Classics 1946 - 1951 [French Import]

in the two decades following thesecond world war, the british aircraft industryflourished in a pageantof ingenuinety and innovation. britain had invented the jet engine and was set to lead the worldinto an exhilarating new age. the jet age. british jets are yearsahead of foreign competitors. very exciting time. absolutely fantastic performance. this was a whole new worldthat was opening up.

aircraft and the men who flew themwere the stars of this age. thousands flocked to air shows towitness the daringfeats of the fighter aces. who were now the pin-upidols of a country escaping the austerityand pain of the war years. squadron leader, neville duke,wowed them all with a daring display. it was glamour, sheer, damn glamour. they flew fast, they flew high. they'd be gone in two minutes. vertical, bang, up.

flying these amazing new warplaneswas the dream of many a young boy. this, to me,was going to be my future. a future fraught with danger, where test pilots wereflying into the unknown, taking prototype military aircraftto the limit, and sometimes beyond. above all, this was an age where thesky was full of fighters and bombers. meteors, hunters, and lightnings.valiant's, vulcans, and victors. this was the golden age of the jet,when britain ruled the sky.

on a bright summer'smorning at coventry airport, a very special plane is beingreadied for flight. this is a gloucester meteor,britain's first jet fighter. british engineering genius,frank whittle, had invented first the jet engine, then a prototypejet aircraft by 1941. they paved the way for thetwin-engined gloucester meteor,which proved itself against germany's v1 flyingbombs in the last year of the war. in 1945, the meteor wasstate-of-the-artin military aviation. the gloucester meteoris a fascinating plane.

i first encountered it as a kid,staring up at the sky, it was as if you suddenly saw the modern worldleap out of the black-and-white. there was this plane, which justlooked so different, so strange. for hundreds of young raf pilots whohad learnt to fly in piston-engined aircraftwith propellers, climbing into a meteor for thefirst time was a bolt from the blue. when you go into a meteor, the first thing that struck it wasthe fantastic view all the way round. you could see what you are doing.there was nothing in front of you,

whereas flying a conventional singlepiston engine aircraft, like a hurricane or spitfire, there's ahuge, great engine in front of you. when you start the engine,it was just a quiet whir, nice, smooth running up. whereas, of course, on a pistonengine it was bang, bang, bang, fighting to get it started. you open the power, and then you'resuddenly pushed in the back, and you realise the first time whata jet aircraft really is. it's so exciting, getting airborne,up with the wheels,

and tell you about 38 knots,pull it up, and she would go up, well,we thought then, like a rocket. the impression i got was thissmoothness of it, the lack of vibration, the lack ofeven noise inside the aircraft, you don't hear all of that jetroar that you get from outside. it's like a high-speed glider,almost. it was such a terrific thing just ahugely, and i loved the meteor. what's remarkable about these earlydays of the jet age is that this revolutionarytechnology was being

developed against a backdropof austerity. it was all done on the cheap becausewe were broke, we just fought a war. in 45, we were looking at a countrywhere a labour government hadjust been elected, and a labour government had not beenelected on the basis that we want more spitfires, it was elected bypeople who wanted somewhere to live. this country had been blitzed,bombed, and poor. but the newprime minister, clement attlee, also understood the importanceof britain's aircraft industry. by the time the war ended,the aircraft industry was our

largest industry, because enormouseffort had been poured into it. and there was something like 30separate aircraft companies. you think of the people,not just building the aircraft, but the engines, hydraulic systems,the material, the seats. the electrics,huge numbers of people, probably well over onemillion involved. the obvious thing to do was tojust say right, let's scale it down to peace time. but part of the problem of trying torationalise it was that,

from a public's point of view, they were almost sacrosanct thesecompanies, they were so well known, de havilland, avro, vickers,they were sort of household names. just as sacrosanct wasthe royal air force. it had saved the countryfrom invasion during the battleof britain. but now, in peace time, it joined forces with the aircraftindustry, the raf created a new unit, a high-speed flight,with three wartime fighter aces. teddy donaldson, neville duke,and bill waterton.

gloucester provided the hardware,souped up meteors, the challenge,to break the world a speed record. this is the star gloucester meteor,the world's fastest aircraft. it is really a publicity stunt, they wanted to sellthe meteor abroad, they also wanted to trumpetengland and all the rest of it, it was very patriotic thing to goand break the world record. the british held the record,606 mph, and now the americans weresnapping at their heels.

