by Phil Delnon
It's hard for us in our Soulless Age to realise just how open and artless the world could be not so very long ago. One evening in 1930 the Prince of Wales simply dropped in to Westland's - almost literally, arriving unannounced and unescorted apart from the pilot of his Westland Wessex. The factory had closed and everyone had left except for Penrose, whose wife had just arrived to drive him home. She promptly made a pot of tea, and Penrose hurried to the 'phone... Innocent days.
That same Summer Penrose had another memorable meeting, this time with Louis Brennan, then in his seventies but still inventing. Brennan had made his money from the invention of an effective torpedo; since then he had been working at various vehicles of radical design. His monorail train had not been adopted, and the same was to happen to the design he showed now: a bicycle car held upright by two counter-rotating gyroscopes. Penrose was allowed to drive this and reports it as the smoothest-riding road vehicle he had tried so far.
Of more direct interest to Westland were Brennan's experiments with helicopters: what might have come of this remains an imponderable, for Brennan was -ironically- knocked down by a conventional car only four months later, and died that Winter.
Meanwhile Westland's PV6 fighter aircraft was edging its way forwards towards modernity - and to a date with destiny. Still a biplane, still with a fixed undercarriage and still with open cockpits for pilot and gunner, it now boasted brakes on the wheels, a more streamlined fuselage and an aerodynamic cowling round its Bristol Pegasus engine. This brought her up to the hectic speed of 162mph.
By now the Air Ministry was issuing detailed operational requirements for new aircraft - this was starting to whittle away at the more subjective criteria of individual test pilots, however famous. Test-flying now started to accrue an increasing number of mundane routines - but dull it was not. Penrose reports being lost above cloud and deciding to carry on until sure he was over the sea before starting to come down, to leave more room for manoeuvre. He needed it: when he emerged into daylight he was flying upside-down and diving into the Channel. It took 500 feet to put that right.
Sometimes he had an observer as passenger to take readings, much as he had been doing a few years earlier: and on another memorable flight he found that the aileron covers had blown open. Lest they be torn off by the slipstream he throttled back, stood up and reached forwards to close them. Movement from behind warned him to turn round just in time to see his panicky observer preparing to bale out, imagining that the plane was going to crash and Penrose had forgotten him.
Penrose is honest enough to admit that the observer's second fear was in fact well-founded.
Penrose had yet another interesting flight soon afterwards, trying the new 10-seater version of the tri-motor Wessex. You might imagine that lengthening the craft might not make too much difference to its handling. Big mistake: Penrose discovered that he simply could not move the rudder. How to turn? He used the throttle and ran the outer motors at different speeds, and so made a happy return. Happier still, as when flying a civilian aircraft he wasn't given a parachute...
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