Originally Posted by
DaveReidUK
Strangely enough, I saw a link recently (can't remember where) asserting that two One-Eleven prototypes were lost in deep stall events, which is demonstrably nonsense, so there may be a minor urban myth at work here.
Or there may be some confusion with an incident in August 1964 involving an early production aircraft which was used prior to delivery to investigate deep stalls and belly-landed on Salisbury Plain after the stall recovery parachute had failed to jettison. The aircraft was repaired and delivered to the customer the following year.
I agree that it most likely refers to the August 1964 accident that left G-ASJD in a field, fortunately without any loss of life. This is also covered in books like Stephen Skinner's title about the 1-11 (
this one) and Sir George Edwards'
biography. Having to explain to the customers why a another 1-11 prototype had crashed (that was still the first impression) was a challenge. Test pilot Peter Baker had previously had to stream a tail parachute in a Victor after an uncontrollable pitch up, which left him in a vertical dive. When the 1-11 didn't respond to the elevator like he expected it to, he streamed the chute but did not get the pitch down response that he needed and expected. He continued to descend with the chute streamed and using a combination of full flaps and full power managed to control the rate of descent to allow a belly landing. It wasn't until later that he found out that it wasn't a deep stall.