RAF Early Jets
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00:00:31In 1953, the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II reviewed her armed services
00:00:37in a series of spectacular displays of pageantry and military might.
00:00:44On July 15th that year, it was the turn of the Royal Air Force to impress the monarch.
00:00:49The location was RAF Odium in Hampshire.
00:00:53The service was at the peak of its peacetime strength since the war,
00:00:57with a total of 6,338 aircraft.
00:01:01It was, by any measure, an impressive display.
00:01:05And as Her Royal Highness proceeded down the immaculately presented lines of aircraft,
00:01:09even the most casual of observer could not have failed to notice
00:01:13that the RAF had well and truly entered the jet age.
00:01:17I think the Air Force has always been a bit underconfident
00:01:20because, of course, the RAF has always been, for a long time,
00:01:25has been under threat of absorption by the other two services.
00:01:32And I think the coronation review, quite apart from anything else,
00:01:35spelled the end of that.
00:01:38Here we were on the ground, covering the ground,
00:01:41with hundreds and hundreds of operational aeroplanes
00:01:44and saying, this is our spithead review.
00:01:47This is our Aldershot tattoo.
00:01:49Come to Odium and have a look at us.
00:01:51We're here and we're going to say.
00:01:53There was that.
00:01:54There was sort of confidence and self-assertive kind of a mood about it all.
00:01:59Fighter Command had been flying jets since 1944 with the Gloucester Meteor.
00:02:04Now the RAF had Meteor Mark 4s and 8s,
00:02:07as well as the much-needed two-seat trainer, the Mark 7.
00:02:11There were also de Havilland Vampires and North American F-86 Sabres
00:02:15on loan from the United States,
00:02:17until the arrival of the Supermarine Swift and Hawker Hunter.
00:02:23Bomber Command was about to pension off its ageing fleet of Avro Lincolns
00:02:27and borrowed Boeing B-29 Washingtons.
00:02:30Now it had the superb English Electric Canberra.
00:02:34And soon the V-Force, consisting of the Vickers Valiant,
00:02:37Avro Vulcan and Handley Page Victor,
00:02:40would be on hand to carry Britain's nuclear deterrent.
00:02:46The RAF was at the height of its power.
00:02:49Not only was it the largest and most powerful air force in the world,
00:02:52second only to the United States Air Force,
00:02:55but it was the most forward-looking,
00:02:57fed by a hungry and imaginative aircraft industry.
00:03:00Well, I think it was still in its wartime rundown state
00:03:04and it was an incredibly capable industry.
00:03:08Right across the board, aircraft, engines, airframes, military and civil.
00:03:15And a lot of prototypes were emerging from the various well-known companies
00:03:21like the Havillands and Hawkers and Clusters.
00:03:24It was a very, very interesting period to be around.
00:03:28Well, I think in many ways it was quite pioneering.
00:03:33But I think, as I say, there were many things against it.
00:03:37I think one was always lack of suitable or adequate funds.
00:03:42And projects tended to overrun their budgets.
00:03:48Again, building two of the same thing was probably wasting money up to an extent.
00:03:56Progress had indeed been rapid.
00:03:59Only nine years previously, in 1944,
00:04:02the Gloucester Meteor had become the first Allied jet aircraft to enter service.
00:04:07Initially, one squadron, No. 616, was equipped with Meteor Mark I's
00:04:12to help in the fight against the V1 flying bombs
00:04:15which were terrorising the civilian population in the south-east of England.
00:04:23The Mark I was powered by two Rolls-Royce Welland turbojet engines
00:04:27which had been developed from Sir Frank Whittle's design.
00:04:30With a top speed of around 415 miles an hour,
00:04:33the Mark I's performance was little better
00:04:36than the best piston-engined fighters of the day.
00:04:46But the Air Ministry was sufficiently confident in the success of the jet fighter
00:04:51that the decision was made to develop a new Mark, the Mark III,
00:04:55even before the 20 Mark I's had been completed.
