Spitfire pilot Jeffrey Quill picked by astronaut Tim Peake

0:05The sound of one of the most distinctive planes ever made, the Supermarine Spitfire. More than 20 ,000 of these beautiful aircraft were made and they played a key role in defending Britain during the last World War. The Spitfire is not, however, our subject today, but one of its test pilots is. And I'm delighted to say that he's been nominated by an astronaut. He's with me here now, so tell us your name and tell us the name of the pilot that you've picked. Well, my name is Tim Peake. I'm a British astronaut. and the name that I've picked for today is Geoffrey Quill, a kindred spirit in many respects.

0:45I think when I read his book Spitfire, A Test Pilot Story and my wife gave me his book in 2002 as I was applying myself for test pilot school, I was just so taken by the story and his life and the matter-of-fact way that he went about his business. But, you know, Geoffrey was born in Littlehampton, I think, which is not far, just a stone's throw from Chichester, where I grew up. And so when I was reading again about his life story, I could really relate to all the places he was flying from and the experiences he was having. Do you think there are other parallels between his life and yours? Well, certainly as a test pilot, yes, and it was brilliant to read some of the old techniques they were using.

1:28Test flying today, in some respects, isn't that different. We're still needing to push aircraft to the limits. We're still testing their stability, their control, but we have a lot more instrumentation today. You know, we don't have to do everything by notebook and pencil and stopwatch. Let's hear from Geoffrey Quill. Here he is in 1970, talking about whether he ever felt any fear. I was very young when I first was with Spitfire. I was only 23 years old and I didn't think I felt it half as much as I should have done. When I look back on it now and think of, realise the issues that were at stake and what the issues would take with that little prototype airplane, the only one we had for two years.

2:09When I think of some of the things that I did with it, it makes me wake up in the middle of the night sweating. Had you heard his voice before? No, I hadn't. I mean, I love the way he speaks exactly how I would have imagined. Very calm, very cool. But actually, the stories he relates, just quite remarkable. Geoffrey Quill was born in 1913, flew a Spitfire prototype in March 1936 and died just three decades ago. So there's a possibility your paths might have crossed. He didn't really become known to me until about the early 2000s. I was aware of the name, you know, Geoffrey Quill, Mutt Summers, you know, these were names that were banded around, but I didn't get to meet him, unfortunately, a great shame.

2:52Also joining us is the aviation historian, Dr Victoria Taylor. Would you say, Victoria, that Geoffrey was a key or the key to the development of this plane? Actually, we use the word development. What was his role? I would say that Geoffrey was absolutely fundamental to the success of the Spitfire in a multitude of ways. The amount of refinements that came from his suggestions were astronomical, and they happened throughout all of the different marks of Spitfire, over 50 variants or so. He pretty much flew all of them. When he was flying in the Battle of Britain, for instance, he noticed that the side panels on the Spitfires actually gave this weird optical illusion.

3:33It basically didn't fully show the surroundings clearly. It was perspex, wasn't it? It was perspex, exactly. So it distorted it. And that was incredibly dangerous because, of course, at that time, you've got to make sure that you are scanning your surroundings more in sectors rather than just sweeping around, as most people tend to think. But also towards the end of 1940, another really important thing is that he pushes for metal skinned ailerons. So basically the controls of the aircraft are going to be a little bit smoother and lighter. That was so important when you're sort of flying over 300 miles per hour.

4:06You need to have that light touch. I think he had nine lives as a test pilot. You know, some of the remarkable things he did, he had to bail out of a Wellesley bomber at one point. And just jumping out of the aircraft is clearly a high risk activity. But then he was nearly sliced by the wing as this aircraft was just in a spin. He was parachuted right next to it. So he nearly didn't make that. You know, the number of times he would just comment very idly that the undercarriage didn't come down. So it had to do a pancake landing onto the tarmac as if it was an everyday occurrence. And there were no simulators in those days.

4:40You just had to take the risk. Well, there were simulators. Were there? But it was, you know, we're at a time where still flight is relatively modern. We've only had, really, at the turn of the century has it emerged and it's still being refined as an art. But as Tim said with the Wellesley, you know, he was very convinced that it could not go into a spin at all. He thought, nope, this is solid. We're starting to refine it. And then, of course, lo and behold, this happens. But I think what's really interesting from that story as well is that really he's the epitome of British understatement because he lands in a garden, but it's a garden of a friend of his.

