Spitfire pilot Jeffrey Quill picked by astronaut Tim Peake

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The sound of one of the most distinctive planes ever made, the Supermarine Spitfire. More than twenty thousand 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 Jeffrey Quill. A kindred spirit i in many respects. I think when I read his book Spitfire a Test Pilot Story. and my wife gave me his book in two thousand and two as I was applying myself for test pilot school.

I was just so taken by the story and and his life and the matter of fact way that he went about his business. But Um you know Geoffrey was born in in Littlehampton, I I think, which is not far, just a stone sloth from Chichester where 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 and and the f the the experiences he was having. Aaron Powell Do you think there are other parallels between his life and yours?

Well certainly as a a test pilot, yes, and it was brilliant to read some of the old techniques they were using. Test 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. Um, 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 nineteen seventy, talking about whether he ever felt any fear.

I was very young when I first read the spit for I was only twenty three years old and I didn't think I felt it half as much as I should have done. Um uh when I look back on it now and think or realise the issues that were at stake and what the sort of the issues were at stake with that little prototype aeroplane, the only one we had and for two years we fled. When 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? Uh no I hadn't. I mean I love the way he he he speaks exactly how I would have imagined. Very calm, very cool, um but actually the stories he relates just quite remarkable. Geoffrey Quill was born in nineteen thirteen, flew a Spitfire prototype in march nineteen thirty six. 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 um about uh the early two thousands.

I was aware of the name, uh you know, Jeffrey Quill, Mutt Summers, you know, these were names that were banded around, but um I didn't get to meet him unfortunately. Great shame. Also joining us is the aviation historian, Doctor Victoria Taylor. Would you say, Victoria, that Geoffrey was a key or the key to the development of this plane? Wha what w actually w we use the word development. What was his role?

I would say that Jeffrey 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 fifty variants or so. He pretty much flew all of them. When he was flying in the Battle of Briston, for instance, he noticed that the side panels on the Spitfires actually gave this weird optical illusion. It 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 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 three hundred miles per hour. You need to have that light touch.

I think he had nine lives as a test pilot. Do you know some of the remarkable things he did. He 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 as this aircraft was just in a spin. Uh he was parachuted right next to it. So he nearly didn't make that.

Um you know the number of times he would just comment very idly that the undercarriage didn't come down, so he'd had to do a pancake landing onto the tarmac as as if it was an everyday occurrence. And there were no simulators in those days.

You you just had to take the risk. Well, uh there were simulators, but it but it was a lit 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. Um but as Tim said with the 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 Um and he just sort of says hello to his friend. His friend grins back and says hello and then Jeffrey says, you know, I think I could do with a glass of beer bleeding from his face, you know.

At the time, just seeing the world, say s seeing Britain from forty thousand feet. must have been as extraordinary, as remarkable, as as an astronaut you m you must have felt seeing the the world from a much greater distance. Absolutely. Um and I think you know he would have experienced that all throughout his career when he was doing those um meteorological flights as well, up to twenty five thousand feet.

Um, I remember at uh Boscombe Down on the test pilots course taking a gazelle helicopter up to twenty thousand feet and in a helicopter a single engine helicopter with very d limited control authority, that felt pretty unusual. So I can kinda sympathize with him. Well, from four hundred kilometers was on the fifteenth of December in two thousand and fifteen.

uh the moment the engines cut out on on the Sawyers rocket and looked out the window and um we were just coasting out over the Pacific at that point. What did you feel? Oh amazing. I mean th the the rocket launch is a very violent experience in terms of power, energy, speed, up to twenty five. times the speed of sound. So that's seventeen and a half thousand 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. It's a bit like, you know, diving to to deep depths. You're 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 um 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. Jeffrey 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.

So 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, um, 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 Spitfry at the very beginning of its journey and pretty much towards the end of it as well. And I think j just to uh um put this into context as well.

The Spitfire Mark One and the prototype, uh he flew it about three weeks I think after Mutt Summers That aircraft compared to i is it the Mark twenty four, the last one? Um I mean, they are nothing like they 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. Th 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 out those war years. Let's go back to Jeffrey's early life. I feel happier calling him Geoffrey than Quill if that's all right with him. 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.

These two incidents, he says, made a considerable impression on me. I suppose they did. To to some of us they would make the impression I'm not going to be a pilot. Tell us a little, Victoria, about his 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, Atlanta 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 um for a short service commission in the RAF. Like Dan Dare in the East. It's a lot you know, things like that and bigles and all sorts of things. But you you said Lancing College. Wha w was it a privilege? Uh up 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. Right. 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 the sort of the trauma, the loss, also getting to 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. And 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 uh looked a scance at his not going to university.