in late summer, 1946, the high-speedflight took to the air over the seaside town of worthing. now, for the run overthe record mile, watch out for the delayedaction sound. the plane is way ahead before youreardrums catch up with it. if you take peoplegoing on holiday in '46, they were suddenly enjoying a worldwhere they knew they were not aboutto be bombed, and they could sit on the frontand watch this phenomenal aircraft fly over their heads at600 miles an hour.

now, if you plonked people down onthe beach in worthing in 2012, and flew the meteor over their heads,they would still be staggered. on september the 7th,group captain, teddy donaldson, increased the record to 616 mph. but this much trumpetedachievement was just the beginning as far as the aircraftcompanies were concerned. british aircraft designersnever stand still. so, they set themselvesa new target. there was this great desire to breakthrough

what was seen as a technical barrierto high-speed flight. the sound barrier. there were filmsand talk of the sound barrier, can you break throughthe sound barrier, there were even those who said youcouldn't get faster than sound, that it was impenetrable barrier. what's so ruddy peculiarabout the speed of sound? we all know exactlywhat it is, don't we? 750 mph at ground level.

but at high altitude,above 20,000 feet, the speed of sound reducesto around 660 mph. that target became thenew holy grail for the raf. during the battle of britain, these brave, young men had flownplanes against a visible enemy, the luftwaffe. after the war,there was this mystical force, as it was seen,which was the sound barrier. what exactly does happen toan aeroplane at the speed of sound?

i don't know. and shall i tell you something,tony? what? no-one else in the worlddoes either. in the cockpit of a futuristiclooking, and, of course,british prototype jet, our test pilot heropushes his aircraft to the limit. still no response! bail out. it's coming up to the last one!

bail out, bail out! tony! horn being a test pilot in the late 1940swas indeed a dangerous business. these chaps really werepushing their necks out because the technology that wasunderstood at the time was primitive. these were real superheroes, i mean, these guys got in tolargely untried aircraft. we had huge respect for them,because they had all done something

which we had never done and werenever going to be asked to do. and so, the life of a test pilot washazardous in the very early days. anything could go wrong, cos it was all at the edgeof the known technology. you know, they could get problemswith pressurisation, the cockpit canopies suddenlyflew off and decapitated them. over the sixyears following the war, a test pilot was killed virtuallyevery month in britain. in september 1946,geoffrey de havilland jr,

chief test pilotfor his father's company, attempted to break the sound barrierin their latest prototype jet. he probably broke the sound barrierin that plane then, but what happened, that plane brokeup over the thames estuary, broke up in to the mud at sheppey. de havilland's death was a nationaltragedy, but it certainly didn't discouragetest pilots continuing to takerisks. test pilots, i suppose, neverbelieved it would happen to them. you flew these aircrafts

but you never believed that you weregoing to get in to trouble, you always felt that you'd be ableto rescue the situation yourself. the test pilots of the late'40s were, generally speaking, pilots who had been flying throughthe second world war. combat experience had made thema perfect fit for the job. by 1948, spitfire ace,neville duke, had joined hawkers. hurricane veteran, bill waterton,had been snapped up by gloucesters, and now john derry,who had flown typhoons after d-day, had filled the gap leftby geoffrey jr at de havilland.

the test pilots of my boyhoodwere national heroes, and they were household names. everybody knew them, they knew themas well as today's people would know the names of formula 1drivers, or footballers. yet they handled that famein a disarmingly understated way. i think it was teddy donaldson, after he had broken the world airspeed record in 1946, he said, "right, that's it, chaps, i've gotto go off and see mother now." they were gentleman fliers,but they were personalities,

they didn't come outof a single mould. these flying galacticos were idealmaterial for the mediaof the late 1940s. and soon, children knewall about them as well. they developed almost a cultfollowing amongst young people. and this was reflected in the sortof comics which were full of all thesesuperheroes and invented stories. a sort of jet version of biggles,really. comics like the eagle, they had all these wonderfulcutaway drawings

which made you look in great detailabout how all these incrediblemachines worked. when you're little, you felt surelythey must be better than anything mere foreignerscould build. there was plenty of evidence tosuggest that might just be true. and the place to see all thisaviation excellence in action was the annual farnborough air show. farnborough was very much a nationalevent in the early years afterthe war. for britain's aircraft industry,this was the key shop window. farnborough showed only britishaircraft in great profusion,

and it was almost an actof patriotism, you went along and you just revelled in this tremendous outpouringof mechanical brilliance. they had buyers from around theworld who would come, and you'd have delegations from arabcountries and the far east, the us. there were even representativesfrom the soviet union, drawn there by britain's reputationfor excellence in jet engine design. there was a feeling if it was goodenough for the royal air force, it must be quite good.