5:17and he just sort of says hello to his friend. His friend grins back and says hello and then Geoffrey says, you know, I think I could do with a glass of beer bleeding from his face, you know. But at the time, just seeing the world, seeing Britain from 40 ,000 feet must have been as extraordinary, as remarkable as an astronaut you must have felt seeing the world from a much greater distance. Absolutely. And I think he would have experienced that all throughout his career when he was doing those meteorological flights as well, up to 25 ,000 feet. I remember at Boscombe Down on the test pilot scores taking a Gazelle helicopter up to 20 ,000 feet and in a single-engine helicopter with very limited control authority, that felt pretty unusual.

6:07So I can kind of sympathise with him. When did you first see the world from a very great distance? Well, from 400 kilometres was on the 15th of December in 2015, the moment the engines cut out on the Sawyer's rocket and looked out the window and we were just coasting out over the Pacific at that point. What did you feel? Oh, amazing. I mean, the rocket launch is a very violent experience in terms of power, energy, speed up to 25 times the speed of sound. So that's 17 ,500 miles per hour. And it takes a huge amount of energy to get you to that speed. So you're very aware that you've been launched into a new realm.

6:46It's a bit like diving to deep depths. You're in a hostile environment and it's taken something quite extraordinary to get you there. But then when the engine's cut out, you just get this peace and this tranquility, this beautiful silence. And you're looking down on this incredible spectacle beneath you. It's quite magical. He wasn't the first test pilot, was he? No, he wasn't the first. So Mutt Summers was the first test pilot for the Spitfire. Geoffrey soon comes in as the second, but he's the one that tends to become synonymous with the Spitfire and testing it so thoroughly over so many years.

7:22So he's so important in terms of the fact that he's the one that's having to really refine if he's feeling if the wings are not quite even. He's looking at its armament. He's looking at its overall weight and how it sort of feels in the air. And so he's with the Spitfire at the very beginning of its journey and pretty much towards the end of it as well. And I think just to put this into context as well, the Spitfire Mark I and the prototype, he flew at about three weeks, I think, after Mutt Summers. That aircraft compared to, is it the Mark 24, the last one? I mean, they are nothing like each other.

7:59They are poles apart. The aircraft, it more than doubled in all up mass. The engine, the Griffin at the end, was over twice as powerful as the original engine. These weren't just a few tweaks and a few modifications. This was an aircraft that was going through sort of Formula One pace of innovation during those war years. Let's go back to Geoffrey's early life. I feel happier calling him Geoffrey than Quill, if that's all right with both of you. His book opens with him seeing a plane land on the common between his home in Littlehampton and the sea, rather like you watching planes taking off and landing, and then later seeing another plane crash nearby.

8:40These two incidents, he says, made a considerable impression on me. I suppose they did. To some of us, they would make the impression I'm not going to be a pilot. Tell us a little, Victoria, about his family, his parents, how he was brought up. Absolutely. So what's interesting is that he is absolutely seized by aviation from such a young age. He's born just before the First World War. But when he's at school at Lansing College, he is absolutely absorbed in the library. He is going through flight magazine, aeroplane magazine, through the Royal Air Force quarterlies. That really fed into his desire to later apply for a short service commission in the RAF.

9:20Like Dan Dare in The Eagle. Absolutely. It's a lot, you know, things like that and bickles and all sorts of things. But you said Lansing College. Was it a privileged upbringing, a background? Technically privileged and also a bit more difficult for him. So very sadly, he lost his father just a year before he joined. That put a lot of strain on his mother because she had five children and Geoffrey was the youngest. So it was difficult because he was sort of trying to navigate that, the trauma, the loss, also get into grips with this life. But I think aviation, as it is for a lot of aviators, was also a sense of escape for him in that regard.

9:58And he really showed a lot of initiative going and trying to get commissioned in the RAF so that he could pay his own way because he knew that his mother wouldn't be able to help. So to have that kind of awareness in his late teens is really quite remarkable. He says his friends looked askance at his not going to university. Did you go to university? I didn't go to university. No, I was toying with the idea. I'd gone to look at Manchester. I ended up not doing particularly well in my A-levels, which teachers hate me saying when I go round and talk to school children, I got a C, a D and an E. And they're like, really?

