Gerry Sayer & Michael Daunt

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TheGreenGoblin
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Gerry Sayer & Michael Daunt

#1 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Wed Jan 19, 2022 11:12 am

Have been reading a lot about Frank Whittle's travails (more like a Greek tragedy in truth) and two test pilots that emerge with honour from that story are the two above mentioned men.

Gerry Sayer flew Britain's maiden jet flight and his soon (tragically) to be replacement, Michael Daunt, took the only know photo's of the flight.

Gerry Sayer.JPG
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Gerry Sayer
Gerry Sayer was born on February 2nd,1905 and was educated at Colchester Grammar School, obtaining a short-service commision in the RAF in June 1924. After learning to fly in an Avro 504K, he flew Snipes and Gladiators, hist outstanding qualities asa pilot resulting in an appointment as test pilot at Martlesham Heath.

He left the RAF on the completion of his 5 year commission to join the Hawker Company,and was appointed as assistant to Group Captain P.W.S Bulman. Here he was engaged in testing Harts,Furies and other aircraft, and on the acquisition of the Gloster Aircraft Company by the Hawker Group, was appointed in 1935 as Chief Test Pilot of the Gloster Company.

Gerry Sayer flew Britain's maiden jet flight in Sir Frank Whittles's Gloster E.28/39 on the 15th May 1941.

On 21st October 1942 Sayer departed from RAF Acklington in a Typhoon to carry out tests of a gunsight involving gun firing into Druridge Bay Ranges, he never returned.
After the loss of Gerry Sayer, Michael Daunt took over as chief test pilot at Gloster aircraft.
Neill Michael Daunt OBE (23 October 1909 – 26 July 1991) was a British test pilot; the first person to fly the Gloster Meteor in March 1943, Britain's first production jet aircraft. He was the second person to fly the Gloster E.28/39 "Pioneer" (Britain's first jet aircraft) in November 1942. He had many severe accidents that he was lucky to survive, including one for which he had no recollection.
from Wiki

After a number of narrow scrapes, Daunt decided that he had used up his nine lives and became a farmer, and then a hospital technician. He must have had some stories to tell...

Neil Michael Daunt


Michael Daunt.JPG
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"To be alive
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To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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Re: Gerry Sayer & Michael Daunt + John Grierson

#2 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Thu Jan 20, 2022 1:23 pm

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Wed Jan 19, 2022 11:12 am
Have been reading a lot about Frank Whittle's travails (more like a Greek tragedy in truth) and two test pilots that emerge with honour from that story are the two above mentioned men.

Gerry Sayer flew Britain's maiden jet flight and his soon (tragically) to be replacement, Michael Daunt, took the only know photo's of the flight.

One of ops-normal's team contacted me and pointed out another Gloster test pilot, John Grierson who, came after the two aforementioned men, and who I knew nothing about.

I have purchased the the Kindle version of "Jet Pioneers: Gloster and the Birth of the Jet Age" by Tim Kershaw (thanks to the kind suggestion of the aforementioned ops-normaliser) and am going to settle down this afternoon and read that! :-bd
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You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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Re: Gerry Sayer & Michael Daunt

#3 Post by PHXPhlyer » Thu Jan 20, 2022 4:06 pm

Damn you! ~X(
Another addition to my already too long reading list. [-X
Only consolation; It is available as a free ebook from my local library. #:-S :YMAPPLAUSE:

PP

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Gerry Sayer - Maurice Summers

#4 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jan 23, 2022 10:56 am

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Thu Jan 20, 2022 1:23 pm

I have purchased the the Kindle version of "Jet Pioneers: Gloster and the Birth of the Jet Age" by Tim Kershaw (thanks to the kind suggestion of the aforementioned ops-normaliser) and am going to settle down this afternoon and read that! :-bd
I am currently reading Tim Kershaw's book which is very interesting and brings back memories of the Gloucestershire area as well, as I lived and worked in Cheltenham for two years, and also used to fly at Staverton. One thing that is a little nonplussing is that Mr. Kershaw spells Gerry Sayer's name as "Jerry" Sayer? Most sources note the test pilot's name as Gerry. Any comment from the cognoscenti here would be welcomed.

One pilot who comes up in the book is the well known Joseph J 'Mutt' Summers and his test pilot (amongst many other things) brother Maurice (hitherto unknown to me). Maurice Summers' obituary notes what an interesting and varied life he lived...

