100ft and 450 knots, commenting later that it had "beautiful control".

This removed the 275kt airspeed restriction, allowing beamont to accelerate to 500kts {sfnp| )

On a conventional programme we would probably have been required to land, put the aircraft up on jacks, check the recycling of the gear, see that everything was fine, then prepare it to fly again. But no - after getting the gear to work twice, with all lights working right, I went straight out to the far extent of the test programme at that time. It had a flight resonance clearance of 500 knots for that state of the flying; I took it out in stages to 500 knots on that flight. The first time we had got the undercarriage up, it was simply superb - I was so confident in it. I ended up over Boscombe Another successful TSR2 flight Down where the weather was very bad - I had got Don Bowen in the back, not quite sure what was going on, with Jimmy Dell flying chase in the Lightning, trying to keep up with me in the rain and low cloud. I brought it round "

On Flight 14 (22 February 1965) Beamont returned XR219  to BAC Warton. During the flight, he achieved exceeded Mach 1 for the first time, using dry power only. Following this, Beamont lit a single reheat unit with the result that the aircraft accelerated away from the chase Lightning.