Roland Beamont, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Roland Beamont

British flying ace

Date of Birth: 10-Aug-1920

Place of Birth: Chichester, England, United Kingdom

Date of Death: 19-Nov-2001

Profession: fighter pilot

Nationality: United Kingdom

Zodiac Sign: Leo


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About Roland Beamont

  • Wing Commander Roland Prosper "Bee" Beamont, (10 August 1920 – 19 November 2001) was a British fighter pilot for the Royal Air Force and an experimental test pilot during and after the Second World War.
  • He was the first British pilot to exceed Mach 1 in a British aircraft in level flight (P.1A), and the first to fly a British aircraft at Mach 2 (P.1B).During the Second World War, he flew more than five hundred operational sorties.
  • He also spent several months as a Hawker experimental test pilot developing the Hawker Typhoon and Tempest, and was responsible for introducing these types into operational squadron service.
  • He pioneered the ground attack capabilities of the Typhoon and led the air to air campaign against the V-1 flying bomb In 1945 he commanded the Air Fighting Development Squadron at RAF Central Fighter Establishment, before leaving the service in 1947.
  • During his subsequent career as English Electric Aviation chief test pilot (and later for BAC), he directed the flight test programmes of the Canberra, the Lightning, and TSR-2, making the maiden flight of each type.When he retired from test flying in 1968, he had flown 167 different types during a total of 5,100hr and 8,000 flights—of which more than 1,100 were supersonic.
  • He set three Atlantic records in the Canberra, including Britannia Trophy for the first double Atlantic flight in one day.
  • In 1971, he became Panavia flight operations director, responsible for the testing of the Tornado, retiring in August 1979 following the maiden flight of the first production Tornado.
  • After retirement he contributed to aviation journals and wrote a number of books about his experiences. Beamont was a careful pilot who understood the capabilities of the aircraft he flew.
  • He was proud that he had never broken an aircraft, nor had to bail out or eject.
  • Even when his Tempest was shot down, he had made the best landing possible in the circumstances and got out, free of injury.

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