by Phil Delnon
Westland had found a new test pilot, Captain Louis Paget, whose philosophy was fairly simple: Even a tea-tray will fly if you stick enough power on it. Paget was being paid £650 per annum, Penrose £250 - plus insurance of £1,000. Having now obtained his licence as a private pilot, he was passed -by Paget- to fly for Westland.
Almost at once he was asked to deliver an aircraft to Canterbury, flying it to its buyer. Navigation at that time often involved following railway-lines: when the weather started to close down, Penrose set down at the nearest convenient landing field - that of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. This proved to be not at all the high-tech set-up of mythology: Penrose found himself approaching a place devoid of activity, the narrow landing-strip lying across the wind, bordered by hangars, airship-sheds and a tall office-block. The place for flyers to sign in was, in Penrose's words, a tatty little shed.
The customer for the Westland aircraft also proved to have an Avro SE5A of World War I vintage - and even allowed Penrose to fly it. Bought as war surplus for £5 and re-engined with a 90hp Renault motor instead of its original 150hp Hispano-Suiza, it still gave Penrose a taste of the dogfighting aircraft he had seen as a boy.
As a character, Penrose is quite delightful: on the one hand he blithely reports on a prang when being flown by an Air Ministry pilot who got lost and attempted to land in far too small a field: then on the other hand he shows quite sneaky perception in seeing an advert for an aircraft company expanding into the civilian market, deducing that it is Westland, and applying for the job. He is right and he gets it, at £350 a year. Then he turns down an offer from de Havilland's, who want to take him on as a mere assistant test- and demonstration-pilot at £400 p.a, but artlessly shows the letter to his boss, thinking to show how right Westland's were to have had confidence in him - and is rather surprised when his salary is upped to £400 per annum.
He was even more surprised when de Havilland's next three test pilots - including two of Geoffrey de Havilland's own sons - were killed in test flights over the next few years.
Penrose himself had another brush with the Grey Man very soon: flying over Blackpool his plane gave a great jolt. The ailerons were immobile and both rear spar roots were dislocated; the wings folded back by half a foot and threatened to come off completely. Penrose put the aircraft into a flat turn, made a huge circle and came in to land. It must have looked quite normal, he reports.
Penrose and other test pilots accepted such happenings as part and parcel of their trade. Management sometimes took a different line, such as placing a ban on smoking. Test pilot Paget took no notice of that at all. So one day the managing director walked in, and there ensued the dialogue:
"Paget! You are smoking!"
"By gad, sir! So I am! What an extraordinary thing!"
Penrose could not have got away with that, but he did something better: he went for and won his B-licence, which involved a flight from Lympne to Croydon and a return flight at night. Around 50 miles each way, as the Moth flew, yet on a cloudy night without radio and with nothing more than a compass and the lights of the towns below, it was enough of an adventure.
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