Test Pilots - Gordon Joseph Horne

Gordon Joseph “Chunky” Horne (June 1926 – 8th September 1998) was the son of a Police Constable in the City of Liverpool. He entered the Royal Navy as a rating in June 1944, but successfully applied for a transfer to the Fleet Air Arm; undergoing his initial pilot training in Canada between November 1944 and June 1945. An extended service commission in the Royal Navy led to promotion to a Sub. Lieutenant (A.) in June 1946. A deck-landing course in Seafires followed, as did appointment to No. 794 Squadron (F.A.A.). Chunky Horne’s flying log book of the time noted a depressing rate of crashes and fatalities among fellow pilots, but also more rewarding work in the form of a fly-past for the King and Queen, on their departure for their tour of South Africa in 1947.

In May 1947, he joined 802 Squadron (F.A.A.), in which he served until March 1949, during the course of which appointment he converted to Sea Furies and was advanced to Lieutenant (A.) in June 1948. By now a “Top Gun” Naval jet pilot, Horne attended assorted air shows and displays, one such occasion being at R.N.A.S. Eglington July 1948, when he flew in a formation of four Sea Furies in front of some 2000 spectators. He subsequently witnessed two of his fellow pilots collide, while they were ‘flying in box formation in a 30-knot wind, only 250 feet overhead’ – miraculously both men survived with minor injuries, one of them having courageously manoeuvred his aircraft away from the crowd.

In March 1949, he was posted to the F.A.A’s Carrier Sea Trials Unit and three months later to the Naval Air Fighting Development Unit. Both appointments comprised daring experimental work on Sea Vampires and, inevitably, further aerobatic displays before enthralled crowds.
In March 1951 Horne converted to Attackers, but at his own request that October, he was placed on the Retired List, having passed an interview with test-pilot-legend Jeffery Quill to fly for Supermarine.

In the words of fellow test pilot Mike Lithgow –

Chunky Horne maintains a fleet of the most impossible motor cars, currently owning a Roesch Talbot and a D8 Delage. The latter is one of the most wonderful pieces of machinery that a millionaire might have been able to run in better times. In his own words, “You have to switch off when filling up with petrol, otherwise you start to lose out”

Sadly, this hobby almost prematurely cost Chunky Horne his life. In August 1957, he was involved in a terrible car crash in a Healey sports car. The driver and another passenger, the actress Pat Russell, were killed, and Horne was seriously injured and partially blinded – the police found the car’s speedometer jammed at 103 mph. Aged 31 years, his flying career was over; he took up farming and died 41 years later at Goring-on-Thames.