What can you say about these pilots that would do justice?....Maybe just thank you for giving us what we have today!

Thank you for your wonderful video. A great wartime pilot and two tremendous world beating aeroplanes. A great Company. Still at Wharton near Preston. Duncan Sandys was the same politician involved in offshore tax evasion employing a legal loophole to pay £130000 earnings from Lonrho into the Cayman Islands. His 1957 Report bankrupted several manufacturers and projects. Nothing changes as regards our politicians.

An absolutely fantastic historical record of post war aircraft development, with its shocking end when the TSR2 was cancelled. I still have an “English Electric Traction Engine Trainee” overall badge which I “won” from a worn out pair of overalls, and have amusing memories of repairing my Reliant Robin fuel tank leak, while it was still dripping, with Lightning fuel tank sealant after a technician on the Provost production line took pity on the undergraduate apprentice (68-72) allocated to him. Time has dimmed memories of disappointment as I realised that a career at BAC was not for me , but I have great memories of arming myself with rolls of drawings as a disguise to enable me to hide between the hangars and watch Canberra’s , Lightnings and Provosts doing circuits, testing and display rehearsals. I was caught by the works manager , but his bark was worse than his bight 😊 . My passion for flying was not diminished , and years later I drove to Warton from Liverpool where I was nightstopping, presented myself at the gate in my uniform, and found John Wilkinson who I had worked under in the MRCA rear fuselage design section, and who gave me the tip to go for a wander with lots of rolled up drawings !! I was able to take him on the DC9 jump seat to Heathrow and back, and it was no surprise when John told me he had been awarded the OBE/MBE ? for his work on the TSR2 and the Tornado. My experience at Warton gave me a quiet confidence in aircraft which was never shaken in my subsequent career flying the DC3, Viscount, DC9, F100, 737 and A320.

What a great man. Also a great shame our politicos sold out to most dubious US based oligarchic. We suffer increasingly as a result - and not just technically and economically!

I understand that this video was taken from a VHS of a TV broadcast, however, someone butchered it with appalling editing. Pity because this is a fascinating tale of part of the story of UK bureaucratic bungling and behind the scenes meddling by US Defense Department insiders that finally killed a long history of British aircraft and scientific innovation. Thereby relegating the future development of British aircraft to second and sometimes third place in military and commercial aircraft production and development. One must never forget that, without the technical expertise of British aircraft designers, scientists, and technicians, the American aviation environment would have been a totally different one; probably a decade or so behind the Brits. From the depths of the second world war, Prime Minister Winston Churchill made it his personal priority and policy to give the US any British technology for free. To ensure, firstly, that America send sorely needed military hardware, then later, to make sure the Americans continued to concentrate on the ‘Europe First’ tactics of WW2. He continued to share any British military equipment secrets openly with the US DoD, also sending British scientists and other support staff to America with working examples of many devices and weapons/aircraft systems ranging from advanced anti-aircraft ammunition inventions through to whole jet engine systems, as developed by Whittle; up to vital British scientific teams that were sent to work on the Manhattan Project. (A fact that at the time and long after, America sort to play down.) In fact, Churchill resolved to send the Americans anything he thought would be of use to them purely to secure their wholehearted ‘leading ally’ status to defeat the Nazis. The penny quickly dropped with the Americans, soon after the war, as they realised that Britain was a true innovator in so many scientific and military disciplines. Once they considered they had acquired sufficient knowledge from the British, the US DoD and the USAAF, later the USAF, actually sent delegations of British scientists and particularly aircraft specialists back to the UK shortly after they had arrived by a pre-agreed arrangement. Pretty much the same way the CIA ‘locked out’ MI5 and MI6 from open cooperation with American espionage issues; British scientists and technicians working on aviation and other military research were ‘locked out’ of any further exchange of information or cooperation. It is little wonder then, that the Americans perceived the TSR Program as a direct threat to large and ever-expanding US corporations like Lockheed, Boeing, McDonald Douglas etc. Had the UK not had those disastrous crashes of their DE Havilland Comets, they would have been snapped up in large numbers, by American airlines, because, at the time, Boeing had not ironed out the bumps in its plan to develop a large, pure jet transAtlantic passenger airliner. The demise of the Mk 1 Comets proved to be a windfall for Boeing and other US companies. Despite that, by the time the remarkably reliable Mk 4 Comet came along it was too late to make any profits from international sales. The R.A.F. was the ‘winner’ because, after substantial reworking by Hawker Siddeley, Comet airframes became the outstanding pure jet maritime, anti-sub warfare ‘Nimrod’. An aircraft so reliable that it remained in service with the R.A.F. until 2011. People have written books about the fantastic rise and punishing fall of the British aircraft industry. I’ll end by stating my belief that if a succession of British governments had not meddled with that industry, and allowed an independent scientific aeronautical organisation, like Farnborough, to take its place; British aviation would have almost certainly become a giant in international aircraft design, research and production. Cheers, BH (Please, better editing next time.)