Squadron leader Squadron leader (Sqn Ldr in the RAF ; SQNLDR in the RAAF and RNZAF; formerly sometimes S/L in all services) is a commissioned rank in the Royal Air Force and the air forces of many countries which have historical British influence. It is also ...

John Douglas Derry DFC (5 December 1921 – 6 September 1952) was a British

test pilot A test pilot is an aircraft pilot with additional training to fly and evaluate experimental, newly produced and modified aircraft with specific maneuvers, known as flight test techniques.Stinton, Darrol. ''Flying Qualities and Flight Testing ...

who is believed to be the first Briton to have exceeded the

speed of sound The speed of sound is the distance travelled per unit of time by a sound wave as it propagates through an elastic medium. At , the speed of sound in air is about , or one kilometre in or one mile in . It depends strongly on temperature as w ...

in flight.

Early life and education

Derry was born in

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

, where his father, Douglas Derry, was Professor of Anatomy at Royal Egyptian University. Douglas Derry was the first anatomist to be involved in the examination of

Tutankhamun's mummy Tutankhamun's mummy was discovered by English Egyptologist Howard Carter and his team on October 28, 1925 in tomb KV62 of Egypt's Valley of the Kings. Tutankhamun was the 13th pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of the New Kingdom of Egypt, making his m ...

, after the discovery of the tomb in 1925. John Derry attended

Dragon School ("Reach for the Sun") , established = 1877 , closed = , type = Preparatory day and boarding school and Pre-Prep school , religion = Church of England , president = , head_label = Head , head = Emma Goldsm ...

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

and

Charterhouse School (God having given, I gave) , established = , closed = , type = Public school Independent day and boarding school , religion = Church of England , president ...

. In his youth, Derry developed a keen interest in bird watching and often attended motor races.

Military career

Shortly after the outbreak of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he left school to enlist as a wireless operator and air gunner in the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...

. In 1942 he received a commission and the following year trained (in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

) as a pilot. His operational career began late in 1944 when he joined 182 Squadron, flying

Hawker Typhoon The Hawker Typhoon is a British single-seat fighter-bomber, produced by Hawker Aircraft. It was intended to be a medium-high altitude interceptor, as a replacement for the Hawker Hurricane, but several design problems were encountered and i ...

s on close support to the Allied armies in the

Low Countries The term Low Countries, also known as the Low Lands ( nl, de Lage Landen, french: les Pays-Bas, lb, déi Niddereg Lännereien) and historically called the Netherlands ( nl, de Nederlanden), Flanders, or Belgica, is a coastal lowland region in N ...

. After serving also with 181 Squadron, he was given command of 182 Squadron shortly before the end of the war.

Test pilot career

In 1947 Derry joined

de Havilland The de Havilland Aircraft Company Limited () was a British aviation manufacturer established in late 1920 by Geoffrey de Havilland at Stag Lane Aerodrome Edgware on the outskirts of north London. Operations were later moved to Hatfield in H ...

as a test pilot, working largely on the

de Havilland DH 108 The de Havilland DH 108 "Swallow" was a British experimental aircraft designed by John Carver Meadows Frost in October 1945. The DH 108 featured a tailless, swept wing with a single vertical stabilizer, similar to the layout of the wartime ...

aircraft. He is widely believed to have exceeded the speed of sound on 6 September 1948, when he lost control of his aircraft and the Mach meter supposedly 'briefly showed' supersonic speeds in a shallow dive from 12,195 m (40,000 ft) to 9,145 m (30,000 ft). Despite lack of substantial evidence (the recording apparatus was switched off during the flight), the news was promoted by the British press as having broken the sound barrier. Also in 1948, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the

Royal Aero Club The Royal Aero Club (RAeC) is the national co-ordinating body for air sport in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1901 as the Aero Club of Great Britain, being granted the title of the "Royal Aero Club" in 1910. History The Aero Club was foun ...

Tom Wolfe Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. (March 2, 1930 – May 14, 2018)Some sources say 1931; ''The New York Times'' and Reuters both initially reported 1931 in their obituaries before changing to 1930. See and was an American author and journalist widely ...

's book '' The Right Stuff'' referred to this claim, but referred to another test pilot,

Geoffrey de Havilland, Jr. Geoffrey Raoul de Havilland Jr., OBE (18 February 1910 – 27 September 1946) was a British test pilot. He was the son of Geoffrey de Havilland, the English aviation pioneer and aircraft designer. Early life Geoffrey Raoul de Havilland was b ...

, who had been killed in a previous test flight, when his DH 108 broke up at about Mach 0.9. As a demonstration pilot, Derry developed a new type of

aerobatic manoeuvre Aerobatic maneuvers are flight paths putting aircraft in unusual attitudes, in air shows, dogfights or competition aerobatics. Aerobatics can be performed by a single aircraft or in formation with several others. Nearly all aircraft are capabl ...

which became known as the "Derry Turn". It consists of a reversal of

bank A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Because ...

during a steep turn which is performed with the aircraft passing through the inverted rather than upright attitude.

Death

Derry was killed in the 1952 Farnborough Airshow DH.110 crash (the DH 110 went on to become the

de Havilland Sea Vixen The de Havilland DH.110 Sea Vixen is a British twin-engine, twin boom-tailed, two-seat, carrier-based fleet air-defence fighter flown by the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm during the 1950s through to the early 1970s. The Sea Vixen was designed by ...

) when his aircraft broke up because of a design fault resulting in catastrophic structural failure, with 31 fatalities including himself, his flight observer Tony Richards, and 29 spectators. The jury at the inquest returned a verdict that the pilot and observer died of accidental death and the deaths of the spectators were also accidental.

In popular culture

Derry's DH 108 historic test flight was used in dramatized form in the 1952 film ''

The Sound Barrier ''The Sound Barrier'' is a 1952 British aviation drama film directed by David Lean. It is a fictional story about attempts by aircraft designers and test pilots to break the sound barrier. It was David Lean's third and final film with his wife ...

'' directed by

David Lean Sir David Lean (25 March 190816 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Widely considered one of the most important figures in British cinema, Lean directed the large-scale epics ''The Bridge on the River ...

John Justin John Justin (24 November 1917 – 29 November 2002) was a British stage and film actor. Early life John Justinian de Ledesma was born in Knightsbridge, London, England, the son of a well-off Argentine rancher. Though he grew up on his father' ...

plays Philip Peel, a test pilot who brings his plane through the sound barrier and out of the speed-creating dive by the untried technique of applying reverse direction to the

control column A yoke, alternatively known as a control wheel or a control column, is a device used for piloting some fixed-wing aircraft.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third edition'', page 563. Aviation Supplies & Academics, 1997. . ...

Chuck Yeager Brigadier General Charles Elwood Yeager ( , February 13, 1923December 7, 2020) was a United States Air Force officer, flying ace, and record-setting test pilot who in October 1947 became the first pilot in history confirmed to have exceeded the ...

's comment on that filmic presentation: "Anyone who reversed the controls going transonic would be dead."Wolfe, Tom (1979), ''The Right Stuff'', 1980 reprint, New York: Bantam, Ch. 3, "Yeager", p. 50, .

Early life and education

Military career

Test pilot career

Death

In popular culture

References

Further reading