so, we better perhaps buy some. tony blackman was a test pilot forthe avro aircraft company in the1950s. it was absolutely key to the firms to have their latest aircraft atfarnborough. at avro's, it was the driving force,all our new developments, we all strove like mad to getthe aircrafts ready for farnborough. farnborough's climax wasthe display over the weekend, when the general publiccame in their hundreds of thousands. everywhere you looked there wasexcitement,

there were so many aeroplanes, the sky was full of aeroplanes,all day long. the pilots would really push theaircraft, it was quite incredible. they were probably only about 15or 20 feet above the grass, and they came right overpeople's heads. most people were probablyrigid with fear. here's the follom meek,designed by ww catcher. the commentators were very carefulto point out who was flying theplane, people would wait with greatanticipation to see a particularpilot

put a particularaircraft through its paces. with this machine, jan zurakowski demonstrates the first,entirely new aerobaticfor 20 years - cartwheeling. it was like watching, i suppose, in mediaeval times, famous knightswaiting to climb onto their horsesto joust. at every show there were alwaysnew aircraft for the test pilots to show off. the canberra, the first of britain'snew jet bombers, powered by rolls-royce turbojets.

at farnborough in 1949, the publicgot its first look at the incredible english electriccanberra, the world's first jet bomber. flying it that week was test pilot,roland "bee" beamont. the way it was demonstrated infarnborough by roland beamont wasimmensely popular. he did it most dramatically, he threwthings around the sky like a fighter, and american commentatorswere most impressed that you could fly a bomberlike a fighter. just let me show youwhat has been happening.

what made the canberraso special though, was that it could fly huge distancesand astonishingly high. certainly, the first aircraft thatthe royal air force had that would fly at heightsof 48,000 feet. pete peters first flewa canberra in 1951. its distinctive, low-slung shapemade an immediate impression. a sleek, beautiful looking aircraft. when you first walk up to it, you think to yourself, "jesus christ,am i going to fly this?"

this version of the canberra, with extra long nose to house radarstill turns heads today. the aircraft itself was incrediblymanoeuvrable and agile, and it could hold its own,we believed at the time, with most of the fighters of the day. the canberra would makeheadlines throughout the '50s by setting a series ofdistance and altitude records, including the first non-stop,unrefuelled, transatlantic crossingby a jet. this was about more than justbreaking records.

by 1950,following the berlin air lift, the soviet union's iron curtain haddescended over eastern europe. britain was now on the frontline of a new war, the cold war. the canberra hadarrived in the nick of time. brilliant aircraft, it's performancewas so good it could fly higher than anything else at thetime, it could fly great distances. and crucially,this meant the canberra could stay out of reach of the soviet fightersof the early '50s. all these attributes paved the wayfor the canberra's greatest coup.

it was sold brilliantlyabroad to america, it was the first time the americanshad taken an aircraft of ours. this was a matter of huge pride. back then, british engineeringwas highly prized. but for all the tub-thumpingpatriotism surroundingthis british bomber, there were clouds on the horizon. those same soviet fightersthat struggled to reachthe camera's altitude were having success elsewhere. there was a hot war going on in korea

and the soviet unionwas flying mig 15s. the mig 15 was faster and better thanany plane the british had in service. with swept wings, it was a moreadvanced design thanthe gloucester meteor. but the mig 15 also benefited from a bizarre decision takenback in 1946. rolls-royce,with government blessing, had sold some of their enginesto the soviets. the russians wanted them, and stalin says, "oh, there's nopoint in asking the british.

"nobody's going tosell their state secrets." but they tried it on anywayand rolls-royce did sell them. it was extraordinary and tragic,actually, as it turned out. the russians reversed engineered themfor their mig 15s, which then started donning americanair force planes in koreawithin a year or two. this did not cheer upthe americans or indeed the royal australian air forcewho saw their meteors being shot down by these extremelyfast soviet aircraft. clearly, by 1951,the meteor was outdated.

