Test Pilot No. I

Over Seattle a big Boeing bomber was in trouble. Fire whipped from an engine nacelle, was extinguished, burst out again. Four men jumped. Too late. On Boeing Field, cleared of traffic when the fire was reported by radio, firemen waited for the plane to come in. There was not enough time. The bomber, now low in the air, dived down flaming, crashed into the Frye packing plant, where employes were at lunch.

In those few moments, 32 died, eleven from the bomber's crew, 21 in the flaming ruins of the packing plant. Among them was the greatest test pilot aviation had ever had. "Eddie" Allen, who had no peer in his combination of piloting virtuosity and engineering skill, had made his last flight. Airmen sadly agreed that probably no other man in aviation could be so hardly spared.

Edmund Turney Allen had survived many a forced landing and some crashes in a quarter century. But he had always brought his defective ship in, had reported in carefully scientific terms what had happened and why. He had first-flown at least 80 types of aircraft, and, because he was also a research engineer, he was always able to find and report the changes that must be made to make an airplane safe and efficient.

Testing and Insurance. Most of the big ones were Eddie Allen's babies--Douglas' DCs, Boeing's Stratoliner and Clipper, Consolidated's four-motored Coronado, Curtiss-Wright's Commando, Lockheed's new Constellation (which he shook down last month). Greatest single tribute to his skill was that a big insurance company refused to cover such test flights unless Eddie Allen was up front.

Eddie Allen's greatest single contribution to World War II was probably his share in the development of the Flying Fortress. When Allen went to Boeing (as "Director of Flight and Aerodynamics") in 1939, after a decade as consulting engineer to most of the aviation industry, "Flying Fortress" was a misnomer. The plane was lightly armed and lightly armored.

Allen's problem: how to add 20,000 Ib. weight to the Fortress without decreasing its altitude or its speed. Adding a tail-gun was revolutionary in itself. It meant greatly increased weight, a displaced center of gravity. How well Eddie Allen succeeded in applying his test-pilot-M.I.T. knowledge of engineering is emphasized almost daily from Rabaul to Bizerte.

Daredeviltry and Research. Eddie Allen, 47, looked like no Hollywood conception of a test pilot. He was modest to the point of shyness. Frail as a column of smoke, he never weighed more than 135. The few straggly strands of hair on top of his bald pate made him look like a tweedy cupid. His nose was fused into his face when he spun to earth more than 20 years ago in young Fred Harvey's white Curtiss Jenny, but many years later a plastic surgeon built him a creditable nose.

Above all, he considered himself a scientist, which he was. In an era when "test pilot" was often a synonym for "daredevil," he persuaded manufacturers that the test pilot should be consulted before the plane was built. "You would not call in an architect after you had built a house," he said.

Flight and Analysis. Analytical and well schooled, he liked better than flying the hours he spent putting down his observations on paper. When Eddie Allen sat down to analyze an aircraft, his findings crackled with equations and Greek symbols for the designers. His recorded tests of Fortresses were inch-thick volumes complete with carefully worked charts of each flight.

Two months before he died he left his testament to aviation. Chosen to deliver the Wright Brothers Lecture before the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences, Pilot Allen sat himself down to a codification of test-pilot procedure. Object: to standardize testing, make it result in the same sound, understandable conclusions no matter what pilot is at the controls. The result: a test pilot's bible. Said Edward Pearson Warner of CAB, onetime professor in M.I.T.'s Department of Aeronautical Engineering: "More than anybody else, Eddie has made it possible for the performance of aircraft to be determined accurately and scientifically."

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