Test pilot for the RAF and later for the Civil Aviation Authority who flew more than 340 types of aircraft in a 35-year career
Beginning his working life as an engineering apprentice with an aircraft firm, Darrol Stinton joined the RAF in 1953, serving for 16 years until he left to join the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) as a test pilot. Here his knowledge of aeronautics gained from his days in the design offices of Blackburn and de Havilland proved invaluable and he became an authority on aircraft construction and behaviour in flight, publishing three books on the subject.
In retirement he continued active as an aeronautical and marine consultant. His test flying spanned 35 years and more than 340 types of aircraft both as an experimental test pilot at Farnborough while serving with the RAF, and afterwards with the CAA.
Darrol Stinton was born in New Zealand in 1927. His father had emigrated there but found the life in his chosen country not to his liking and returned to the UK, settling at Beverley, East Yorkshire. Darrol Stinton was educated at Beverley Grammar School which he left to joined Blackburn Aircraft at nearby Brough, where he had a thorough grounding in aero-engineering, as well as working in the design office. He later moved on to de Havilland.
But combining aeronautics with flying had always been his object. In 1953 he joined the RAF, where his knowledge of how an aircraft functioned not only made him a good pilot but one who understood in detail what any aircraft he flew was capable of.
He served with Nos 25 and 26 squadrons flying all-weather and night fighters and also had a posting to the Far East Air Force, based at RAF Seletar in Singapore. But a good deal of his flying was done as an experimental test pilot at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough where, over the years, he tested a wide range of aircraft, military and civil, of both British and foreign manufacture. He was appointed MBE in 1965 in recognition of his work at RAE Farnborough.
In 1969 he retired from the RAF as a squadron leader and joined the UK CAA as a test pilot. For the next 20 years he was an airworthiness test pilot at the CAA, testing large numbers of light aircraft, right down to microlights, as well as larger commercial transports. In the meantime, he had in 1966 published his book The Anatomy of an Aeroplane which soon became the standard work on the subject, and has been through a number of editions. When the world land speed record holder Richard Noble took part as the “castaway” in the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs, this was his volume of choice.
The book was followed by The Design of the Aeroplane (1983) and by The Flying Qualities and Flight Testing of the Airplane, which was published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1996, and by Blackwell Science UK as The Flying Qualities and Flight Testing of the Aeroplane in 1998.
After retiring from the CAA in 1989, Stinton continued working, as an independent consultant, advising on a number of air accidents and giving expert testimony in many cases. He also advised foreign manufacturers on the feasibility of their designs.
In the mid-1980s he was appointed to the committee of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and was in 2006 invited to become an Honorary Fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots of the United States. He had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1978, and became a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Naval Architects in 1992.
He is survived by his third wife, Jacqueline, and by five children.
Squadron Leader Darrol Stinton, MBE, test pilot, aeronautical engineer and author, was born on December 9, 1927. He died on January 6, 2012, aged 84
Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Freer
Суэц, необъявленная война с Индонезией, ответственные командные должности во время холодной войны, директор Королевской Коллегии исследований вопросов обороны
RAF officer in charge of the air defence of the UK during the Cold War who later became head of the Royal College of Defence Studies
A first-class pilot, Robert Freer was selected, as such men often were, to become an instructor after completing his flying training in 1944, and so did not get the chance to take part in air operations during what remained of the Second World War. Subsequently, however, he had a distinguished RAF career, which included important squadron and station commands, as well as staff appointments, en route to the command of respectively 11 Group and 18 Group — two important commands during a tense period of the Cold War between Nato and the Soviet bloc — and his final appointments, as Deputy Commander in Chief, Strike Command, and as as Commandant of the Royal College of Defence Studies.
During the Suez Crisis of 1956 he had commanded 92 Squadron, equipped with Hawker Hunter fighters, and during the “confrontation” between Malaysia and Indonesia in the 1960s, in reality a threat to the former by the latter, he was in command of the strategically important base RAF Seletar in Singapore.
Robert William George Freer was born in Darjeeling in 1923, and was educated at Gosport Grammar School. Like so many young men of his generation he joined the Royal Air Force to fly, and trained in South Africa where he afterwards served as a flying instructor until 1947.
