Captain Eric Melrose 'Winkle' Brown was born in Leith, Scotland, on 21st January 1919 and was a British former Royal Navy Officer who flew 487 different types of aircraft during his long career, more than anyone else in history. He flight-tested 53 German aircraft, including the Me 163 Komet rocket fighter. That Komet is now on display at the National Museum of Flight near Edinburgh. His flight test of this rocket plane, the only one by an Allied pilot using the rocket motor, was accomplished unofficially: it was deemed to be almost suicidal due to the notoriously dangerous hypergolic C-Stoff fuel and T-Stoff oxidizer combination. Commenting to a newspaper in September 2015 he recalled,
"To me it was the most exciting thing on the horizon, a totally new experience. I remember watching the ground crew very carefully before take-off, wondering if they thought they were waving goodbye to me forever or whether they thought this thing was going to return. The noise it made was absolutely thunderous and it was like being in charge of a runaway train; everything changed so rapidly and I really had to have my wits about me."