britain needed a replacement. but the government was not short ofnew fighter designs to choose from. test pilots at competing companieshad been trying out allmanner of prototype military jets. and with them, experiments likerolls-royce's outlandish-lookingflying bedstead, an early attempt at the verticaltakeoff and landing aircraft. in those days, almost every aircraftlooked completely different. you could look up at the skyalmost any day in britain and see a shape that's neverbeen seen before. music: "the nutcracker suite"

swept wings were now the thing, and reflected in the gracefuldesign of the new hawker hunter. there was the boldly distinctivedelta shape of the biggloucester javelin. even the dear old meteor hada modern revamp with this long-nosednight fighter model. at the farnborough air show in 1952, people turned out in vast numbers tosee all these new aircraft daringlydisplayed by the test pilots. one of the big draws that yearwas john derry, who would be flyingthe extraordinary twin-boom dh110. and amongst the crowdson the saturday was thefive-year-old richard gardner.

the 1952 air show is one thati will never forget, because although i was very young atthe time, my father was takinga cinefilm and i was standing next to himand we had the sunshine roof openin our old car. he was following with his 16 mil cinecamera the dh 110. you have this extremelybeautiful, if curious looking plane,flown by john derry. this aircraft approached at veryhigh speed from my right and banked over and it looked sort ofglistening, silver coloured aircraft. explosion derry broke the sound barrier,flung the plane higher and higher,

then the unexpected,the unbelievable happened. the plane broke up. my mother sort of grabbed my father'selbow and said, "look, something'shappening." father shouted back, "let go, letgo. leave me alone, leave me alone." derry's dh 110 came apart in midair,right above the watching thousands. i'll never forget. it looked likeconfetti. it looked like silverconfetti. the remaining airframefloated down right in front of us and it just came down like a leaf. both derry and his co-pilottony richards were killed.

and then the two engines,like two missiles, shot out of the airframe and hurtledin the direction of the air show. one of them smashed into a hillwhere thousands were standing. there was sort of silenceand then one or two people screamed, but mostly, it was just a sortof shock. you could hear some people weresort of whimpering, which was quite shockingif you were a young person. you were not used to that sort ofthing, grown people sort of crying. it was carnage.

28 spectators had been killedand countless more injured. this was an absolutelynakedly public event. it took place in front of hundredsof thousands of people. they could see it suddenly that itwasn't all about abstract glamour or excitement, it was about a mandying in front of them in the air, and it was also about a lotof spectators dying. they were not just onlookers.they were tragic participants. derry's crash had also beenwitnessed by other test pilots on the ground waitingfor their part of the display.

i think everybody almost felta personal loss with john derry beingkilled on accident. but once the ambulance crews hadtreated the injured and the wreckage cleared away... they went on with the air show. can you imagineanything like that today if something like that happened? 28 people. neville duke in a hawker huntertook off,

flew the plane up to 30,000 feet, dived it and broke the soundbarrier. now, was that a kind of brutal actor an unthinking act? no, i think what they realisedwas they had to keep the showon the road. the air show was suchan important event. it was in the spirit of thingsto carry on. and the nextday in the pouring rain, 140,000 people turned up to watchthe final day's display. the difference between then and now

is that it never crossed anybody'smind to sue either farnborough,the airfield organisers, or de havilland's,the company that made the plane. changes, though, were made to whattest pilots would be allowedto do in future. besides an immediate effect,it had a lasting effect on flying, because we were not allowed afterthat to do turns towards the crowd. safety in all aspects of flyingbecame a more pressing concern. nowhere was this better seen than inthe development of the ejector seat. 'as more and more jet aircraftcome into service, 'the problem of saving the pilot inthe event of mishap becomesincreasingly difficult.'

the higher speedsthat jet aircraft introduced, the airflow was so enormous that you would probably not evenget your head out much beyond the outsideof the windscreen cover. experiments replicating thisvery powerful airflow show just how difficultit was to escape from the cockpit. but scientistshave accepted the challenge. a british company, martin-baker,came up with the answer. in 1946, pilot bernard lynch climbedaboard a specially-adapted meteor

and carried out the very firstin-flight ejection tests. and by the mid-'50s, ejector seatswere standard in raf fighters. how did it work in a real emergency? in 1956, hawker hunter pilotalan merriman was part ofan raf squadron in suffolk. i was doing this climb at full powerand 400 knots and as i passedthrough roughly 12,000 feet, the engine completely exploded. i lost control. he had no choice but to eject.

the next thing i knew wasthat the aircraft was disappearingin front of me, the seat was disappearing below,and i was hanging in a parachute. it all happened automatically. and you were there floating downgently so quietly after all the fuss and botherthat you had before -it was really peace and calm. the next question really is,"where am i going to land?" there were one or two hazards thatmade you feel slightly uncomfortable. electric power cables with33,000 volts running through them, steam trains driving upthe railway line at very high speed.

