Coolest Pilot!

[jamesc]

I will start the ball rolling with Brian Trubshaw, the Concorde test pilot and Mark Hanna, who flew various aircraft at airshows worldwide.

James

[BLUETHUNDER]

Any pilot from the empire test pilots school at boscombe down.

[jamesc]

Funny you should mention the "Empire Test Pilots' School"!! Take a look at this:

www.power-aerobatics.co.uk

Run by a couple of graduates.

James

[anonymous-user]

Mike Bannister, The pilot who took Concorde back into the air in 2001.

[ABBTVR]

Douglas Bader,
The Battle of Britain, RAF "legless" (not drunk) Spitfire pilot.

Big Al.

[tvradict]

All of the 22 Pilots who looped 22 Hunters at Farnborough in 1959 (I think) Something that hasn't even been attempted since

[Eric Mc]

A-ha, a topic woth discussing. How about Chuck Yeager (first man through the sound barrier)?
ANYONE who flew the North American X-15.
Roland Beamont - first to fly both the English Electric Canberra and Lightning.
John Cunningham - RAF Night Fighter ace and first to fly the De Havilland Comet, Trident and DH125 executive jet.
Neil Williams - aerobatic champion and film stunt pilot (keep an eye out for him in "Aces High".
If you're going to mention Concorde test pilot Brian Trubshaw (also the first to fly the Vickers Vanguard and VC-10), you also have to mention the French pilot Andre Turcat who took the prototype Concorde up on its first ever flight.

I might come up with more later

>> Edited by Eric Mc on Sunday 19th January 12:50

[big_man]

Has to be Hans Solo piloting the millenium falcon.

[anonymous-user]

Anyone brave enough to fly an F104 Starfighter.

[jamesc]

The BBC programme on the Empire Test Pilots School has to be one of my all time favourites.

James

[Eric Mc]

In actual fact, the F-104's safety record was on a par with many of its contemporaries. The Lightning actually hada a worse loss rate. The F-104 acquired a bad reputation in Luftwaffe service. The Germans trained their F-104 pilots at Luke AFB in the Nevada desert and then expected them to perform low level multi-role missions in European weather conditions. The old German joke was - "How does one acquire a Starfighter?" - Answer "Just buy a field and wait".

[PatHeald]

That bloke from "The Flight of the Phoenix".

[DJFish]

Has to be a tossup between:

Leonard Cheshire

Guy Gibson

The Eagle pilot who made Clarkson Yak on Extreme machines

The Tornado pilot who once told me you could listen to rock music on a tornado's audio tape bomb data computer thingy

The chap who was a test pilot on the boeing 707 project who was called something like 'Dick Splash'

[Eric Mc]

The real pilot in The Flight of the Phoenix was Paul Mantz who was a legendary film stunt pilot. Unfortunately, during the making of the film, The Phoenix crashed and Mantz was killed. Most of the flying shots seen in the movie therefore had to be faked.

[Deester]

ME!

[jmorgan]

The first one to handbrake turn the shuttle on landing

[Eric Mc]

Not that absurd actually - the Shuttle uses differential braking to assist steering on the round out. Tyres have blown on a number of landings.

[littlegearl]

"otto" the inflatable emergancy pilot from the film "airplane!"

[roop]

Roland Beaumont - Lightning, Canberra and TSR2
Neville Duke - Hawker Hunter
Chuck Yeager - X-1
Ray and Mark Hanna (RIP) - Anything with wings

Bit lower-key, but I also think Brian Lecomber, Nigel Lamb and Kirby Chambliss are a dab-hand...

[LRdriver]

the 707 driver was Al Johnston, he was the guy who barrel rolled the airplane during a customer demonstration...
speaking of the Shuttle, they almost pancaked it infront of princecharles and other VIPs in the early days due to bugs still messing with early fly-by-wire systems.