Roland Beamont

During the Second World War, he flew more than five hundred operational sorties. He also spent several months as a Hawker Aircraft experimental test pilot developing the Hawker Typhoon and Tempest, and was responsible for introducing these types into operational squadron service.^[1] He pioneered the ground attack capabilities of the Typhoon and led the air-to-air campaign against the V-1 flying bomb

In 1945 he commanded the

Beamont was a careful pilot who understood the capabilities of the aircraft he flew. He was proud that he had never broken an aircraft, nor had to bail out or eject. Even when his Tempest was shot down, he had made the best landing possible in the circumstances and got out, free of injury.[2]

Early life

Roland Prosper Beamont was born on 10 August 1920 at 8 Private Road,

He spent his school holidays, cycling to nearby Tangmere aerodrome ^[7] to watch the RAF Hawker Furies fly. His parents supported his interest in aviation and had him educated at Eastbourne College from 1934 to 1937 with the aim of admission into the RAF College Cranwell^[8] In addition, his father organised two air experience flights (under the RAF's schools assistance scheme) the first at Tangmere, with No. 1 Squadron, the second at RAF Halton in which Beamont (aged 16) was allowed to take the controls in an Avro Tutor.^[6]

Beamont was not academic and failed his school certificate in 1938. He retook it after private tuition, and scraped enough passes to apply for a short service commission. On 2 September 1939 he reported to No. 13 Elementary and Reserve Training School at

Beamont arrived at British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France with 15 hours experience flying Hurricanes.^[13] During the winter of 1939, there was little opportunity for the inexperienced pilots to fly and Beamont was assigned to the operations room.^[14] As a result of a high fever, he was sent to a hospital in Dieppe, but after two weeks absence he risked being removed from squadron strength and put into the pilots pool. To avoid this, he persuaded his father, who was also stationed in France, to provide a car to drive him back to the squadron. The spring of 1940 provided more opportunity for action. In March he took part in an interception of a Heinkel He 111 bomber, on 8 May he shot down a Dornier Do 17.^[15]

When No. 87 Squadron returned from France they were initially stationed at RAF Church Fenton, before relocating to RAF Exeter, as part of 10 Group, defending South Western England.^[16][17] During the Battle of Britain, Beamont claimed a Junkers Ju 88 on 24 July, two Messerschmitt Bf 110 on 15 August, a Dornier Do 17 and a Messerschmitt Bf 109 on 25 August.^[18]

Beamont described the period:

...I used to fly often to Portsmouth and look down upon my home, where my family was, in Chichester. Tangmere was being bombed ten miles away. It was all a very personal thing. When you got into your aeroplane, you felt the fears that everybody fears when going off to fight but overpowering all that was this feeling that if you and all your chaps didn't do your damnedest on every operation then all these Germans were going to be flooding over your country, your homes and destroying everything that was worth preserving. That was what it was all about.^[19]

During the air raids of The Blitz, No. 87 Squadron was assigned night fighter duties defending Bristol. Directing the Hurricanes by searchlight was largely ineffective.^[20] In frustration, Beamont suggested that on moonlit nights they should cross the channel and strafe the Luftwaffe aerodromes.^[21] This tactic was adopted by Group and proved successful, with Beamont taking part in the destruction of several aircraft.^[22]

In May 1941 he was transferred to

When his tour of duty ended in December 1941, he was offered the position of Leigh-Mallory's personal aide. Instead, he chose to keep flying and to accept a position as a production test pilot at Hawker's. While he had 800 hours flying Hurricanes he was by his own admission, ignorant of the problems of aircraft stability, trim and control balance. To remedy this, Hawker's civilian test pilots, Bill Humble, Hubert Broad and particularly Philip Lucas mentored him in the art and science of test flying.^[26]

At Hawker's, while most of his flying was production test flights of Hurricanes, he did take part in some of the development flying of the early production Typhoons. On his first cross country flight in a Typhoon, while delivering it to Gloster's,^{[Note 2]} its main oil pipe failed. He managed an emergency landing in a small field being used as a flying school, attracting a rebuke from the chief flying instructor.^[27] In February 1942 he took over the vibration programme of the Typhoon. Flying aircraft fitted with vibrographs to determine the effectiveness of propeller balancing improvements and the sprung seat mounts· ^{[28][Note 3]}

Typhoon

Beamont was keen to resume operational flying in one of the two Typhoon squadrons. He was initially posted to No. 56 Squadron, as a supernumerary flight commander in July 1942,^[29] followed by a permanent posting to No. 609 Squadron RAF in October.^[29] When its commanding officer Paul Richey left in January 1943, Beamont was promoted to squadron leader.^[30][31]

Fighter Command had concerns about the Typhoon's safety and serviceability because during the first nine months of its introduction, the losses due to structural and engine failure were greater than caused by enemy action.