i spotted a tennis court, a beautiful grass tennis court ina big house with its own grounds, and i thought, "if only i could aimfor that i'm going to be all right." but alan was already too low. there was a great crashand i found myself burstingthrough the roof of a house on the outskirts of the town and there i was wedgedin amongst the tiles. his impact was even more dramatic. my legs had gone through not onlythe tiles in the roof

but in the ceilingof an upper bedroom in which there was a woman of 75 who was awakened and frightenedby the crashing noise above. his story made front-page newsin the local press. it was also picked upby the french media, who revelled in the rude awakeningof the elderly woman,who was described as shocked by the two booted legs and themale derriere stuck in her ceiling. ejector escapes like alan'swere commonplace in the 1950s. fighter jets were going ever faster

as new aircraft shapes wereconstantly tested in wind tunnels. british designers had learnedmuch from german research. during the closing years of worldwar ii, britain discovered that the germans had very advancedsupersonic wind tunnels, far more advanced than whatwe had in the uk. in fact, this very wind tunnelin farnborough is one captured from the germansand brought back to britain. wind tunnel research helped producea whole new generation of aircraft. the v bombers.

the valiant, the vulcanand the victor. three very different bombers witha common destructive purpose. the story of the v bomberis intimately linked to the story of britain's viewof itself in the world. in the late '40s, the british, in order to remainan independent great power, they decided to embark upon creatingtheir own nuclear weapons. if they're going to createtheir own nuclear weapons, they had to have away of delivering them.

what do they do? in a way,they went back to the tried and tested formulaof the second world war. in the war, three heavy bombers - the lancaster, halifaxand stirling - had pulverised germany. now the new generation -valiant, vulcan and victor - could strike a nuclear hammer-blowagainst the soviet union. but why did the air ministry,in a seemingly extravagant move, go for three differentv bomber designs?

the ministry decided to go for threebecause the first aircraft, the valiant, was quitestraightforward and simple and could be produced quicklywhereas the more advanced ones, the vulcan and victor,were to be proceeded with until it was clear that one of themwas the better aircraft and in the end, the ministry went forall three because all three worked. absolutely incredible,if you think about it now, the way things are and the waythey were then. it's all fantastic. the largest, heaviest, and the mostaerodynamically advanced

of the v bombers was the victor. with its other-worldlycrescent-shaped tail and wings, the victor was massive. its enormous 110-foot wingspan and distinctive cockpitgave it a predatory presence. i think to this day,the handley page victor is one of the most evil-lookingaircraft i've ever seen. if you wanted a planewhich looked like something out of a 1950s science fiction,it was the victor.

a bomber with an incredible range of6,000 miles, the victor was powered by four thunderous armstrongsiddeley sapphire engines. the pilots could call upon a mammoth40 tons of thrust to get this monster into the air. but when it comes to makinga lasting impression, there's one v bomber headand shoulders above the rest. the vulcan really is an iconicsymbol, i suppose. everybody knows about the vulcan. this strange delta shape,unheard of.

no bomber had ever hada shape like this. it was like a great black bat. with the wheels extended almostlike talons. a fantastic sight. the vulcan was designed and builtby the same company that produced the great lancasterbomber, avro. now the world's first delta wingfour jet bomber, the avro vulcan. and there was no better man to showit off than avro's chief test pilot, roly falk. immediately i got into her,

i knew that had got absoluteconfidence. 'a brilliant man, a wonderfultest pilot and a great salesman.' he used to fly in a grey pinstripesuit, never wore overalls. at farnborough,which was very important, he would have lunch with a customerand then he would dash out in his pinstripe suit and get intothe vulcan and fly and he always flew immaculately. everybody's used to bombersdroning along laboriously getting into airlike flying pigs.

this thing just leapt off theground, it was incredible. at the 1955 air show, falk did what no one had ever donewith a heavy bomber. he rolled the vulcan. the crowds loved it but falkwas given a ticking off. he was told this was inappropriatebehaviour for a bomber. by the time the vulcan enteredservice with the raf in 1956, tony blackman wasjoining avro as a test pilot. he, like falk, once wowed the crowdsat farnborough.

now you must turn at onceto tony blackman. there he goes,now on the top of a loop. he's over the topand he's rolling out. huge bomber it may have been butthe cockpit is surprisingly cramped. as well as two pilots in the front,the back had to fit in a navigator radar, navigator plotterand electronics officer. it's amazing to be backand nothing's changed. just slightly harder perhapsclimbing up the steps. i used to be a bit quicker and ofcourse, the flight deck is so small.

