Captain Mutt Summers, Vickers Test Pilot.

[luffers79]

I am surprised that a book has never been written about Captain "Mutt" Summers (Chief Test Pilot, Vickers Aviation) considering he flew the first flights of the Spitfire, Wellington,Viscount, Valiant - & about 40(?) others.

I was lucky enough to bump into him at Farnborough when I was on an ATC initiative test from Bristol, about 1950. Indirectly he was probably responsible for my subsequent career as a pilot (RAF & civil). He was a friendly avuncular man & when he heard that I was hopefull trying to obtain the signatures of 3 test pilots - including Bill Pegg (Bristols Brabazon pilot) he said, "No problem - jump in the car (a Riley) & drove me across the runway to the test pilots tent where he asked them to autograph a photograph of the first (? G-AMAV) BEA production Viscount aircraft in flight - which he was flying - and gave it to me. Then he organised a buffet lunch & let me stay there for the flying display. I was 16 years of age & sitting down with John Cunningham, Wimpy Wade, Neville Duke, Mike Lithgow & others !! (HONEST !!).

I´m pretty sure that I received an ATC flying scholarship, about a year later because of that day & my luck of meeting him !!

Thanks Mutt !!!

PS.
I believe he died just a few years afterwards, only.

The only info I have ever found online is at:-

Any info on "Mutt" Summers (http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?59536-Any-info-on-quot-Mutt-quot-Summers)

[Milo Minderbinder]

an obituary at electronics research | test pilot | engine research | 1954 | 0801 | Flight Archive (http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1954/1954%20-%200801.html)

[Fantome]

Now that's what you call luck of the draw, for a youngster to get such a fabulous kick start with men such as them. In the recently published book FIGHTER PILOT by Mac 'Serge' Tucker, the author describes how he too was taken under the wing of a senior service ( not navy!) pilot at an airshow, this encounter leading to later entry into the RAAF and years of fantastic flying.

Joseph 'Mutt' Summers curiously did not get a mention in the movie 'Spitfire' with Leslie Howard playing RJ Mitchell and David Niven playing the test pilot, and former Schneider Trophy pilot, given the fictitious name Geoffrey Crisp. Did Mutt Summers ever fly the racers in the S6B days?

It would be priceless to hear what he might have had to say after seeing that movie.

Does the name John Austen Pimlott mean anything? He was a squadron leader, flew in the Battle of Britain with 601 SQN. Later was a test pilot at Boscombe Down and was for a time closely associated with Mutt Summers.
John Pimlott came to live in Australia in 1960. He died about ten years later.
He told me he had flown 83 different types while in the RAF.

What a beautiful obit in that FLIGHT of 1954, especially the tribute from George Edwards, that plain speaking man of the pork pie hat.

[Fantome]

