Cold War Test Pilot

The Falkland Islands had been invaded, and a British Task Force was already heading south at full speed. Harriers aboard the carriers were to provide air protection for the troops and ships sent to win the islands back. The aircraft would be flying into especially dangerous airspace, so its capabilities had to be widened and proven in a hurry. That demanding job fell to Ron Burrows and the pilots of his elite Fighter Test Squadron at Boscombe Down.

From the 1960s to the 1990s, Burrows test-flew every RAF fast-jet of that era. Along the way he survived two crash landings, two emergency ejections and many other narrow escapes. He eventually became chief test pilot at the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment. His career includes four test flying tours and close air support sorties in Hunters during the Aden Emergency, and it spans the last critical decades of the Cold War.

A graduate of the US Navy's test pilot school, Burrows has flown a wide mix of American and British aircraft, from fast-jets to heavy multi-engine machines. Drawing on that experience, he explains the methods, techniques and demands of test flying, with many examples of what can go wrong during aircraft development and trials.

His accounts of near misses and catastrophic accidents are vivid and frank. He also covers the skills needed to fly and test fast-jets, the evolution of cockpit displays and design, and the problems that surfaced both during development and once aircraft were in service. A fitting subtitle would be a line about anything that can go wrong eventually going wrong.