Records
What made him the best at what he was, and why he was predominantly chosen above other test pilots, was his unique ability to identify issues with any aircraft just by sitting the cockpit and listening to the sound the aircraft made in flight.
In his career he clocked up over 5,600 flying hours, which is the equivalent of taking off in an aircraft on 1 January and landing at the end of October. This is the highest amount of flying hours currently achieved by any test pilot. By 1946 he had tested 310 different aircraft.
Summers numbered among his firsts the first flight of a pure jet civil aircraft (the Nene-Viking) on 6 April 1948; first flight of civil turboprop airliner, (Vickers Viscount) on 16 July 1948; initial flight of Britain's first four-jet bomber (Vickers Valiant) on 18 May, 1951.
By the time he retired he had achieved 366 general types, second only to the Guinness world record holder Eric "Winkle" Brown who has 487. Summers still holds the world record of 54 "Prototype First Flights".
Read more about this topic: Joseph Summers
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