Think that I have answered my own question -


The Film’s Use Of Creative License
http://www.south-central-media.co.uk/spitfire/spitfireposter-cropped-bw.gif Though the development of the the RAF’s finest fighter from a successful trophy-racing seaplane by a dying designer now in a grim race against time provided the basis of an exciting film project, it was the film’s use of creative license that made the film work and ultimately helped turn the Spitfire into a legend for millions who would never see a real Spitfire.
In the early scenes we see Mitchell struggling for recognition and having to resign in protest at a blinkered management who can't grasp the potential of his monoplane design ("looks just like a damn bird with boots on"). In fact, Mitchell was Vickers Supermarine’s Chief Designer, a wealthy man (he was given a Rolls Royce at one point), with a house (depicted in the film by a soundstage set) built to his own specification in 1927 in Portswood, Southampton. He also had his own pilot's licence. He did not simply work on a single 'dream' concept, but was a very practical man who designed over twenty different aircraft, from light planes to a long-distance flying boat that flew round the world, and was working on a high-speed heavy bomber when he died. (The plans were destroyed in a Luftwaffe raid on the Southampton Vickers plant which killed many workers.) As one encyclopedia put it, “Britain dominated the flying world through Mitchell’s designs.”
And the plan for a monoplane fighter with wing-mounted guns was in fact proposed by the Air Ministry in 1930. Mitchell's first design, an open-cockpit gull-wing monoplane with fixed undercarriage (just as we see in the sketch), was rejected when it proved unable to carry the required 8-gun load. Mitchell then designed a new closed-cockpit prototype, with a Rolls Royce engine and the now-familiar elliptical wing with retractable undercarriage, which became the Mark I. Though Mitchell died in 1937, the Spitfire continued to be developed , the Vickers design team carrying out regular modifications to keep the plane competitive as Germany improved their fighter designs. It was the only British plane that was in continuous production throughout the war.
The pilot played by David Niven is a composite character, there being no single pilot who flew the seaplane races and tested the Spitfire. The name ‘Geoffrey Crisp’ is probably meant to suggest Vickers test pilot Jeffrey Quill: though he never raced in the Schneider Cup races, he helped test the Spitfire prototype, along with 'Mutt' Summers, Vickers’s chief test pilot. (Summers is portrayed as a character in The Dam Busters in the Fleet-Lagoon test-drops.) Quill also flew the plane in the recreation shot especially for the film in November 1941, of the prototype test flight which impressed the RAF brass. However making the test pilots into a composite character creates a coherence the film would otherwise lack, with the Niven character becoming the film’s flashback narrator (and occasional comic relief), the man who has seen the events depicted, right through from start to finish.
http://www.south-central-media.co.uk/spitfire/RJMitchell.gifMitchell's illness in the film is delicately unspecified, and depicted as coming later in life than it did, with an implication it was something that could be alleviated if not cured by rest. In fact Mitchell had the same condition that comedian Will Hay survived in the year the film came out: bowel or rectal cancer. Mitchell was not so lucky as Hay. In 1933, he collapsed and underwent a colostomy, after having a malignant section of intestine removed. His son has recently said he did not tell friends about his condition; in the film he doesn’t even tell his wife until near the end. The German holiday depicted in the film was actually to convalesce from his operation, though the notion the trip alerted him to Nazi re-armament and bully-boy ambitions seems to have a basis in fact. (Two days after the prototype's maiden flight on March 5, 1936, the first German troops marched into the Rhineland demilitarized zone.)
In 1937, after three years unstinting work on the Spitfire and his planned new high-speed bomber (never built), he went to Vienna for specialist treatment, but returned soon after to die in Southampton. He died in June 1937, age 42, within a year of the Spitfire’s first test-flight, at what today is part of Southampton International Airport. (His 85-year old son and biographer still campaigns to have the airfield renamed to commemorate this 1936 maiden flight.)
The film opens with him in 1922 picnicking on a South Coast clifftop, admiring the grace of gulls as they swoop and dive, and goes on to depict him as a man with a dream, of a bird that will swoop and dive, and ‘spit fire’. This depiction of Mitchell as a bit of a dreamer may not have been accurate (anecdotes in documentaries tell of "Mitch" being stern and gruff), but it fitted Leslie Howard’s own on-screen image. (That Howard kept his slender boyish looks even at age 50 allowed him to credibly play a man ageing from his mid-20s to age 42.) As with Michael Redgrave in The Dam Busters, the actor made no attempt to portray the real-life inventor’s stammer.) While thus on holiday watching the gulls wheel above the clifftops, Mitchell is inspired, in the manner of inventor Leonardo Da Vinci, to the possibility of a plane that would have the grace of a bird, and could swoop like one. (During the war, in neutral Sweden, the famed nature documentarist Arne Sucksdorff made a film on skua gulls ‘dive-bombing’ the guillemots who live on the cliff-face, which was taken by some as a parable of Nazi aggression, with the crank-winged skuas as Stuka dive-bombers.)
The film portrays ‘Mitch’ as an artist, and his plane designs as works of art. One of the DVD issues of the restored film (on the Odyssey label) includes comments by the real Jeffrey Quill (the basis of the David Niven character) saying the idea Mitchell was inspired by gulls is fantasy. His Dictionary Of National Biography entry says his brilliance was the way, as a practical engineer, he integrated many refinements seen in various American (Curtiss) and German (Junkers) aircraft designs. Regarding the name Spitfire, historically Mitchell is quoted as saying, when he heard the Air Ministry had officially named the plane the Spitfire, “That’s just the sort of bloody silly name they would give it.” To which it has to be added, that seems to have been just the sort of thing he would say, with his reputation for bluff northern bluntness and for having a short fuse. The quote seems to be officially accepted as genuine, and was recently used as a question on University Challenge by Jeremy Paxman, who himself had nominated the Spitfire in 2005 as a British Design Icon. Mitchell's son and biographer has said "My father thought the name Spitfire was a bit silly.” He had toyed with calling his earlier unsuccessful fighter design the Spitfire and wanted to call his re-design the Shrew, but luckily this was vetoed.
One reason he may have felt the name silly was that it had become associated with Hollywood. A series of films made from 1939 on, starring actress Lupe Velez, was known by her own personal nickname, the Mexican Spitfire. It was an old slang term for a type of fiery, hot-tempered female who will fight to do things her way. (At war's end, director Carol Reed tried to get a Lady Godiva historical comedy made under the title Spitfire.) The Vickers chairman had called his daughter ‘my little spitfire’ in Mitchell’s presence, and the name came out of this usage. In fact the name itself had tremendous propaganda value (it worked in German - as in 'Achtung, Spitfeuer!'), emphasizing the fighter’s firepower and death-dealing capability, and it is this the film builds on. Mitchell's envisioning the gull as the prototype of a fighter in the flashback-framework sequence anticipates the mediaeval pilgrim's trained hunting hawk turning into a Spitfire in Powell & Pressburger's 1944 A Canterbury Tale (an effect later reused by Kubrick in 2001 with a bone thrown in the air becoming a space weapon).

