In August 1916 two squadrons had just been re-equipped with a new type of single-seat fighter, a scout called the F.E.8, which had been designed at the Factory (Royal Aircraft Factory) and tested by Frank Goodden. The first F.E.8, sent out to France some months earlier, had been quite a success, but as soon as the first production machines reached the squadrons a series of disastrous spinning accidents began. Inevitably they reflected on the Farnborough designers and also the Farnborough test pilot. Goodden took up the challenge. According to one of the Farnborough scientist, Sir William Farren, this was mainly on his own iniative, but also as a result of discussions with some of the scientist and engineers, including Lindemann, Glauert, and Farren himself. Goodden resolved to test the F.E.8 by putting it deliberately, in cold blood, into a series of spins ; in order, so he hoped, to show that it could be righted perfectly well if handled in the proper way.

On a hot summer's day at the end of August 1916 (some records indicate it was August 22nd, others August 23rd), Goodden took off in his F.E.8. The aircraft was a biplane of the 'gun-bus' type, with the pilot sitting right forward in the nose--the whole thing looked rather like a wheelbarrow with wings. Goodden in his flying wheelbarrow climbed to a height of 3,500 feet. There he made a flat turn to lose speed, the nose 'gradually dropped', and suddenly the spinning started. As it continued it 'gradually got steepr' and Goodden thereupon switched off the motor, put the stick central and forward, and centralized the rudder. 'This resulted in a nose dive', he wrote afterwards in his report, 'from which the aeroplane, having once got up speed, can easily be pulled out with the control stick pulled back slightly.' Thus he made three spinning tests to the left, and three to the right. Three spins in each direction! One in any direction was more than enough for most pilots.

Goodden's report probably the first full account of recovery from spinning ever written by the pilot concerned, ended triumphantly as follows:

This aeroplane is perfectly stable, and is as safe from spinning as any aeroplane I have flown. There are large elevator, rudder and wing flap surfaces...if care is taken to make the correct movements required by the particular conditions, these powerful controls will enable the aeroplane to be readily brought under control again.

I could only succeed in making the aeroplane spin by the misuse of the controls...and from reports I have of the spinning accidents to F.E.8 aeroplanes, this seems to have been the cause.

From Testing Time, The Story Of British Test Pilots And Their Aircraft, by Constance Babington-Smith.