The British test pilot Harold Penrose wrote a book called Adventure with Fate which was first published in 1984. One of the aircraft he test flew was the Westland Wyvern, in 1947. The Wyvern was a large ten ton single engine fighter with contra-rotating propellers. This extract from his book chilled me to the bone.
"I was completing the customary final circuit at Westland with the Wyvern when in a flash of time above Pete Garner's house, where I could see him and his wife in the garden, the world flicked sideways upside-down and the aircraft plunged inverted towards the sea of wedge-shaped roofs.
In that split-second the ambivalent dispassionate part of my mind even recognized the house into which the machine would crash in the next two seconds. - yet animal instinct had already pushed the control column diagonally forward and applied full rudder in the long practiced movements of opposing the roll and lifting the nose.
Shuddering on the verge of stall, the machine screwed laterally around and up, still massively rolling its ten tons past the horizontal, checked, then slowly returned to level a mere hundred feet above the roofs. Opening the throttle to gain vital speed, I glanced outside and saw that both ailerons were up at full lock, one controlled by me with the stick held hard to port, the other independently in repetition of the earlier Whirlwind and Welkin (incidents) but even more dangerously.
Tensely, I climbed to 5000 ft, willing the machine not to turn over, then successfully tried a wide turn by fractionally decreasing my sole controllable aileron, relying on lateral stability for recovery, knowing that with both ailerons up the wings had an effective wash-out that improved their ability to keep level.
Luck was with me. All went well. I radioed my predicament to Ground Control; saw the crash tender and ambulance move into position. In a five-mile curve across open country I headed back towards the west edge of the aerodrome, gambling there would be no bumps to upset that lateral balancing when low down.
Rocking slightly, the Wyvern made it, though there was an apprehensive moment as flaps and undercarriage went down and disturbed the trim, but we touched with a normal three-pointer and great relief, well aware that had the machine dived when it whirled uncontrollably inverted, the verdict would have been "error of judgement while performing aerobatics at a dangerously low altitude" instead of mechanical failure.
Inspection revealed the starboard aileron push-rod had broken at a forked socket.
Last edited by Centaurus; 1st August 2010 at 08:53.