10:32I've never worked harder since leaving school. So I didn't go to university a bit like Geoffrey. And it's been a lifelong career of learning ever since. Did your parents approve? Yeah, they've always approved of what I was doing, which for them I think was very brave. They didn't come from a military background at all. And here I was. I mean, my eldest will be approaching 18 very soon. And to think that if you don't come from that background, suddenly to see one of your children wandering off and joining the military, and that's it. And the moment you walk through those gates at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, you're in the arms of the military and it's a whole new world.

11:06In October 1931, Geoffrey Quill reported to the RAF depot in Uxbridge as an acting pilot officer on probation, aged just 18. He says he was the lowest of the low. I wonder whether he fitted in. My grandfather started in an orphanage in Derby and went up through the ranks in the RAF and ended up as a squadron leader. but I think also felt a little bit not quite part of the rather posher side of the RAF. I think he would have been a little bit unsettled by it because he's had to struggle with that change of his dad dying and then obviously his mum struggling a bit more financially. And I think you really do feel those keen differences.

11:50I'm also state school educated, so sometimes you can end up in hallowed circles and feel a little bit of an imposter and that you don't quite fit there at first. And I think also what maybe didn't help in his favour early on is that he's not described really as being the life and soul of the party. He's always been described as being a little bit serious, a little bit hesitant in his manner, but also, you know, of a good nature, sort of quietly humorous. So perhaps that kind of personality might not have completely fell to ease straight away in the RAF. You're listening to The Great Life of Geoffrey Quill, nominated by Tim Peake, and helping us with the story of his life is Victoria Taylor.

12:29Time for a pause and a voice some of you may recall, Raymond Baxter, himself a Spitfire pilot in the Second World War. This fighter was very nearly called the Shrew, scarcely a name to inspire a nation nor terrify an enemy. Sir Robert Maclean of Supermarine wrote, The name had to begin with an S, spitting venom, a thoroughly nasty and unpleasant creature to meet. Shakespeare's shrew gave me, I thought, the very word, but as I looked again at drawings of the aircraft with its eight automatic guns, the name flashed into my mind. Spitfire. And here, once again, is the voice of the test pilot, Geoffrey Quill.

13:19this was one of the tools of the trade um has in fact made two parachute descents in its time this was the thing on which you really wrote everything down uh this carried a piece of card or several pieces of card and stopwatch there and we had a lot of built-in instrumentation all sorts of special stuff festooned all around the cockpit but you had to read it yourself and write it all down i love that when he says this thing's made two parachute descents in its time What that means is he's bailed out with that thing strapped to his knees twice in his career. I just love the matter-of-fact way. He talks about the most sensational incidents.

13:58Geoffrey ends up learning initially on Avro Tutus. So these are biplanes when you think of where he's eventually going to go with the Spitfire. It's really quite different. And he's actually incredibly good in his training. He ends up going solo after five hours, 20 minutes. and the normal rate was after nine hours that you'd be trusted to go solo. So he was really exceptional. He'd also had a lot of different areas of training as well where he'd learnt to move more over into meteorological flights. They let themselves down through the cloud on a regular basis. We would do that today, going to an airfield with instrument approaches, with people talking us down.

14:39They were just letting themselves down over the sea or over low ground. On one occasion, he popped out the cloud and went straight into the ground. Thankfully, his aircraft was in a landing attitude. But he did flip over and I think he broke his nose. These were remarkable flying sorties. And he gained the Air Force Cross at the age of 22 for his work in that meteorological flight. So by the time he got onto the Spitfires, he was already an accomplished pilot. Simple question, simple answer. Who designed the plane? The designer of the Spitfire was R.J. Mitchell. and he unfortunately never actually saw the Spitfire reach its full glory.

15:16He died of cancer in 1937. But his legacy lived on in the Spitfire and, of course, the brave men like Geoffrey who flew it. I think what was really interesting with the prototype as well, because the hurricane was in production at the time, they had to get 350 miles an hour. Otherwise, the air ministry simply weren't going to bother. They weren't interested. It had to outperform the hurricane to some degree and they managed to achieve that, of course, ended up going a lot faster throughout its career. What was new about this, Victoria? The difference with the Spitfire is that its wings were far more complex.

15:51They were elliptical. And unfortunately, during things like the Battle of Britain, it could be a little harder to get more aircraft in the air if they were Spitfires because they took longer to repair. But really, it's just so well defined. With its elliptical wings, it helps to reduce drag balance. It's got a better rate of climb. It's also faster than the hurricane. So really, it's kind of trying to refine all these different areas. And yes, it has its weaknesses. It does have, for instance, a very thin undercarriage, which can be very perilous for new pilots that are trying to get to grips with it.