Maurice and Mutt.JPG
SUMMERS-Maurice, in his 90th year, RAF Test Pilot. Maurice Summers, a former Royal Air Force Wing Commander and Test Pilot, director of E.F. Hutton, Governor of the New York Stock Exchange, and Real Estate Developer, died after a long illness on March 29 at his home in Bermuda. He was 89. Mr. Summers was born in Hull, England. His first flight was on January 15, 1930 at the age of 18. He served on active duty in the Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm until 1934 when he became a test pilot. Prior to World War II, Mr. Summers delivered aircraft around the world including two tours with the Chinese Air Force in 1937 and 1939. In 1940, Mr. Summers was placed in charge of Bomber Development Flying for Vickers Armstrong. In March 1941, he piloted the first B-24 ''Liberator'' Bomber to England setting the then Trans-Atlantic speed record of 7-1/2 hours. Twice during his flying career Mr. Summers' life was saved by parachute. In 1950 Mr. Summers became a member of the New York Stock Exchange, and was made a partner of E.F. Hutton in 1953. He later became a Director until his retirement in 1973. He served as a Governor of the New York Stock Exchange from 1970 to 1973. With his retirement from Wall Street he returned to flying and participated in the National Aerobatics Championships at age 62. Mr. Summers started his third career as a real estate developer in Florida in the 1970's building single family houses and rental apartments. Mr. Summers was a member of the Everglades Club in Palm Beach, FL, the Piping Rock Club in Locust Valley, NY, and the Royal Air Force Club in London. His wife of 52 years, the late Jean Ellis Summers, predeceased him in 1993. He is survived by his daughter, Mrs. Michael I. Gulden of Palm Beach and his son Mr. George E. Summers, also of Palm Beach. He has four grandchildren: Christopher and David Gulden of New York; Bliss Summers of New York, and Ellis Summers of Memphis, TN. He will be greatly missed by his immediate family, and their dogs. Funeral services are private.
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/30/clas ... urice.html

Maurice Summers was lucky to survive this crash... but there were fatalities on the ground.

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/139951
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"To be alive
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To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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Re: Gerry Sayer & Michael Daunt

#5 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jan 23, 2022 6:50 pm

Britain’s first jet pilot was Philip Edward Gerald Sayer, chief test pilot of the Gloster Aircraft Company. ‘Jerry’ or ‘Gerry’, as he was known, was a much loved figure who died in an aircraft accident – not in a jet – at the age of thirty-seven, some eighteen months after the E28 first flew
The Gerry/Jerry conundrum solved later in the book.
Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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Re: Gerry Sayer & Michael Daunt

#6 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Mon Jan 24, 2022 6:37 am

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Sun Jan 23, 2022 6:50 pm
Britain’s first jet pilot was Philip Edward Gerald Sayer, chief test pilot of the Gloster Aircraft Company. ‘Jerry’ or ‘Gerry’, as he was known, was a much loved figure who died in an aircraft accident – not in a jet – at the age of thirty-seven, some eighteen months after the E28 first flew
The Gerry/Jerry conundrum solved later in the book.
Finished the "Jet Pioneers: Gloster and the Birth of the Jet Age" by Tim Kershaw. It was a tremendously enjoyable book and really covers the Gloster company history, at time of the development of the E28, very well indeed. It also gives some detailed biographical detail on Gerry and Michael Gaunt, John Grierson et al.

Gaunt, post his test pilot career, is the most enigmatic, having disappeared from the record for a while, but he did lead a torrid, and one might say, charmed life, during his years with Gloster vide.
Although E28 flight testing at Cranwell continued until 28 May, Daunt returned to Brockworth early in order to make the first flight of the first Gloster-built Hawker Typhoon, R7576, on 27 May. He continued to be closely involved with the Typhoon programme. Later, testing production Typhoons, his oil tank emptied itself at 25,000 feet. He made a forced landing in a field in ground mist, severing both wings between two trees. Describing the Typhoon as ‘one of the most bloody ever’, he said that ‘the things that went wrong with it before it went to the RAF were appalling’. After trying for some time to get some trees at the end of the runway felled in case of engine failure on take-off, he wrote to Gloster works manager Frank McKenna:

I wish to God that I could see
A gap where now doth stand a tree,
A tree that now is bearing nuts
May, one day, bear some pilot’s guts.
Please, Mac, don’t wait for MAP,
Just give us space and not a tree!
A doggerel writing test pilot, now there's a departure from the norm.