[spekesoftly]

luffers79,

If you google Test & Research Pilots, Flight Test Engineers and then put Mutt Summers in the top left search box, it'll take you to a good write up. (I tried to post a direct link, but failed)

P.S. His impressive list of first flights included the Vickers Valiant but not the Vulcan. That was flown by Avro's CTP - Roly Falk.

[Pittsextra]

Not a book specifically about him but some good stories:-

Vapour Trails by Mike Lithgow and British Test pilots by Geoffrey Dorman.

[luffers79]

Spekesoftly.

Thank you !! Sorry about the typo, I thought I had written Valiant - until I read your correction !!!

(Must be getting OLD - its beginning to happen too often !!).

Your link :-

http://thetartanterror.********.ca/2007/09/joseph-mutt-j-summers-1903-1954.html

[spekesoftly]

Yes unfortunately that link doesn't work - looks like the same problem I had earlier.

Anyway, glad you found it and hope you enjoyed the read.

[Fantome]

Joseph 'Mutt' J. Summers 1903-1954


Joseph Summers, affectionately known for some reason as “Mutt”, was granted a short service commission in the RAF at the age of 21 and learned to fly Avro 504s and Sopwith Snipes at Duxford. He passed out at Digby in 1924 and was posted to 24 Sqn flying Sopwith Snipes, which were soon replaced by Gloster Grebes. He must have had exceptional talent, because after only 6 months he was posted to Martlesham Heath as a test pilot, a signal honour for a short-service officer.

Among the first aircraft he tested were the Gamecock, Bulldog, Hornbill and Avenger. The prototype Bulldog was so unstable he almost had to make his first parachute jump. It got into a spin that he could not stop, but when he started to get out he found that the airflow disturbance caused by his body had started to bring the aircraft out of the spin. He returned to his seat and landed – the fuselage was then extended by 18 inches and no further problems occurred with the Bulldog.

During a terminal velocity test in a Hawker Hawfinch the upper decking of the fuselage collapsed, with the side effect of overtightening the Sutton harness and jamming Mutt so tightly in his seat he could hardly breathe. He decided never to use shoulder straps again, which undoubtedly saved his life on another occasion.

One of the Martlesham pilots to test the Vickers 141 single-seat Scout in January 1928 was F/O John Summers, soon to become a Flight Lieutenant and Vickers’ chief test pilot.

The Vickers biplane bomber proposal to meet Spec. B.19/27 flew for the first time for 10 minutes in the hands of Mutt, on 30 November 1929. This competitor to the Heyford, eventually called the Vanox, was extensively modified, being flown many times by Mutt, but was eventually unsuccessful in being adopted by the Air Ministry. Instead it was used for testing, including at the RAE as a flight refuelling tanker, and was last seen at a public display in 1937, refuelling an Overstrand.

