Flying more than a job for test pilot

Press, 6 August 1987, Page 15

Flying more than a job for test pilot

Although the 8.8. C. documentary series, “Test Pilot” (tonight at 8 p.m. on One), captured the undivided attention of many thousands of loyal fans during its sixweek screening on British television, it failed to enlist among that number the wife of one of its principal stars. Artist and teacher, Barbara Giles, is the wife of Squadron Leader James Giles, test pilot and principal tutor at the Empire Test Pilots’ School (E.T.P.S.) at Boscombe Down, in Wiltshire.

She recalls seeing a film of a pilot putting a plane into a spin and saying to her husband, “Good God, you don’t do that, do you?” “Of course not,” he told her. But she knew he

did, and he knew she knew.

Being a test pilot, and teaching others to become test pilots, is more than a job for Giles, it is a way of life. So much so, that when his tour of duty as principal tutor at E.T.P.S. comes to an end, he intends leaving the Royal Air Force to work as a freelance test pilot and open his own flying school.

An unusual decision, one might think, for a man who spent many years at university studying oceanography and training to become a marine biologist When he applied to join the air squadron at University College, Swansea, he told the interviewing officer he definitely did not intend to enter the R.A.F., he

simply had an interest in learning to fly small planes. But his interviewer was a shrewd observer of men, as James Giles was to discover later when he saw his R.A.F. personal file. The officer had written of him, “This man says he will not join the Air Force, but get him in and we will change his mind.”

Change his mind, they did. Work as a marine biologist was hard to find once he graduated, so he joined up on a shortservice flying commission. He like the life and the people, but after a while as a Jaguar pilot he became bored with flying the same, missions in the same aircraft and was ready to leave the service.

Then a friend told him about the test pilots* course. He thought it sounded like an interesting challenge, and a chance to fly a lot of different aircraft. He was accepted for the course and sent to train, not at Boscombe Down, but at the United States Navy Test Centre in Maryland. He graduated top of the class and returned to Britain as an R.A.F. test pilot. Now, with 17 years service in the R.A.F. behind him he is still flying and testing his skill at the controls of multi-million dollar aircraft every day. Despite that, he claims flying is not his whole life. He enjoys sailing, and loves music. He plays folk music on the piano, violin and mandolin.