Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My castaway today for the 3,000th edition of Desert Island Disks is the former

Royal Navy test pilot Captain Eric Winkle Brown. His ability to take on danger and win is staggering.

The Navy Fleet Air Arms most decorated pilot, his life reads like a handbook on beating the odds.

Landing on a flight deck is acknowledged as one of the most difficult

things a pilot can do. Eric Brown has held the record for the most flight deck landings for over 65 years.

Add to that the fact that he was one of only two men on his ship to survive a German U-boat bombing

and you get some idea of his bravery and brilliance. In a long and remarkable life he has witnessed firsthand

momentous events in world history from the Berlin Olympics in 1936 to the liberation of the

Belsen concentration camp.

Flying, he believes, is in his blood.

He first climbed into the open cockpit of a Gloucester gauntlet as a child to sit on his father's knee.

Thirty years later, he would pilot Britain's first ever

supersonic flight. He says it's an exhilarating world to live in. There's always that

aura of risk. You come to value life in a slightly different way.

So welcome, Captain Eric Brown. Can you explain how your life's work involving so much potential danger has you think

sort of influenced your personality how has it changed you all the things you've

been through? I made a point of preparing myself very well indeed because after all you owe this to

yourself to your family you don't want to lose theirane and you want to bring back results.

So kick the tires, light the fires and last one off Sir Sissy as many of those fighter pilots

...