From March 1942 the Southern coast of England had been under attack from Luftwaffe fighter bombers.[34] No 609 squadron was relocated to RAF Manston and in November standing patrols were set up from dawn till dusk to intercept raiding Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter bombers (Jagdbombers).^[35] At the same time Beamont was developing the use of the Typhoon as a night intruder. To repeat his earlier initiative with the Hurricane, he had the illumination of his displays and reflector sight modified to be compatible with night flying. Starting on the night of 17 November, he flew a series of solo sorties; attacking trains on the Calais-Amiens-Paris line to demonstrate that the Typhoon was both safe to fly at night and an effective ground attack aircraft.^[36]

No. 91 Squadron's Spitfire XII were also deployed to intercept the raiders. Inevitably, amid inter-squadron rivalry, the question of the fastest fighter arose. Beamont challenged the CO of No. 91 Squadron to an air race, with Beamont's Typhoon being the clear victor over the Spitfire XII.^{[37][Note 4][38]}

He was awarded a bar to his DSO in June 1943, his destruction of 13 trains and numerous lorries being noted.^[30]

Tempest

In mid-May 1943 he returned to Hawker's as a test pilot, performing experimental testing of both the Typhoon and new

From his airfield at Newchurch, Beamont witnessed the first intrusion by V-1 flying bombs as they flew towards London at dawn on 14 June;^[43] two days later (16 June) his wing was switched to intercepting them.^[44] In the following days, he and his pilots would trial attack tactics by day and discuss their effectiveness in the evening.^[45] For instance, Beamont discovered first hand that attacking a V-1 at close range could result in a hazardous explosion. He established that the best attack was to approach from astern at an acute angle with the cannons synchronised to 200yds (180m).^[46][45] On at least one occasion Beamont defeated a V-1 by carefully sliding his wing-tip under that of the V-1 and flipping it. ^[47] His fifth V-1 kill on the evening of 19 June made him the first V-1. ace.^[48] By the end of the V-1 campaign, 150 Wing had shot down 638, with Beamont accounting for 32.^[49] Around this time Beamont met Ernest Hemingway, who had flown over from America to report on the D-Day invasion and spent time in 150 Wing's officer's mess.^[50]

On 2 October 1944, now based on the continent at Volkel, the Netherlands, he achieved his ninth and final kill of the war when he shot down a Fw 190 near Nijmegen. On 12 October, on his 492nd operational mission, while attacking a heavily defended troop-train near Bocholt his Tempest's radiator was hit by flak. He crash landed without injury and became a prisoner of war (PoW).^[51] Confined firstly to Stalag Luft III at Żagań in Lower Silesia, then to Stalag III-A at Luckenwalde, Brandenburg, he remained a PoW until the end of the war in Europe (May 1945).^[52] Beamont and other POWs were detained for a few weeks by Soviet forces, and repatriated in late May.^[53]

At

At this time English Electric were manufacturing D.H Vampires under licence but had no original aircraft to conduct research, particularly to explore the effects of compressibility. From his experience at Glosters, Beamont suggested to Petter that they borrow a Meteor F.4 to carry out high altitude research.^[65] Beamont made the first experimental test flight from the Warton Aerodrome in a Meteor on 28 August 1947.^[66]

To get Beamont experience of flying big jets the

On 13 May 1949 he made the first flight of the Canberra prototype (VN799).[70] Due to its reserves of power and low wing-loading the Canberra was highly manoeuvrable at any altitude, and Beamont would use this to advantage in his flying.^[71]On 13 September 1949 he demonstrated it at the Farnborough air show. Flight magazine described Beamont's display as "exhilarating", stating that "A new aircraft has never been more convincingly demonstrated" .^[72] This display was only marred by the inadvertent jettison of the 'automatic-observer' when Beamont opened the bomb bay doors to slow the aircraft, necessary because the prototype had no air-brakes.^[73] On 23 February 1951 he presented it to US Department of Defense officials contributing to the decision in the April for Canberras to be built under licence by the Glenn L. Martin Company as the B-57.^[74]

Beamont set two transatlantic records in the Canberra. Taking advantage of a delivery flight to Glenn Martin, he set a new record of 4 hr 18 min 29.4 sec, from

The English Electric P.1 was to be the RAF's first Mach 2 interceptor and to achieve that speed it was a radical design with a 60° wing sweep. To gain relevant experience, Beamont flew the

