Sleeve Wing in #11: I totally back You up on this.
It's easy to pick popularized names and forget other who qualifies to a given honour as well as there might be plenty of pilots with unspoken achievements who never gets into the comparison.
In such case I often compare with the first person to fly with a motorised airplane, who is common known to be the Wright brothers - But in fact the Wrights are morely the first to survive to tell the story hence there might be several among the pioneers who died in the try but actual got airborne short before they perished. Remember: Trying to fly was performed by lonely fools theese days!
But IF I should ignore the achievements of Eric Brown I would mention Roland Garros and Howard Huges!
Last edited by Flybiker7000; 7th Dec 2014 at 20:25.