On returning to England with a permanent commission, he instructed at the RAF College, Cranwell, from 1947 to 1950, when he joined No 54 and later No 614 fighter squadrons, flying Vampires and Meteors, and then moved to the Central Fighter Establishment at West Raynham, Norfolk.
As a squadron leader, in 1955 he was given command of No 92 Squadron flying North American Sabres, but shortly to be re-equipped with Hawker Hunters. Just after the Suez Crisis he led it to Nicosia in Cyprus. He had been awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Valuable Service in the Air in 1955.
In 1957 he passsed through the RAF Staff College, and his career thereafter included a number of key appointments. As a wing commander he was a member of the directing staff of the United States Air Force Academy, returning to join the staff of the Chief of Defence Staff in 1961.
In 1963, as a group captain, he went to the Far East to take command of the important RAF base at Seletar, the largest of the three RAF stations in Singapore. Seletar was the main base in the area for short-range transport aircraft (which included the helicopter force), largely deployed in Borneo during the confrontation by Indonesia, whose leader, President Sukarno, was determined to destabilise the newly created federation of Malaysia of which Singapore was then a member, in pursuit of his dream of a Greater Indonesia.
The thwarting of this ambition by the application of British ground, air and naval forces in four years of conflict in a resolute but little trumpeted campaign, was subsequently hailed in Parliament by the then Minister of Defence, Denis Healey, as “one of the most efficient uses of military force in the history of the world”.
Seletar under Freer’s command played an important role in this silent war with its troop-carrying and supply helicopters which made support for and resupply of the forces on the ground a vital component of a strategy of repelling enemy attacks in the mountainous and jungle-clad terrain, which would have otherwise been a difficult if not impossible task. The RAF’s lumbering Blackburn Beverley transport aircraft also proved invaluable in their ability to drop crucial heavy supplies and equipment. For his services in the Far East Freer was appointed CBE in 1966.
He returned to the MoD for a time, but after taking the course at the Imperial Defence College and promotion to air commodore he became Assistant Commandant at the RAF Staff College, Bracknell. In 1971, as an air vicemarshal, he moved to Cyprus as Senior Air Staff Officer, Near East Air Force, a busy period when greater responsibilities were being taken on in the Gulf States and the withdrawal of British forces from Malta was under way. He returned to England as Air Officer Commanding No 11 (Fighter) Group, responsible for the air defence of the UK at a time when the Cold War led to frequent confrontations between the RAF’s fighter squadrons and Soviet Tupolev Bear bombers, as well as other intruder aircraft, in the air space to the North and North East of Britain. In 1975, as an air marshal, he took command of No 18 (maritime reconnaissance) Group at Northwood, a post which was combined with a Nato appointment, Commander, Maritime Air, Eastern Atlantic. This again was a most active post in the Cold War overlay of what was actually a period of peace. Freer’s Nimrod Maritime patrol aircraft were constantly in the air tracking the movements of Soviet nuclear submarines and the surface vessels of the Northern Fleet. Added to this was support of the Royal Navy during the “Third Cod War” when 18 Group aircraft patrolled the 200-mile maritime zone established by the Icelandic Government. Freer was appointed KCB in 1977.
In 1978 he was appointed Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Strike Command, returning in 1980 to the Imperial Defence College, by then renamed Royal College of Defence Studies, as Commandant for his final post. He was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in 1981, having previously been Air ADC to the Queen, 1969-71.
After retiring from the RAF in 1982, Freer became a director of the aircraft manufacturer Pilatus Britten-Norman in 1988, having previously been a director of various companies in the communications and defence fields. He enjoyed golf and tennis and was president of the RAF Lawn Tennis Association from 1975 to 1981. He was also a member of the council of the RAF Benevolent Fund.
Robert Freer was a likeable man with a good sense of humour and a quiet though decisive manner. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
In 1950 he married Margaret Elkington of Ruskington Manor, near Sleaford, Lincolnshire, whom he had met while at Cranwell. She and their son and daughter survive him.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Freer, GBE, KCB, Commandant, Royal College of Defence Studies, 1980-82, was born on on September 1, 1923. He died on January 15, 2012, aged 88
'Бій відлунав. Жовто-сині знамена затріпотіли на станції знов'