The prototype Vixen I, registered G-EBEC and designed as a private venture day bomber proposal, after several metamorphoses including major airframe changes, was fitted in 1924 with a developed version of the 650 hp Rolls-Royce Condor III direct-drive engine. Although undergoing trials at Martlesham in connection with the 1927 general-purpose competition, it was not selected. However in Mutt’s hands it had one claim to fame: on 26 August 1929, as on that date Mutt, along with Col Russell of the Irish Air Corps, flew the first airborne Irish mail, in G-EBEC from Galway to London.

Private venture single-seat shipboard aircraft Type 177 was flown by Mutt at Brooklands on 26 November 1929 and was the final development of the Vickers single-seat tractor biplanes.

The last aircraft to be built by Vickers at the Vickers Crayford Works was the Vellore Mk III, which was registered G-AASW and first flown by Mutt at Brooklands on 24 June, 1930.

The Vickers Type 160 Viastra commercial monoplane fuselage was built at the Crayford Works, but then work was transferred to Woolston, Southampton, which had just been acquired by Vickers. On completion at Woolston, the Viastra I was towed down the Itchen river and round to Hamble aerodrome on a lighter. Registered G-AAUB, it was then flown at Hamble by Mutt on 1 October, 1930.

In 1930, Barnes Wallis attempted to save weight in the structure of the Vickers proposal to meet the M.1/30 specification, given the serial S1641. Unfortunately he overdid the weight-saving, and after a couple of dozen test flights the aircraft disintegrated with pilot Mutt and flight test observer J. Radcliffe on board. Both landed safely by parachute, but the entry for this flight in Mutt’s log book was very laconic! This was on 23 November, 1933, in a high speed dive with full load, when the whole fuselage detached from the wings and Mutt was thrown out, his parachute opening immediately. Radcliffe’s safety belt was released or broken, and he found himself suspended by his parachute back-strap from the machine-gun on the starboard side of his cockpit. After some seconds he became detached and then released his parachute.

Vickers tried to interest the Air Ministry in a new tactical concept with their Type 163 Battleplane, with huge 37 mm COW guns at the nose and tail and another firing downward beneath the fuselage. Powered by a combination tractor/pusher propeller arrangement, Mutt flew it for the first time on 12 January 1931 as a bomber, but it completed only 40 hours of test flying and was broken up in the early summer of 1934.

On 4th November 1932 Mutt, by then chief test pilot for Vickers, received a letter from an officer of 216 (Bomber Transport) Squadron requesting that the Victoria (originally designed to meet the Troop Carrying Aeroplane (B) D of R Type 12 specification) should be re-engined with Bristol Pegasus engines and provided with wheel brakes and a tail wheel to replace the skid. Vickers had, probably unknown to this officer, already investigated the possibility of installing the Pegasus in the Victoria V airframe, and K2340 was selected for the initial conversion. This eventually became the Valentia.

A special twin-engined Viastra, Type 259, was built for the use of the Prince of Wales on official flights. It even included parachutes for the crew and passengers. Registered G-ACCC on 19 December 1932, in the name of Flt Lt E. H. Fielden, AFC, the Prince of Wales’ pilot and later Captain of the King’s Flight, it was first flown by Mutt Summers at Hamble in April 1933.

A development of the Vellore, the Vellox, claimed to have optimum (short landing and take-off) airfield performance, first flew as G-ABKY on 23 January, 1934 at Brooklands, piloted by Mutt Summers. On a second flight on the same day it carried its full design load.

The first of Barnes Wallis' geodetic aircraft was the Wellesley bomber, Mutt flying the prototype for the first time on 19 June, 1935. He was landing this aircraft on 23 July when the port undercarriage collapsed, resulting in several months in the workshops to repair the serious damage to the wing.

The Wellington was designed to meet Spec. B.9/32 and the first flight of the prototype, K4049, was made by Mutt, accompanied by Messrs. Wallis and Westbrook, designer and factory manager respectively, at Brooklands on 15 June, 1936. It was to have been called the Crecy, but the change to Wellington (to commemorate the Iron Duke), started the practice of using the initial letter W for Vickers aircraft that employed Barnes Wallis geodetic structures. Of course the first Wellington Mk I L4212 was also first flown by Mutt, on 23 December, 1937, as was the first Mk III, L4251, on 19 May, 1939.

