page_title: Edward Tennant (pilot)
section_title: Folland Aircraft
hierarchical_section_title: Edward Tennant (pilot) / Career / Folland Aircraft
caption_attribution_description: English: Folland lightweight automatic ejection seat from a Folland Gnat. Photographed at the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford
context_page_description: Squadron Leader Edward Alan Tennant DFC was a Royal Air Force fighter pilot who later became chief test pilot of Folland Aircraft.
context_section_description: When Edward Tennant and his wife Sylvia relocated to Hampshire they rented a farm close to Folland's Chilbolton airfield so he could stable his horse and ride it to work. After flying, he would unwind by scything the airfield grass to provide hay for his animals, and spend some of his evenings helping to run a pub in Stockbridge with Vickers-Supermarine's test pilots.
  Tennant made the maiden flight of Folland's prototype light fighter, the Fo 139 Midge, on  11 August 1954 and displayed it at the Farnborough air show in September.  Despite the low power from its Viper engine, Tennant demonstrated it was capable of supersonic flight in a shallow dive from 34,000ft, in late 1954.
  On 18 July 1955 Tennant made the first flight of the Folland Gnat G-39-2 from at Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment (A & AEE) at RAF Boscombe Down (eastward) to RAF Chilbolton, in a flight lasting fifteen minutes. Four days later on 22 July 1955,  Tennant was flying G-39-2 at 20,000 ft, when the Gnat's canopy detached. His helmet, oxygen mask and microphone were torn away, leaving him cut on the head and without any means of communicating with the airfield. On approach, the runway was obstructed so he elected to make a wheels-up landing on the grass. Neither himself nor the Gnat were badly damaged.  The Gnat was repaired just in time for Tennant to fly a display at the 1955 the Farnborough air show,  
   during which he performed high-speed loops, fast passes and high-G tight turns.
  On 31 July 1956, Tennant was assessing the Gnat's aero-elastic flutter speeds at an altitude of 1000ft, above the Chilbolton airfield.During the test, he made sudden pitch demands and determined if the resulting oscillations decayed. At Mach 0.91 a torsional flutter in G-39-2's tailplane caused it to detach from the airframe. Tennant tried remedial  measures  with  throttle  and  tail-trim, but once he realised there was no response to control inputs he had no other option but to eject. By this time he was down to 600 ft and his airspeed was above that of the earlier Folland ejection seat tests; he pulled the face blind and made a successful ejection, only suffering a sprained arm. He parachuted to within walking distance of his farm, walked home and poured  himself a drink. Shortly after this, his wife returned home and asked, "What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be working today".
  At that year's Farnborough air show, Tennnant and his assistant, Dick Wittington flew XK724, the first of the six Ministry of Supply procured  Gnats
  He demonstrated the second Gnat prototype at the twenty-second Paris Air Show in early June 1957, flying from Chilbolton to Le Bourget.
  In 1959 he flew the first two-seat (twin-stick) version XM691 of the Folland Gnat from RAF Chilbolton (directly westward) to RAF Boscombe Down. The trainer version F.O.144 of the aircraft had a 30% larger wing than the fighter version. By this time, the 12 Gnat aircraft were in service with the Finnish Air Force. The Gnat (XP501) entered service with the Central Flying School at RAF Little Rissington on 5 November 1962, then another Gnat entered service with 4 FTS on 7 November 1962. The Gnat left RAF training service in late 1978. It was chosen for the RAF's new Yellow Jackets aerobatic display team. In autumn 1959 Folland Aircraft became part of Hawker Siddeley Aviation (HSA); flight testing moved to HSA in spring 1961.
caption: Folland lightweight ejection seat of the type Tennant would have used. Note the face-blind ejection handle in addition to the seat pan handle
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