Test Pilots - David William Morgan

David William Morgan MBE (15th April 1923 – 3rd February 2004) was one of the last members of that generation of daredevil British test pilots who, emerging from the Second World War, used their skills to move from the era of piston-engined aircraft to that of jet propulsion. Much of his work took place on the Vickers Supermarine Swift and the Scimitar fighter-bomber.

David Morgan was born in Heanor, Derbyshire, and educated at University College school. He was a young 18 when he volunteered for the RAF in 1941. His first solo flight was on a Tiger Moth biplane in July 1942, and his training was completed in South Africa. He was stationed for a time at Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, home of the 617 Dam Busters squadron. In 1944, he was transferred to the Fleet Air Arm (FAA), flying Seafires, the naval version of the Spitfire, and later served on the escort aircraft carrier HMS Stalker in the Indian Ocean.

After the war, he became a flying instructor. In 1949, Morgan was one of four FAA pilots who flew a formation of piston-engined Hawker Sea Fury fighters non-stop from Heathrow to Malta in 3hr 23min. Then, in 1950, he joined Vickers Supermarine as a test pilot. In July 1952, he set a record of 18min 21sec by flying a prototype Swift from London to Brussels, at an average speed of 667mph.

His greatest disappointment, he said, was never having flown the British Aircraft Corporation’s tactical strike reconaissance aircraft, the TSR2, before the Labour government cancelled it in 1965. He had designed its “navattack” system and was its project pilot.

David Morgan then became a BAC salesman based in Singapore, selling Rapier missiles there and to Australia, Brunei and Indonesia. He continued to appear at air displays, his Spitfire engaging in mock dogfights with Bedford’s Hawker Hurricane.

He was made an MBE in 1985, and retired to a farm on Dartmoor in 1988.