In the late 1950s my friend and Guernsey neighbour John Hall, who has died aged 98, was part of an intrepid team of British test pilots. During the cold war they helped with the birth of the English Electric Lightning, the first – and last – entirely British-built supersonic jet fighter.
For years the Lightning was the RAF’s main interceptor, with a phenomenal rate of climb. American fighter pilots envied its performance; they called it “the pocket rocket”. To achieve such power, the prototypes required rigorous testing from John and his pals, who pushed them to their limits.
Once he took a Lightning up to 36,000ft for something called a “cold soak” – an endurance test in which he ended up flying for 90 minutes with the plane in a completely frozen state. His hands became almost useless in cold agony, while the controls began to stiffen and he could only work them with jerky movements. Unable to lower the undercarriage normally, he just about managed a landing, after which the ground crew prised his 6ft 2in frame out of the aircraft and, hardly able to walk, he was led to safety.
He was fortunate to survive that escapade, and just as lucky to come back from a “structural integrity test” during which he took a Lightning out to one of the RAF’s North Sea firing ranges, trying to discover if it was possible to simultaneously empty the magazines that fed its three 30mm Aden cannon before the recoil from such heavy calibre ammunition shook the aircraft apart. He expected the entire body to crack apart, but fortunately, after “a bloody great bang” and the flashing of all sorts of warning lights, it held together.
John was born in East Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, close to the market town of Southwell, where he attended Southwell Minster grammar school. He was 10 when the second world war broke out, and like many of his contemporaries longed to fly Spitfires. At 18, after the war was over, he trained at RAF Cranwell and his dream was fulfilled when he joined a Spitfire squadron that saw active service in the Suez canal zone.
In 1952 he returned to the UK as an instructor on Meteor jet bombers, and by the late 50s he was part of the English Electric Lightning test pilot team. He then left the RAF to work directly for English Electric (later BAE), but continued to test jets for the RAF on a part-time basis until a final move to British Caledonian airlines, with whom he flew commercial transatlantic flights in Boeing 707s for 25 years until retirement.
John’s first marriage, to Shelagh Stone, ended in divorce, and afterwards he moved with his second wife, Tessa (nee Maxwell), to Guernsey, where he especially enjoyed the local swimming.
He is survived by Tessa, three sons, James, Patrick and Richard, from his first marriage, and another son, Maxwell, from his second.