Uh 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 Um, I ended up not doing particularly well in my A levels, which teachers hate me saying. When I go round and talk to yes to school children, I gotta see a D and an E and they're like, Really? It's like Yes, but I've never worked harder since leaving school. So

I didn't go to university a bit like Jeffrey and it's been a lifelong career of learning ever since. Did your parents approve? Um yeah, they they've always approved of of what I was doing. Um which for them I think was very brave. They they didn't come from a a military background at all. And and here I was uh I mean my eldest will be approaching eighteen very soon and to think that if you don't come from that background suddenly to see

one of your children wandering off and and joining the military and that's it. Then 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. In October nineteen thirty one Geoffrey Quill reported to the RAF depot in Uxbridge as an acting pilot officer on probation aged just eighteen. He says he was the lowest of the low. I wonder whether he fitted in. My grandfather started in an orphanage in Derby.

And w 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 his mum struggling a bit more financially. And I think you really do feel those keen differences. I'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 felt at ease straight away in the REF. Jag skulle köpa några nya palpställd i lagret. Det kanske blev lite mer grejer. De hade ju allt, hade en skribord, jag köpte en sån, och kontorstolar, och så hade de en skit snygg typcontainer. Vi har inredning för hela arbetsplatsen. Välkommen till AI Produktion.

Snö överallt! Kilan biter! Då gäller det att vara redo. Svedå har vi inteklderna som klarar hela arbetsdagen. Stumpor, vintejängor, vinte jackor, solor, vantar اشتركوا في القناة Välkommen till Svedal!

You're listening to The Great Life of Jeffrey Quill, nominated by Tim Peak. Helping us with the story of his life is is Victoria Taylor. Time 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 near. Sir Robert McLean of Supermarine wrote, the name had to begin with an S, spitting venom. nasty and unpleasant creature to meet.

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, Jeffrey Quill. This was one of the tools of the trade. Um has in fact made two parachute percents in its time. This was the thing on which you really wrote everything down. Uh this carried a piece of uh

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 l 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 incident.

Jeffrey ends up learning initially on Avro Tutors, 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 twenty 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 of training as well where he'd learn to move more over into meteorological flight. 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, they were just letting themselves down over the sea, you know, or over low ground. On one occasion he popped out the cloud and and, you know, went straight into the ground. Thankfully his aircraft was in a landing attitude. Um 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 twenty two for his work in that meteorological flight.

By the time he got onto the Spitfires he was all already an accomplished pilot. Simple question. Simple answer. Who designed the plane? The designer of the Spitfire was RJ Mitchell, and he unfortunately never actually saw the Spitfire reach its full glory. He died of cancer in nineteen thirty seven, 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 it w with the prototype as well.

Because the hurricane was in production at the time, they had to get three hundred and fifty miles an hour. Otherwise the air ministry simply weren't gonna bother. They they weren't interested. It had to outperform the hurricane to some degree. And they managed to achieve that. Of course it 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. They were elliptical. And in 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. balanced, it's got really good performance.

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. But really it is a a thing of beauty. And he does mention when he steps out of that prototype that he was a real lady. I I'm aware we hadn't talked much about what he looked like.

like. So I'm going to pass round this photograph and ask if you could describe what you see. Who is the young man that you're you're looking at? What does he look like, Victoria? Well Geoffrey I think looks very quizzical. So here he is in his cockpit. Um 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. But in terms of his looks, you know, he's quite good looking. Yes, yes. Quite dramatic.

That makes me laugh, Victoria, because of course as pilots we spend a huge amount of our time wearing leather gloves. Yes, and um and if you were doing like the open cockpit work, they would have had silk liners as well. So Yes, Pilot's soft hands. Sorry. But no, he he does he ha there's a very striking pose. I mean there's somebody who's got a lot of Self confidence. Um you know uh quiet self confidence. Yeah, modest understated um competence, I think, is that look.

I I like his understatement and I think there's humour. in his understatement. You know, in that clipped voice saying I had a bit of a problem with the wheels so we we just had to belly flop. Yes. Yes. He knows he's understating, doesn't he? Yes. I also very much think that when he did a flight in a Spitfire from France to England in nineteen thirty nine and his average speed for most of it was about three hundred miles per hour, but he just said, Oh, I was just cruising.

He became head of development during the war and 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.

he really wanted that actual combat experience because of course you can sit there theoretically and take in 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 we ended up spending a bit of time at RF Hornchurch, and he does actually have a quite bit of success during the Battle of Britain. He shoots down

a Messerschmitt BF one hundred nine fighter and also claims a share of a kill on a Heinkel H E one eleven bomber. So really he gets to grips quite quickly with it. Um but ultimately his work is just too important and he's called back to test fly spitfires once more. He he spoke Tim about the need to have the ordinary human emotions fear. Did you feel fear on something that is potentially dangerous?

Mm. Well there's there are different types of fear. One of the fears you have is is the more sort of thoughtful, introspective fear, when you're ahead of the the 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? So 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. We you know, we were pushing the boundaries. And so you do go off wi you know, knowing that things can happen. But I think it's important to have analyse 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 you're operating at at real high performance.