16:25But really, it is a thing of beauty. And he does mention when he steps out of that prototype that he was a real lady. I'm aware we haven't talked much about what he looked like. So I'm going to pass around this photograph and ask if you could describe what you see. Who is the young man that you're looking at? What does he look like, Victoria? Well, Geoffrey, I think, looks very quizzical. So here he is in his cockpit. And it was interesting because a reporter once said of his hands that they were beautifully kept, almost like a musician. And I always think of that because, of course, a test pilot has to be so kind of nimble and flexible in their fingers and ready to grab anything at a moment's notice in the cockpit.

17:08But in terms of his looks, you know, he's quite good looking. Quite striking. Yes, yes. Quite dramatic looking. That makes me laugh, Victoria, because, of course, as pilots, we spend a huge amount of our time wearing leather gloves. Yes. And if you were doing, like, the open cockpit work, they would have had silk liners as well. So, yes, pilots, soft hands, sorry. But, no, he does, there's a very striking pose. I mean, there's somebody who's got a lot of self-confidence, you know. Quiet self-confidence. Yeah, modest, understated competence, I think, is that look. I like his understatement and I think there's humour in his understatement.

17:43You know, in that clipped voice saying, I had a bit of a problem with the wheels, so we just had to belly flop. Yes. He is actually quietly smiling. Yes. He knows he's understating, doesn't he? Yes, and I also very much think that when he did a flight in a Spitfire from France to England in 1939, and his average speed for most of it was about 300 miles per hour. But he just said, oh, I was just cruising. He became head of development during the war and he also had combat experience himself. What do we know about that, Victoria? His combat experience came during the Battle of Britain, so the peak months between August and September.

18:21He really wanted that actual combat experience because, of course, you can sit there theoretically and take this information from fighter command pilots, but he knew that he wouldn't be able to fully refine the Spitfire unless he understood exactly what your problems were in the air, in an active combat zone. So he ended up spending a bit of time at RF Hornchurch and he does actually have quite a bit of success during the Battle of Britain. He shoots down a Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter and also claims a share of a kill on a Heinkel He-111 bomber. So really he gets to grips quite quickly with it.

18:55But ultimately his work is just too important and he's called back to test fly spitfires once more. He spoke, Tim, about the need to have the ordinary human emotions, fear. Did you feel fear on something that is potentially dangerous? Well, there are different types of fear. One of the fears you have is the more sort of thoughtful, introspective fear. When you're ahead of something that's about to happen, you've got time to think about it and plan and prepare it, to control it if you can. Is there a new piece of equipment, some training that we can do to mitigate this risk and allay that fear.

19:28So you do all of that. But if I was doing a couple of high-risk trials, you know, out in Arizona with the Apache, then there was fear there. You know, we were pushing the boundaries. And so you do go off, you know, knowing that things can happen. But I think it's important to have analysed that so that it doesn't incapacitate you. Fear can be a really useful motivator. It can elevate your senses to a point where you're operating at real high performance. What you don't want to do is push that fear too far where it starts to inhibit your ability to respond. Victoria mentioned his encounter with a Messerschmitt and he wrote about that in his diary.

20:07And perhaps you would read that for us, Tim. I had a quick look round and all seemed fairly clear. So I broke away and went after him, opened fire from fairly short range and saw my traces going right into his fuselage. I expected him to swerve or half roll, so it was all keyed up to follow, but he just went straight down. Do you think, Victoria, that when you see someone just go straight down because you've just fired at them, do you feel any sympathy for them or you just think, yay? It'd be tempting to think yay, wouldn't it? Well, for the few, there were a lot of different reactions. So it was interesting, Guy Mayfield, who was a chaplain at Duxford, for instance, he once mentioned about one of the pilots that were stationed there actually throwing up in his cockpit the first time he shot down a German because he sort of had this real feeling of that's a life I've just taken but there's other aviators at that time who really they see that they've downed the aircraft not the person so of course that's the sort of form of compartmentalization that's common in war in terms of making sure that you can keep scrambling day after day and try not to think too much about the actual ins and outs and mechanics of it simply to protect yourself in many ways.

