Jeffrey Quill
Quill's work on the aircraft aided its development from a promising but untried prototype to become, with the Hawker Hurricane, an instrument of the Royal Air Force's victory in the Battle of Britain.[8] He was well aware of the dangers of flying and later wrote: Unless aerobatics were practised assiduously to the point where one was familiar with every conceivable combination of speed and altitude of which the aircraft was capable, one was not master of the aeroplane.There he joined a small team flying obsolescent Armstrong Whitworth Siskin IIIAs with open cockpits, no artificial horizon or radio, and only the most rudimentary blind-flying instruments (a Reid & Sigrist "turn-and-bank" indicator and an inclinometer).Wearing electrically heated suits which plugged into a socket in the cockpit, the unit made twice-daily scheduled flights (except on Sundays) up to 25,000 ft to collect data at 1,000-foot intervals on temperature, humidity and cloud formation for weather reports.On one occasion, when letting down through cloud, his Siskin hit the ground hard but in perfect landing attitude, bounced over a hedge and overturned, pushing Quill's head forward on to the cockpit coaming (its raised border).In January 1936 Quill applied for release from the RAF and joined Vickers (Aviation) Ltd at Brooklands, as assistant to its chief test pilot, Joseph "Mutt" Summers.The Spitfire needed a great deal of work before it was deemed safe for young RAF pilots to fly, and it did not enter squadron service until July 1938.During the Second World War, Quill was in charge of development and production flying at Vickers Supermarine, a job that he took so seriously that he felt he must obtain first-hand combat experience.Forestalling opposition from his employers at Vickers Supermarine, he successfully argued the need to gain front-line operational experience and was temporarily released on 5 August 1940 to join No.From November 1943 to April 1944 he served with the Fleet Air Arm, as a lieutenant commander, helping to develop better carrier-deck-landings with the Supermarine Seafire, the naval version of the Spitfire.He also made the first flights of the Dumbo (an experimental variable-incidence wing torpedo bomber to S.24/37), the Spiteful, the Seafang and, on 27 July 1946, the Attacker, the Royal Navy's first jet fighter.The First of the Few (released in 1942 and known in the US as Spitfire) was a British feature film, in which David Niven played the part of "Geoffrey Crisp", a composite character based on Quill and the Schneider Trophy pilots of 1927, 1929 and 1931.