a large aircraft with a minuteflight deck with a stick and it was just likea fighter, really. the vulcan served in the raf foran impressive 28 years, even flying missionsin the falklands war in 1982. there's now only one in the worldthat still flies and its basedat doncaster airport. it's an important day for xh558. she's going to do a special flypastover a gathering of former v bomber crews.

when you taxi out, of course, the power is very lowand there's not very much noise and you don't really appreciate whata powerful machine you're handling. it all seems so tame. then of course,when you open up the power, it takes a little timefor the engines to accelerate and if you open up to full poweron the brakes and then let go, it's absolutely fantasticthe acceleration rate. the power in the 301 engineswas so enormous

because you had four engines,20,000 pounds static thrust each and the vulcan dry only weighedjust over 100,000 pounds so that's why the vulcan would go. you get this tremendouskick up the backside, i suppose like driving a racing car. vulcan, you're clear to manoeuvre. beautiful airborne,the vulcan triggers vivid memories for those who spent long hourson the flight deck. it was a typical avro aircraft,it was black inside

and had the avro smell of a mixtureof hydraulic fluid, fuel and vomit. those engines have a sound that anyone who's ever heard avulcan before instantly recognises. you can hear it quite well there. i reckon he's about 800 feet,i think. happy days, i suppose, happy days.nostalgic. nostalgic, yes. but these bomber crewshad a deadly serious job. anthony wright flew allthe v bombers. he spent most of the 1960spractising for nuclear war

with the soviet union. i was 21 when i first was responsiblefor my nuclear weapon in my aircraft. it was a cold war, they wereagainst us, we were against them and if they were going to hurt us,i would do the same to them. practice missions with dummybomb drops were carried out over areas of mainland britainthat replicated soviet territory. if you went on a mission east,you'd go high first of all, and then you'd go down belowthe russian polish radar, go in and drop your nuclear weapon

and come back. that was it, really. we always felt that the massivedestruction that could be dealt by the v bombers would have beenso colossal that no-one in their right minds would even thinkabout attacking this country. i am very proud to have flownthe v-bombers, under my father's commandduring the war. he was only too pleasedto bomb germany,

the same as i had no problemwhatsoever to bomb russia if i had to. the v-bombers were emblematicof the brilliance but also the extravaganceof the british aircraft industry in the 1950s. the big problem was, there wasn't enough fundingto pay for all these. as well as all the bombers, there was now an almost bewilderingarray of fighters in

or about to come into service with both the raf and navy. gloster was building javelins. hawkers had hunters, seahawks. de havilland made vampires, venoms and sea vixens. and supermarine had theirscimitars and swifts. and even more potential new aircraftwere already in development. the government of the day,

when they looked at the requirementsfor the next 20 years concluded that you couldn't affordto operate so many different types. something had to go and the government was readyto bite the bullet. in 1957, duncan sandys, who was thenthe conservative defence minister, unleashed his white paperfor the future of defence. sandys was a great believerand had been since the war, in guided missiles and rocketry,

and what he really wanted to dowas to do away with aircraft and just have guided missiles. missiles, not fighters, weresupposedly going to be the future. which meant that the oncesacrosanct raf would be firston the chopping block. at a stroke, 14 day-fighter squadrons and about eightnight-fighter squadrons had been disbandedvirtually overnight. a savage reduction in capability.

aircraft companies were toldthey would have to merge. within three years, most of the multitude had beenrationalised down to just two. the first big group -the british aircraft corporation. now that includes bristol aircraft,hunting aircraft, english electricand vickers-armstrong. the second big groupis hawker-siddeley aviation. but from these ashes,a phoenix would rise. a shining hero that escapedthe defence cuts...

..the english electric lightning. when it was first releasedto the public i think it had a huge media impact. there was this utterly bizarre,silver aircraft, which was then calledthe english electric p1. the fact that it was calledenglish electric was wonderful cos it made it sound likeit should be a washing machine. indeed, the company who had builtthis new prototype fighter also made a varietyof kitchen appliances.