00:04:59Initially, the Mark III had to make do with the same Welland engine as its predecessor.
00:05:04But by January 1945, 616 squadron received the new Mark III
00:05:09powered by Rolls-Royce Derwent engines.
00:05:12With the new type came a move to Belgium
00:05:14where the squadron was attached to the 2nd Tactical Air Force
00:05:17and tasked to fly ground attack sorties.
00:05:20They were joined by a second meteor squadron, No. 504.
00:05:25At the back of many people's minds was the possibility
00:05:28that the meteors might come up against the Germans' first operational jet fighter,
00:05:32the Messerschmitt Me 262.
00:05:35But it was not to be.
00:05:45The Mark III remained in service until 1948,
00:05:49when it was replaced by the Mark IV.
00:05:53The Mark IV was faster and stronger than the previous Marks,
00:05:57having uprated Derwent engines
00:05:59which gave it a top speed of 580 miles an hour at 10,000 feet.
00:06:05The first meteors had what they call a short squat nacelle
00:06:12which limited their maximum speed, the Mach number,
00:06:17and then they brought out what they call the long nose meteor,
00:06:22very much extended pods with the engines in
00:06:27which increased the limiting Mach number considerably.
00:06:34Two years later, the Mark IVs were superseded by the Mark VIII,
00:06:37which became the RAF's primary day interceptor from 1950 to 1955.
00:06:43The F-8 equipped 19 fighter command squadrons
00:06:46as well as 10 squadrons of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force.
00:06:58The de Havilland DH-100 Vampire was the RAF's second jet fighter to enter service
00:07:04and was also Britain's first single jet aircraft.
00:07:08Remarkably, it took just 16 months from the commencement of detailed drawing
00:07:12to first flight in September 1943.
00:07:17It was powered by de Havilland's own turbojet design, the Goblin,
00:07:21which had begun life as an alternative to Whittle's engine
00:07:24at a time when it had been beset by production problems
00:07:27during 1941-42, before Rolls-Royce intervened.
00:07:33Although diminutive in size and despite modest performance,
00:07:36the Vampire would become a popular aircraft.
00:07:39I was still in the Air Force in 1944 when I was asked to go and fly
00:07:46the earliest Vampire that was then at Farnborough.
00:07:52And that was the first jet that I flew.
00:07:58And there's no shadow of doubt that it was a marvellous way
00:08:03to be driven through the sky by a jet.
00:08:07Extremely smooth and rather fast.
00:08:20As a first aircraft, I was very impressed.
00:08:24First of all, being a jet, it was very smooth.
00:08:27There was no vibration.
00:08:29Having been flying Griffins for quite a long time,
00:08:32which was a pretty robust vibrating bit of machinery,
00:08:36to have this dead smooth power there
00:08:41was a tremendous acceleration on the take-off.
00:08:45And sitting up in the cockpit,
00:08:48where instead of having a couple of tonnes of machinery in front of you
00:08:52so you couldn't see much, you had a marvellous view of the runway.
00:08:56And flying the aircraft was dead smooth.
00:09:01It was a real pleasure.
00:09:13The Vampire was by far the pleasantest
00:09:17and most nicely balanced of the two to fly.
00:09:21It was a kind of jet-propelled Tiger Moth.
00:09:24Small, light, responsive, terribly intimate.
00:09:29Your shoulders were almost wider than the fuselage.
00:09:32And a lovely aeroplane.
00:09:35If you had to have a little jet aeroplane of your own to run,
00:09:40I would choose either the Vampire or the Seahawk, I think.
00:09:44It was really lovely.
00:09:46The Meteor, on the other hand, was big, heavy by comparison.
00:09:51Two motors with all that entailed.
00:09:54Not as responsive by any means as the Vampire.
00:09:58But, of course, a much more capable aeroplane in terms of performance.
00:10:03The Vampire had 3,000 pounds of thrust.
00:10:06The Meteor had 2,000 times 3,500 pounds of thrust.
00:10:09So there was a lot more performance there.