On 5 March, 1936 Jeffrey Quill flew Mutt Summers in Vickers' new Miles Falcon from Martlesham to Eastleigh, where Mutt was to fly the new F.37/34 fighter, later known as the Spitfire, of course!

The Vickers F.5/34 embodied many new features, including 90 degree trailing edge flaps and actually flew on its first test with its full battery of eight Browning machine guns in wing mountings.It also had electrical undercarriage. Mutt Summers flew this aircraft, now called the Venom, on 17 June, 1936 at Brooklands, nearly 3 months after he had flown the prototype Spitfire at Eastleigh.

Although the F.7/41 twin-engined fighter proposal DZ217 was first flown by Vickers test pilot Tommy Lucke, on 24 December 1942, a flight by Mutt Summers confirmed that the handling characteristics were not all that could be desired. The second prototype was never completed and the programme was officially stopped at the end of 1943, although DZ217 continued to fly until the end of 1944, being known by some as “the tin Mossie” due to its resemblance to the Mosquito.

There were 3 accidents with the Warwick within the space of a few days early in 1945, and Mutt, with his flight observer Jimmy Green, was involved in the one concerning HG364, from which they escaped without serious injury. Mutt’s brother Maurice (also a test pilot) was involved in another Warwick accident, PN777, in which his flight observer, G. F. Hemsley, broke his leg. The cause was found to be rudder aerodynamic overbalance, corrected by the addition of a dorsal fin.

Windsor DW506 was first flown from Farnborough by Mutt Summers on 23 October, 1943, having been assembled there in a specially built hangar later used by the ETPS. This was the first prototype Windsor, which is renowned for having gun barbettes at the rear of the two outboard engine nacelles. However, only 3 Windsors ever flew, the last without the barbettes. The second prototype was flown by Wg Cdr Maurice Summers, Mutt’s brother.

Britain’s first postwar airliner to fly was the Vickers VC1, adapted from the Wellington and Warwick designs, registered G-AGOK and flown by Mutt from Wisley on 22 June 1945. # prototypes were ordered by the Ministry of Aircraft Production, and this project became the Viking. This was followed by the military troop transport Valetta, the prototype being first flown by Mutt on 30 June, 1947 at Brooklands. Another later development was the Varsity for Flying Training Command, the first of which was VX828 flown by Mutt from Wisley on 17 July, 1949 with Jock Bryce as co-pilot.

The Viscount needs no introduction and the prototype of this tremendously successful turboprop civil transport (originally the VC2) was flown from Wisley by Mutt and Jock Bryce for 10 minutes on 16 July, 1948.

Jock Bryce recounts that on his first flight with Mutt in the prototype Viscount 630 he was astonished to see Mutt beginning his pre-flight checks by relieving himself alongside the main wheels. “Never fly with a full bladder,” was his advice, “I know people who crashed with one and it killed them!”

The very last prototype to have Mutt at the controls on its first flight was the Type 600 serial WB210, in June given the name Valiant, once again with Jock Bryce as co-pilot, from the grass at Wisley on 18 May, 1951. Only 3 more Valiant flights were made from Wisley before flight trials were transferred to Hurn, while a paved runway was being constructed at Wisley.

After 3 flights with Jock, he was checked out as first pilot and took over as chief test pilot when Mutt retired shortly afterwards. Sadly, his retirement was brief. He died after an operation 2 years later.

[teeteringhead]

I'm sure Mutt Summers also flew some of the early "Upkeep" (dams raid bouncing bomb) test sorties. Gibson's book refers to "Mutt & Jeff" (Quill??) as the pilots, but names - as much else - was left out for security reasons.

Perhaps his association with Jeff Quill accounts for the name "Mutt"?

(Mutt and Jeff were early 20th Century cartoon characters)

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111224045203/marvel_dc/images/4/40/Mutt_&_Jeff_Vol_1_76.jpg

I'm not sure which is which.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

On the theme of kindly test pilots, I was lucky enough to chat to John Cunningham at a Hatfield airshow, aged about 10. He was very patient. I remember his was the only autograph I have ever asked for. I subsequently became a (night) fighter pilot.