{"id":621,"date":"2008-06-10T11:09:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-10T10:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.royalhigh.org.uk\/wordpress\/former-rhs-pupil-eric-brown\/"},"modified":"2008-06-10T11:09:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-10T10:09:00","slug":"former-rhs-pupil-eric-brown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.royalhigh.org.uk\/wordpress\/former-rhs-pupil-eric-brown\/","title":{"rendered":"Former RHS Pupil Eric Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"From &#8211; The Scotsman 12\/05\/2008<br \/>A PENSIONER who holds the title of being the world&#8217;s most prolific test<br \/>pilot will be awarded with an honorary doctorate by Edinburgh University.<br \/><br \/>Captain Eric &#8216;Winkle&#8217; Brown, 89, who once crashed while performing a<br \/>demonstration for Sir Winston Churchill, will be awarded the degree next<br \/>month by his alma mater in honour of his distinguished career .<br \/><br \/>The former Royal Navy officer&#8217;s career almost ended before it began when he<br \/>was captured by the Gestapo as a modern languages undergraduate on exchange<br \/>in Nazi Germany. But he was mistakenly released by the SS, who failed to<br \/>realise he was an RAF volunteer service pilot &#8211; and later ended up<br \/>interrogating key Nazi figures including Herman Goering to learn from their<br \/>advanced aviation technology.<br \/><br \/>Now he is in the Guinness Book of World Records for notching up 487 test<br \/>flights, having served as the chief test pilot at the Royal Aircraft<br \/>Establishment in Farnborough.<br \/><br \/>And his long career included 11 near fatal accidents, such as when he<br \/>crashed before the former war prime minister at Donibristle in 1941, falling<br \/>into the Firth of Forth and ending up with a broken nose and arm.<br \/><br \/>Captain Brown, who gave up his wings at 72, said: &#8220;I was surprised and very<br \/>honoured to be awarded the doctorate. Studying modern languages at Edinburgh<br \/>University gave me an exciting part of my life, going to Germany and then<br \/>spending time interrogating people.<br \/><br \/>&#8221; I loved the challenge of flying. Speed is like an aphrodisiac, and I love<br \/>fast aeroplanes, like I love fast cars. But I realise my reactions are now<br \/>not as quick as they used to be.&#8221;<br \/><br \/>Captain Brown inherited his love of planes from his father, a pilot in the<br \/>Royal Flying Corps during the First World War.<br \/><br \/>Originally from Edinburgh, he learned to fly alone as a student with the<br \/>university air squadron.<br \/><br \/>After 42 years serving as a Royal Navy officer, he is the Fleet Air Arm&#8217;s<br \/>most decorated pilot and also holds the world record for the most carrier<br \/>landings, 2,407.<br \/><br \/>His book on his adventures, Wings on My Sleeve, has sold 30,000 copies since<br \/>first being published in 1961.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From &#8211; The Scotsman 12\/05\/2008A PENSIONER who holds the title of being the world&#8217;s most prolific testpilot will be awarded with an honorary doctorate by Edinburgh University.Captain Eric &#8216;Winkle&#8217; Brown, 89, who once crashed while performing ademonstration for Sir Winston Churchill, will be awarded the degree nextmonth by his alma mater in honour of his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.royalhigh.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.royalhigh.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.royalhigh.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.royalhigh.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.royalhigh.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.royalhigh.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.royalhigh.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.royalhigh.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.royalhigh.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}