Captain Brian Trubshaw (deceased)

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Ernest Brian Trubshaw was born on January 29th 1924 and educated at Winchester, where he was captain of cricket. He had been captivated by flying since the age of 10, when he saw the Prince of Wales' aircraft land on the beach at Pembrey, Carmarthenshire, not far from where his family then lived. In 1942, he signed up for the RAF, training on a Stearman biplane in America. He joined Bomber Command in 1944, flying Stirlings and Lancasters, before transferring the next year to Transport Command. His flying skills were rated as exceptional and, in 1946, he joined the King's Flight, piloting George VI and other members of the Royal Family; he was occasionally roped in for after-dinner games with the young Princesses at Balmoral. After teaching at the Empire Flying School and the RAF Flying College from 1949-50, Trubshaw was almost sent to Malaya as one of only two RAF pilots who also had helicopter experience. Instead, he was given permission to leave the service to become a test pilot for Vickers-Armstrong, where he remained for 30 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 VC-10, and the BAC-111, all of which he test flew. His coolness in saving Britain's prototype VC-10 from disaster on an early test flight 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. Trubshaw could not read the instruments because of the violent motion, but broadcast to base the nature of the trouble in case he could not get back. He then managed to land the aircraft with only half the elevator control. He later described this manoeuvre as one of my trickier moments. Three years earlier, Trubshaw had been awarded the same medal for his work in the early 1950s on the Valiant jet bomber, on which he tested the delivery system for Britain's first atom bomb, the 10,000 lb Blue Danube. In 1985, on the eve of his retirement, Trubshaw revealed that while flying a Valiant V-bomber, he had been compelled to drop a concrete replica of the weapon into the Thames estuary. Prior to joining the Concorde project, he also flew V-bombers, the aircraft responsible for the nuclear deterrent of the UK. He was the original test pilot for Concorde, Trubshaw flew the British-assembled Concorde 002 from Filton in Bristol to RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, on April 9 1969. and was awarded the OBE and CBE. He died 25th March 2001.

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