'in this jet age, 'the english electric companyis supreme with the canberra bomber 'and the p1 fighter, which exceedsthe speed of sound in level flight. 'you will find the same supremequality and workmanship 'in every english electricdomestic appliance...' and if this happy couple could be dragged awayfrom the blissful perfection of their english electric kitchento cast their eyes skyward, there was this magnificent,shiny aircraft to behold.

those p1 prototypes became...the lightning. soon they began to be spottedin skies over britain. it just went, "zoom!",straight over my head and i thought, "that's for me, love it.love it, love it." seeing a lightning that dayinspired lesley hayward-mudge to join the air force, whereshe worked in air-traffic control. in those days, women weren't allowedto be jet pilots but at least she could get closerto her beloved lightnings. the lightning was somethingtotally different altogether.

it was a rocket-fuelleddelivery vehicle and it just went like the clappers. i'd have given me eye-teethto have flown it! everybody loved the lightning,it was so powerful. it looked an utter thoroughbred in gleaming aluminiumwhen it first came out. two hugely powerful engines,one on top of the other, were what made the lightningreally stand out. 'the lightning, equippedwith firestreak guided missiles,

is the first fully supersonicfighter for the raf. in late 1959, lightningsentered service with the raf. future fighter pilot john wardremembers seeing one up close for the first time. we watched as a lightning taxied inpast the hanger and to me then, as an 18-year-old teenager, it wasjust a huge, powerful, awesome beast. above all else, the lightningwas about speed and acceleration. that plane was so fast it could break the sound barrierin a vertical climb.

it was a quite extraordinaryaircraft. 'want to fly a lightning?' 'want to climb two everest's...in three minutes?' with a top speedof 1,320 miles per hour, this aircraft was the idealrecruiting tool for the raf in the early 1960s. under your left handyou've got something like 120,000 horsepowerinstantly responding. and it's... it's a good feeling.

a brilliant feeling. all that performance,though, came at a price. as an raf engineer,tony clarke spent seven years toiling on this notoriouslycomplex aircraft. everybody on the ground crewused to think it was a great pieceof aircraft to work on and everybody liked itto start with. once you'd been there a littlewhile, you didn't like it so much. tony, like all lightningground crew, had to put in

huge efforts to keep these highmaintenance aircraft operational. lots and lots of hours were put inon the lightning all the time. pilots generally done their joband went home and we were there through the night,fixing it for them. it wasn't so much a simple job -you had to get to it, which meant taking engines out, reheat pipes or ejection seats,anything. get to the problem and you'dprobably fix it in an hour or so, then you'd have to put itall back together.

an hour's job would properlyturn into 25, 30, 40 man-hours. the lightning was alsoa thirsty fighter. you were always watchingthe fuel gauges. i could empty this in 15 minutes. shuuucck! and it was gone. to tackle this problem,v-bombers were used as tankers for air-to-air refuelling. the raf had to spend a lot of time working out waysof getting enough fuel on board

to keep the plane up long enoughto do its job, which was to shoot downthe various russian planes. in the early 1960s,cold war tension was at its height, following the cuban missile crisis. britain's lightning squadrons were almost ina permanent state of alert. leuchars - alert. two lightningsto two minutes. acknowledge, over. suddenly the telephone would ring and it would be one of the radarcontrollers from around the uk

ordering you to scramble immediately. you would run to the aeroplane,jump in... russian bear and bison bombersapproaching british airspace were usually the triggerfor these scrambles. 'receiving - scramble, scramble.acknowledge.' being in air trafficwe used to count them out and watch two or three taking offon qra - quick reaction alert. bears and bisons coming inand you'd think, pray, "please let them come back."

you then start working outwhere you're going, how far you've got to go. their job was to interceptrussian bombers over the north sea. it was a cat and mousewatching game at 50,000 feet. they were just monitoring, listening,recording everything that went on. you would get up alongsideand normally they would wave. quite often there'd be a littlewhite face at every window. they knew that we were therejust to watch them. sometimes these encountersbecame very tense.

one i interceptedwhen he violated the airspace and i was trying to get him to land,it was scary. he just wanted to get out of there. he was out to dodgeas fast as he could go. he didn't want to mix it with me. in the cold war,britain was privileged to have a fighter like the lightningguarding her shores. by now though, building militaryaircraft as purely fighters or bombers was not enough.

the lightning was good,but only really in one role. versatility was the thing. and britain was ahead of the packwith a new development... the tsr-2. when it first flew in 1964,great hopes were pinned to it. all the effort was ploughed intomaking tsr-2 something special, right across the range fromits engines to its aerodynamics, to very advancedterrain-following radar. it was years aheadof any opposition.