Another incident ... having been seriously injured while test flying the the ‘Folland Frightful’ (Folland had asked Gloster to loan them a test pilot, and Daunt, literally, drew the short straw to fly the awful Folland P1777)...
... and on 19 May 1942, when he was flying from Staverton to conduct diving trials, P1777 broke up and scattered itself along 2 miles of fields near Tewkesbury. Daunt’s harness gave way, and he was thrown through the cabin roof and landed – still holding his parachute ripcord – with broken wrist and collarbone, and partly strangled. First on the scene was the local vicar. Daunt recalled: ‘The doctors told me that if you are slightly strangled, you tend, when you come to, to be violent and . . . I clocked this poor little man who had been doing his good Samaritan Samaritan act.’ Daunt kept the ripcord as a souvenir, using it as the lavatory chain pull at home.
and then yet another close shave (literally)...
It was on 27 January 1943 that Daunt almost lost his life again. He was standing in front of the port engine nacelle of F9/40 DG206 <<Meteor>> during ground running of the engines at Bentham. Whittle’s account says that, bending forward to check for fuel leaks, Daunt was sucked head first into the intake. Four ground crew were unable to free him until the engine was stopped. Badly bruised and shaken, but not otherwise injured, he was off work for two days and it affected him for a long time afterwards. It was after this that 1 in square steel-mesh grilles were fitted in jet engine intakes, known to the Gloster ground staff as Anti-Daunts and at Power Jets as Daunt Stoppers. Whittle wrote: ‘I hope Michael Daunt will forgive me if I mention that he was no feather-weight, and the fact that he could be whipped off his feet into the intake was an indication of the very powerful “vacuum cleaner” effect if one got too close.’
and finally...
His last E28 flight, on 14 June 1943, was in W4041. He had already taken over F9/40 taxiing trials from Sayer and made the first flight, in the H1-powered fifth prototype, at Newmarket on 5 March 1943. He also piloted five of the other seven F9/40 prototypes on their first flights. It was on one F9/40 test flight that an impeller disintegrated and Daunt managed to crash-land successfully in a potato field. The aircraft was promptly nicknamed the ‘Whittle-Daunt Potato Lifter’ and Daunt remarked that the potatoes ‘were chipped and cooked as well as delivered’. On another occasion, Sid Dix remembered, Daunt put a Meteor down on the sands at Westbury-on-Severn. Meteor testing and development was a long, slow process with many discouraging results. It was after suffering aileron flutter and high-frequency vibration of the control column during a dive from 20,000 feet that Daunt wrote a short verse for George Carter:

Sing a song of shock-stall,
words by Ernest Mach
Four and twenty slide-rules,
shuffling in the dark Begone,
O doubting fancies,
our George will fill the bill
But George!
Please make the Meteor a wee bit meatier still.
After he quit flying (who can blame him) to go farming it was said....
that his colleagues remarked, ‘Oh yes, Mike – he’s now spreading it as well as talking it.’ Eric Greenwood took his place as Gloster’s new chief test pilot.
Kershaw, Tim. Jet Pioneers . The History Press.











.
Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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Flight Lieutenant Ernest Schofield DFC and Operation Gearbox

#7 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Jan 28, 2022 1:07 am

Extraordinary man and story of a cadre of very brave men suggested by Rossian and his recent reading matter, name, 'Arctic Airmen'.

Telegraph obituary -
Flight Lieutenant Ernest Schofield DFC

Born: October 26th 1916, Penistone, Barnsley. Died: February 23rd 2009 Age: 92

Ernest Schofield.JPG
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Flight Lieutenant Ernest Schofield, who has died aged 92, was the navigator of a Catalina flying boat that carried out a number of top secret long-range sorties to the High Arctic and Russia, earning him an immediate DFC.

With the need to send critical convoys to Russia, in 1942 it was deemed necessary to establish an Allied presence on Spitsbergen – 350 miles north of Norway’s North Cape – to monitor the weather, ice conditions and Luftwaffe activity. The Germans already had an outpost there, having established a weather station manned by four men in late 1941.

In May 1942 a party of Norwegians and an intelligence officer, Lt-Cdr Sandy Glen, were sent to Spitsbergen in an ice breaker. The ship was attacked by a German aircraft as she arrived, but the survivors made it ashore and set up a signal station. Flight Lieutenant Tim Healy and his crew, which included Schofield as navigator, were detailed to go to the aid of Glen’s party, using a Catalina that had been specially modified to allow it to cover extreme distances.

On their first flight they were able to do no more than exchange messages; on the second, although drift ice prevented them from landing to evacuate the wounded, they dropped supplies. Then, on June 6, the Catalina managed to land, ferry stores to the small garrison and pick up three wounded men. A week later the aircraft returned to collect Glen, who was needed at discussions in London, and subsequently brought him back to the island.

