Centaurus. Fine old names there. Bill Else and Eric Franklin were with Air Anglia later.
Bill Else had a slightly wonky eye. He told me he was test flying a Hawker Typhoon and the engine failed shortly after takeoff.
He belly landed in a field and hit his head on the gun-sight. One of his eyes literally popped out from its socket with the impact. There was no fire so after he escaped from the Typhoon, he waited on the wing for help to arrive while doing his best to hold his eye against it's socket. One of the rescuers was a nurse who asked if he was alright. He removed his hand and said look - my eye has popped out. She fainted on the spot.
Jimmy Harrison told me of the time he flew blind into a huge CB while demonstrating the prototype Avro 748 in India. The aircraft did not have weather radar. As the aircraft was thrown about in severe turbulence inside the cloud, Jimmy said he kept on repeating to himself "This aircraft is designed as Fail-Safe." He said the aircraft was spat from the side of the CB at 23,000 ft. On his eventual arrival back to Woodford, Jimmy Harrison told the designers that in future, all HS 748's must have weather radar.
Eric Franklin was a superb instructor on the 748. I flew with him on several occasions in the RAAF 748's as part of our conversion to type. Later I discovered he was a decorated former RAF wartime pilot.
During my time at Woodford 1966-1967 RAF Andovers were ferried there for maintenance. Walking past a hangar I was aware of an appalling stench emanating from an Andover. Turned out the Elsan toilet had not be cleaned out for many days as the maintenance people refused to clean it and the RAF ferry crew had long since departed to home base. It became an impasse that wasn't resolved for some time. Meanwhile maintenance staff still worked on the aircraft holding their noses. Beats me why something wasn't done about that appalling state of affairs.
Tony Blackman was one of the test pilots at Woodford. Nice bloke and very knowledgeable albeit a trifle impatient. When the first RAAF pilots did their first dual flight in G-ARAY after completing their ground course, the captain was in the left seat waiting for advice from Tony how to start the Dart engines as he had never flown a turbo-prop before.
"Come on, hurry up and start the engines" said Tony who was in the right hand seat. RAAF pilot: "I haven't got a clue - we weren't taught that on the ground course." I was in the jump seat as observer. Fortunately I had flown Viscounts and they had Dart engines so was able to help the left seater a bit while Tony fumed.