'it's the most advanced airborneweapon system ever developed.' returning from the tsr-2's maidenflight, test pilot roland beamont was impressedby the aircraft's handling. on the surface,everything looked sunny. the tsr-2 had rave reviewsin the press when it went throughits test flying phase and everybody still views it in the rosy glow of the reportsof the test pilots. under this carapace of optimism,problems were mounting.

the very length of the titleof the tsr-2 is a bit of a giveaway - it stoodfor tactical strike reconnaissance. it kind of beatsas it sweeps as it cleans. it is expected to doso many different things. it was very difficult to getall this in one aircraft. it had to fly very high, very fast. it had to fly at a reasonable speedon the ground. it had to carry an atomic weaponat low altitude a long distance. too much was being expectedfrom a single aircraft design

and there was trouble at the top. there was nobody in charge. the air staff wantedcertain things done. the ministry of technology,as it came about,wanted certain things done. everything that was demanded byanybody was put on the tsr-2 budget, which escalated the cost enormously. in some respects, tsr-2 was the aircraft that neveractually had to confront reality. it was a brilliant aeroplane,the test pilot said so,

but that's all we know. reality came crashing in on tsr-2with a new labour government. harold wilsonwas dead against tsr-2, even before he came to power in thegeneral election in october 1964. tsr-2 was heavily over budget and it became clear that thegovernment was going to cancel it. when bac factory workersgot wind of this, 10,000 of them marched in protestthrough london. the british aircraft workers demanda national plan for the industry.

the demonstrations were to no avail. in april, 1965, tsr-2 was scrapped. there was a public outcry, of course, because it looked as thoughit was just another occasion of throwing an immense sum of moneydown the drain with nothing to show for it. roy jenkins,the minister for aviation, defended the government's decision against furious attackfrom the opposition.

we can't go on spendingâ£1 million a week which is what we've been spendingon this plane. what this has done, is it is the death knellfor the british aircraft industry. but there was no going back. all that remains today of tsr-2 area couple of mournful museum pieces. tsr-2's downfall was a signal momentfor british aviation. by the early '60s,the climate had changed. it was all about money.

test pilots no longer had quitethe say that they used to have and nor did the companiesthat they belonged to. if a company produced an aircraftthat was extremely flyable and got it to prototype stage,this was no guarantee that it couldn't just be axedby the government at the last moment. amidst all this, one exampleof idiosyncratic british ingenuity managed to counter the trendof cancelled projects. in 1962, it made its debutat the farnborough airshow. 'the fighter of the future -the hawker p1127.'

better known todayas the harrier jump jet, this was an astonishing, revolutionary pieceof engineering genius. you suddenly could flyalmost like a bird. you could stopand hover like a kestrel and the original designwas called a kestrel, and then accelerate forward again. you could turn so tightly thatnobody else could follow you around unless they were ina comparable aeroplane.

here was the world's first verticaltakeoff and landing fighter. a product of more than a decade'sexperimentation by several different companies. from rolls-royce'sflying bedstead... ..to short's sc1. but it was hawkers who had the driveto turn a concept into a successful aircraft. sydney camm, their chief designer, wasn't prepared to dojust another research aeroplane.

camm's team took a french concept -vectored thrust - and adapted it to their ownaircraft design. the idea was that you could swivelthe thrust of a jet engine. point it downwards when you wantedit, out of the back when you didn't. simple, but clever. what really addedto the harrier's brilliance was that hawkershad foreseen a need for this kind of aircraft. the concept that hawkers had was

aerodromesare very difficult to defend and all you've got to do is knock afew holes in the middle of the runway and it doesn't matter how goodthe aeroplanes are in the hangers, you can't fly them. the harrier didn't need a runway. as eagle comic proudly proclaimed, the harrier was so nimbleit could land on a tennis court. the harrier was a stunning success. it wowed the crowds at airshows,entered service with the raf

and was sold to air forcesall over the world, most significantly,the united states. a wonderful aeroplane. absolutely wonderful. and, of course,the americans are still flying them. in the mid-1960s, the harrier demonstrated thatdespite the debacle of the tsr-2, britain's aircraft industrycould still be a world beater. it was to be a final hurrah. the last all-british-made fighter,perhaps the crowning achievement

of more than 20 years of creativityin british military jet aviation. when we startedit was like a one-man band, but of course, what happened was,we became very much part of a team. and that team was expandingall the time. no longer was it exclusivelythe raf and test pilots experiencing the jet age. it was the british public. not just appreciative spectators,they were now participants. next time...

comets, cocktailsand continental jet travel. things could happen.britain could make it. we were going to reach for the sky. 'tales up for britain.' subtitles by red bee media ltd

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