On 4 April 1957 Beamont made the first flight of the P.1B (XA847, fitted with Avon engines) exceeding Mach 1 during this flight.^[83][84] On 25 November he reached Mach 2, ^[85] the first time in a British aircraft.^{[citation needed][Note 8]}

TSR-2

Over the following three months the engines were modified and the undercarriage cleared for retraction, allowing the second flight to take place on 31 December 1964.[88] Running short of day light, Beamont took off at 2:40 pm. Once airborne he noted poor forward vision, which he initially thought was due to glare from the low sun until he realised that his instrument panel also appeared blurred. Realising this was due to high frequency vibration affecting his eyes he throttled back No. 1 engine, determining the engine speed range over which this vibration was a problem. This problem forced Beamont to land XR219 with asymmetric thrust.^{[Note 9][89]}

Beamont was unable to retract the undercarriage satisfactorily on the third and fourth flights. On the fifth flight the undercarriage bogies jammed in a vertical orientation. He understood that this could cause a catastrophe on landing and offered the project navigator, Don Bowen, the opportunity to "use the Martin-Baker Mk.5 ejection seat". Don Bowen declined. Beamont was confident in the XR219's precise flying, so made a long approach at low descent rate (0.12 m/s) and successfully rotated the bogies by using the weight of the aircraft on landing.^{[Note 10][90]} On the tenth flight Beamont successfully retracted the undercarriage, he cycled it twice and took XR219 out to 500 knots in stages. ^{[Note 11]} As TSR-2 was designed to follow contours at high speed, Beamont decided to fly it down Boscombe's runway at 100 ft and 450 knots, commenting later that it had "beautiful control".^[86]

On Flight 14 (22 February 1965) Beamont returned XR219 to BAC Warton. During the flight, he achieved exceeded Mach 1 for the first time,^[91] using dry power only. Following this, Beamont lit a single reheat unit^{[Note 12]} with the result that the aircraft accelerated away from the chase Lightning.^{[citation needed]}

Directorship

In 1960 Beamont was appointed a special director of English Electric Aviation.^[1] In May 1965 he retired from prototype flying and was appointed as BAC Warton's flight operations director. He did however continue production test flying of Lightnings until 1968 when he retired from test flying altogether, by then he had flown 167 different types during a total of 5,100hr and 8,000 flights, of which more than 1,100 were supersonic.^[1][92]

In 1971, he became

In 2002 he was posthumously awarded the Belgian Croix de guerre.^[93]

Personal life

Beamont was a keen dinghy sailor and ornithologist.^[94] On 13 October 1942, he married Shirley Dagmar Adams, the WAAF officer he had transported to the dance in his Hurricane and the daughter of the artist Bernard Robert Adams,^[95][23] for which he was "quite properly court-martialled".^[96] They had a daughter Carol, born in 1943.^[96] Sadly, Shirley died in May 1945, two weeks before Roland was liberated from Luckenwalde. On 14 March 1947 he married Patricia Whitehead, the daughter of Richard Galpine Raworth, solicitor. With Patricia he had two daughters and raised her son from her previous marriage.^[23]

In popular culture

An AI companion based on Roland Beamont appears in several installments of the military science fiction franchise Halo.^[97]

Books

• Phoenix into Ashes – Roland Beamont – William Kimber – 1968 –
  ISBN 0-7183-0121-8
• Typhoon and Tempest at War – Arthur Reed & Roland Beamont – Ian Allan – 1977 –
  ISBN 0-7110-0542-7
• Testing Years – Roland Beamont – Ian Allan – 1980 –
  ISBN 0-7110-1072-2
• English Electric Canberra – Roland Beamont & Arthur Reed – Ian Allan – 1984 –
  ISBN 0-7110-1343-8
• English Electric P1 Lightning – Roland Beamont – Ian Allan – 1985 –
  ISBN 0-7110-1471-X
• Fighter Test Pilot: From Hurricane to Tornado – Roland Beamont – HarperCollins – 1986 –
  ISBN 0-85059-850-8
• My Part of the Sky – Roland Beamont – Patrick Stephens – 1989 –
  ISBN 1-85260-079-9
• Testing Early Jets – Roland Beamont – Airlife – 1990 –
  ISBN 1-85310-158-3
• Tempest over Europe – Roland Beamont – Airlife – 1994 –
  ISBN 1-85310-452-3
• Flying to the Limit: Reminiscences of Air Combat, Test Flying and the Aircraft Industry – Roland Beamont – Patrick Stephens – 1996 –
  ISBN 1-85260-553-7
• The Years Flew Past: 40 Years at the Leading Edge of Aviation – Roland "Bee" Beamont – Crowood Press – 2001 –
  ISBN 1-84037-299-0