What you don't want to do is is push that fear too far where it starts to you know inhibit your ability to respond. Victoria mentioned his encounter with a a Mesha Smith. And he wrote about that in his diary, and 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 tracers 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 just someone just go straight down because you've just Do you feel any sympathy for them or you just think Yay It'd be tempting to think yay, wouldn't it? Um well for the few, there were a lot of different reactions. So it was interesting, Guy Mayfield, who was a chaplain at Ducksford, for instance.

He once mentioned about one of the pilots that was 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 a 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.

But 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 yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n. Was it the Spitfire that uh won the Battle of Britain for us? Could would we have won it without the Spitfire?

I have always said it is a fifty fifty effort with the Spitfire and the Hurricane, even though of course the hurricane accounts for more kills because it's more numerous. The 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 Meshersmet was a pretty good plane too though, wasn't it? A as was the P five Mustang, absolutely, yes. And the F W one ninety. I mean there was a point there during the war when the Mark five Spitfire came out. And they clipped its wings, made it look terribly ugly. But actually the point of that is it couldn't outperform a Fokow Wolf one ninety, so in order to uh survive they just had to be able to roll away from the aircraft more rapidly.

No, there were many good aircraft at the time and and they were in this constant battle of development. You mentioned the Faulk Wolf. He was apparently Under orders to go and fly one over here, though. Yes, so the idea was known as Operation Airfeeth, and what it consisted of was the fact that Jeffrey was really keen to get hold of a Fokovol 190 because it had so much refinement in its power, uh it had a radial engine, it had all of these different

developments that were very dangerous to the Spitfire. And 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 Airfeth comes about when actually one of his friends or colleagues Captain Philip Pinckney, who's with the commando.

He says about the fact that actually why don't we just launch a commando raid to steal a Foc of All for ninety that's already warmed up? I'll give you cover fire. And they do actually create this plan. So they do create 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. But then of course there is an amazing twist of fate.

Which I think Tim will know, in which This is where the the German pilot got a bit disorientated and and was flying over the Seven 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'cause

uh he would have stood a very good chance of uh perishing, wouldn't he, in that endeavour? It certainly would have been high risk. Absolutely. He knew it. He said as such afterwards, he he said that he regarded their chances of surviving to be minimal. And he was secretly quite relieved that it didn't go ahead. But Pinkney was so annoying. It was 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 um most notably Britain's third jet aircraft, which was the Attacker. Um, he does make an attempt on the airspeed record as well in the in the mid to late nineteen forties, which is interesting, and he's sort of rivaling people like Jeffrey de Havilland Junior

Um and of course later of course Chuck Yeager ends up breaking the sound barrier. So he's he's sort of in the early stages of that as well. But the attacker is particularly dangerous and it starts to show that his years of flying are catching up with him because at forty thousand feet he ended up passing out.

And he's able to recover it at ten thousand 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.

Certainly I was very run down and unwell. He was then sent on three months leave, m 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 wouldn't he? I'm sure he would have loved to he would have made a fantastic astronaut without dedication. Would you have liked to be a Spitfire test pilot? I would love to. I I I I you know, I think anybody who liked the idea of flying back then would have been drawn to that um Spitfire. I was I've been incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to fly it twice.

Goodw Go Goodwood Airfield. In fact a as recently as September this year for the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, the eighty fifth anniversary. So three spits, one hurricane in a formation. And um it was just the most incredible experience. Hairs on the back of my neck. Five boys from his school flew in the Battle of Britain, and three of them died. Here from a decade ago in an event covered by the BBC to mark their contribution, is his daughter, Sarah.

Flying Officer Jeffrey Quill was a celebrated test pilot who helped develop the spitfire. He'd had to leave the Air Force in order to get that job. And then of course what he desperately wanted to do was to get back into the Air Force in order to be able to fly in the Battle of Britain. They fought and thank God they won. Did you enjoy that discussion? Did you learn anything? I love that discussion. Um uh and

Yes, I did learn a huge amount. Thank you very much, Victoria. Um such a wealth of knowledge there. Um anything that surprised you? Hearing his voice was was wonderful. It was actually exactly how I would have expected to have have been. Um with that kind of dry sense of humour. Um but uh no, uh what an incredible life uh led and um you know, we owe a huge debt of honour to Jeffrey Quill. Riktigt som profilbilden, så är jag.

Men att få en triss, så rakt. Han är liksom okej med att jag kan vinna. Två på miljoner. Törs man säger dem. Det är alla hjärtanstav med Triss. Plötsligt händer det. Ska spel tur för dig över Åton. Stödlinjen.se Snö överallt! Kyland biter! Då gäller det att vara redo. Svedål har vi inte kläderna som klarar hela armen. Altyazı M.K. Vinte jakor, sulor va. Lager på lager Välkommen till Svedal!