21:21But it is interesting because when we're talking about the Messerschmitt going down, Geoffrey did actually mention about the fact that he got all sorts of advice during the Battle of Britain, which he said was key to his survival. And one of them was, do not follow that fighter down because that's how you get picked off. You just have to keep going and leave it in your periphery. Was it the Spitfire that won the Battle of Britain for us? Would we have won it without the Spitfire? I have always said it is a 50-50 effort with the Spitfire and the Hurricane, even though, of course, the Hurricane accounts for more kills because it's more numerous.

21:56The thing is with the Spitfire is that it actually was so intimidating to the Germans. That's the aircraft that always appears in their press. They're the ones that say, you know, the British talk about this lauded Spitfire, but look at the fact that we've downed them. Even the Germans were amazed by it and they had their own sort of admiration for it. they said about how it did all these looping turns and things and couldn't get hold of them. The Messerschmitt was a pretty good plane too though, wasn't it? As was the P5 Mustang, absolutely, yes, and the FW 190. I mean, there was a point there during the war when the Mark V Spitfire came out and they clipped its wings, made it look terribly ugly.

22:33But actually, the point of that is it couldn't outperform a Focke-Wulf 190. So in order to survive, they just had to be able to roll away from the aircraft more rapidly. Now, there were many good aircraft at the time and they were in this constant battle of development. You mentioned the Focke-Wulf. He was apparently under orders to go and fly one over here. Yes. So the idea was known as Operation Airfeith. And what it consisted of was the fact that Geoffrey was really keen to get hold of a Focke-Wulf 190 because it had so much refinement in its power. It had a radial engine. It had all of these different developments that were very dangerous to the Spitfire.

23:12And there had been a lot of panic among the British when they first saw it. They couldn't identify what this aircraft was, this sort of squatter nose. So they were really concerned about trying to bridge that gap. So Operation Air Thief comes about when actually one of his friends or colleagues, Captain Philip Pinckney, who's with the commandos, he says about the fact that actually, why don't we just launch a commando raid to steal a Focke Wolf 190 that's already warmed up. I'll give you cover fire. And they do actually create this plan. So they do submit it. Yeah, they're going to go as far as they can on an armed motorboat to the French coastline, try and steal it and bring it back.

23:51But then, of course, there is an amazing twist of fate, which I think Tim will know, in which that doesn't happen. This is where the German pilot got a bit disorientated and was flying over the Severn, I think, and landed in South Wales, didn't he, thinking it was the northern coast of France. So an aircraft ended up being delivered to our doorstep. Oh, thank goodness. So because he would have stood a very good chance of perishing, wouldn't he, in that endeavour? It certainly would have been high risk. Absolutely. He knew it. He said as such afterwards, he said that he regarded their chances of surviving to be minimal.

24:25And he was secretly quite relieved that it didn't go ahead. But Pinkney was so annoying. It's like this fool has landed in South Wales and, you know, he's ruined it. He's robbed us of it. What did he do after the war? So he stayed flying a chief test pilot and he started working on most notably Britain's third jet aircraft which was the attacker. He does make an attempt on the airspeed record as well in the in the mid to late 1940s which is interesting and he's sort of rivaling people like Geoffrey de Havilland Jr. And of course later of course Chuck Yeager ends up breaking the sound barrier. So he's sort of in the early stages of that as well.

25:04But the attacker is particularly dangerous and it starts to show that his years of flying are catching up with him because at 40 ,000 feet he ended up passing out. And he's able to recover it at 10 ,000 feet and he lands safely. But I think that's a really important moment in which, you know, all of his years of flying, and I imagine Tim can attest to this far more than we can, starts to catch up after a point, that sort of endless pilot fatigue. Geoffrey wrote this, I at once became suspect in the eyes of the doctors. It was true that I was extremely tired. I had been flying continuously and hard for sixteen years.

25:39Certainly I was very run down and unwell. He was then sent on three months' leave, most of which he spent sailing, and after leaving his job as a test pilot, he writes that he went home full of sad and bitter thoughts. I would never again be a test pilot, he said, and would have to learn to fly a desk. He'd have wanted to be an astronaut, wouldn't he? I'm sure he would have loved to. He would have made a fantastic astronaut. Would you have liked to be a Spitfire test pilot? I would love to. I think anybody who liked the idea of flying back then would have been drawn to that Spitfire. I've been incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to fly it twice, Goodwood Airfield.