Throughout this period the Catalina also carried out reconnaissance missions to determine the extent of the ice in the High Arctic, missions that sometimes required the crew to remain airborne for more than 24 hours. Schofield’s role was particularly demanding: polar navigation, particularly north of the 80 degree latitude, presented unique problems to the navigator, since the traditional magnetic compass and routine maps were unsuitable.

Schofield had to rely on gyromagnetic and astro compasses, and on a sextant to obtain sightings from the sun which, at those latitudes in the summer, never set. He was often afflicted with air sickness, which only added to his difficulties. The crew’s attempt in August 1942 to fly a reconnaissance to the North Pole was thwarted by bad weather when they were 600 miles away from their objective. On their return one of the aircraft’s two engines lost power, but Healy was able to nurse the Catalina back to Iceland.

For their service over this period Healy was awarded a DSO and Schofield a DFC.

After the mauling of the PQ 17 convoy to Russia in June/July 1942, the RAF sent torpedo bombers to Russia’s north-western Kola Inlet to support the next convoy.

The Catalinas of No 210 were ordered to provide PQ 18 with an escort and to establish an anti-submarine barrier around the North Cape of Norway. In September Healy’s crew flew to a Russian airbase to carry out a number of patrols during the final, and most dangerous, phase of PQ 18’s journey to Murmansk.

With the convoy safely in port, on September 24 Healy and his crew took off to return to Shetland via Spitsbergen. Bad weather forced them to return to their Russian base, and as they approached the coast a German long-range fighter attacked the Catalina. Healy was killed, but the second pilot managed to fly the aircraft back to a safe landing.

Ernest Schofield was born on October 26 1916 at Penistone, near Barnsley, and educated at Bemrose School, Derby. He won a scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge, where he read Economics.

After taking his degree he spent an additional year at Cambridge reading History, then joined the Civil Service. In January 1939 he was posted to the Inland Revenue, but despite being in a reserved occupation he joined the RAF to train as an observer in 1941.

That September Schofield was posted to No 210 Squadron, flying anti-submarine patrols from Oban. In April 1942 the squadron moved to Sullom Voe in the Shetlands, where its primary role was to carry out reconnaissance off the north Norwegian coast and to protect convoys in the region.

After his adventures in the Arctic, Schofield left No 210 in the spring of 1943, spending the last two years of the war as a specialist navigation instructor. He was released from the RAF in 1945.

He returned to the Inland Revenue, where he remained until his retirement in 1976. He devoted more than 30 years to the care of his wife, whose delicate health required many stays in hospital and constant care at their home in Surrey.

Schofield was a patient, gentle man of great integrity, and liked nothing better than to work in his superb garden, which he had cultivated from a large bramble patch.

With a fellow Coastal Command observer, Roy Nesbit, he wrote about his wartime experiences in Arctic Airmen (1987), a book he dedicated to his pilot Tim Healy.

Ernest Schofield died on February 23. He married, in 1940, Hattie Pritchard; she died in 1995, and he is survived by their two daughters.

Operation Gearbox (30 June – 17 September 1942) was a joint Norwegian and British operation to occupy the Arctic island of Spitzbergen during the Second World War. It superseded Operation Fritham, an expedition in May, to secure the coal mines on Spitsbergen, the main island of the Svalbard Archipelago which had failed when attacked by four German Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor reconnaissance bombers. The Norwegian force, with 116 long tons (118 t) of supplies, arrived by British cruiser on 2 July.

The survivors from Fritham had salvaged what equipment they could and set up camp in Barentsburg (deserted since the Operation Gauntlet evacuation and sabotage operation in August–September 1941) and sent out reconnaissance parties. The Admiralty arranged a survey flight by a Catalina flying boat from RAF Coastal Command but already knew much of what had happened, through Ultra decrypts of Luftwaffe Enigma coded wireless signals.

The reinforcements consolidated the Barentsburg defences and sent parties to attack the German weather party at Longyearbyen on 12 July, only to find that they had departed three days earlier. The German airstrip was blocked and on 23 July, a Ju 88, carrying an experienced crew and two senior officials, was shot down while flying low over the landing ground. In Operation Gearbox, Norwegian sovereignty had been asserted, no casualties had been suffered, the German plan to send another weather party had been thwarted and preparations had begun for Operation Gearbox II.
Map-of-the-Arctic-Region-The-Svalbard-archipelago-is-outlined-in-the-pink-hashed.png
Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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