00:10:13But the Vampire did not enter RAF service until 1946.
00:10:17No. 247 Squadron was the first to receive them,
00:10:21with 54 and 72 squadrons joining 247 at RAF Odium
00:10:26to form the first Vampire wing in September 1946.
00:10:31I actually converted from the latest or the last of the Spitfires
00:10:42straight on to Vampire jets.
00:10:46That was in Hong Kong and that was in 1950.
00:10:51I had grown to love the Spitfire we were flying
00:10:57which, once again, was a fighter reconnaissance aeroplane.
00:11:01It was the Mark 18 with a Griffin engine
00:11:04with a superb performance and so on.
00:11:07But time goes by and, of course, everything changes.
00:11:11And the powers that be said the Spitfire has run its course
00:11:17and you're getting Vampires.
00:11:19Well, this was mildly exciting at the time.
00:11:23Well, this was mildly exciting at the time
00:11:26because this was the way things were.
00:11:29This was the pointed end.
00:11:33When it came to actually transferring
00:11:37and converting onto the aircraft,
00:11:40I found it to be an extremely simple task to do this.
00:11:48My surprise was that in getting into a Vampire
00:11:52you suddenly got an aeroplane where you sat in the nose.
00:11:56The world was lying at your feet.
00:11:59You didn't have to dodge past 11 feet of Rolls-Royce engine.
00:12:05But it was quiet in the air and it was remarkably easy to fly.
00:12:10And it didn't have anything like the bits and pieces
00:12:14we used to enjoy in the Spitfire
00:12:17like mixture controls and pitch controls
00:12:20and things that you could play around with
00:12:23and alter the sound of the engine and so on.
00:12:26It was like a tiger moth.
00:12:28It had an engine, it had a throttle.
00:12:30You started the engine, you took off at full throttle,
00:12:33you climbed at full throttle
00:12:35and you chose your own power setting when you were up there.
00:12:39So it just seemed absurdly simple at the time.
00:12:44So a lot of the interest went out of it in a way going onto jets.
00:12:50VAMPIRES
00:12:55Development of the type continued with the Mark III
00:12:58replacing the older versions in RAF service in 1948.
00:13:02The Mark III formed the basis of export versions
00:13:05which were sold and manufactured under licence
00:13:08in Norway, Canada and Australia.
00:13:11The Vampire's potential was underlined further
00:13:14when in 1948 six aircraft from 54 Squadron
00:13:18made the first transatlantic jet flight under their own power.
00:13:37Other records were set by the Vampire
00:13:39which helped keep it in the public eye.
00:13:42CHAMPINO AIRFIELD, ROME
00:13:45The record-breaking Vampire came in for a great deal of interest
00:13:48from Italians at Champino Airfield, Rome.
00:13:54Flown by Mr John Derry, de Havilland test pilot,
00:13:56the machine had travelled non-stop at a high altitude from Hatfield
00:14:00covering the 916 miles in 2 hours, 50 minutes, 40 seconds,
00:14:04an average of 323 miles an hour.
00:14:07A demonstration of its wonderful flying qualities
00:14:09was given over the Rome airport.
00:14:13VAMPIRE JETPLANES
00:14:18It's reported that there is a possibility of Vampire jetplanes
00:14:21being produced under licence by Italian firms.
00:14:34Royal Air Force Vampires were very much on the spot.
00:14:37Here, south of Blomberg, they catch a trainload of tanks.
00:14:39The Vampire was also proving to be potent in the ground attack role.
00:14:43A new version of the Mark III was produced
00:14:46with slightly shorter, strengthened wings
00:14:48so that it could carry underwing stores.
00:14:52This version became the FB Mark V
00:14:55and won many export orders around the world.
00:15:01Just one more demonstration of the vital importance of command in the air.
00:15:09VAMPIRE JETPLANES
00:15:17Vampire and its successor, the Venom,
00:15:20were seen as ground attack aeroplanes,
00:15:22as tank-busting aeroplanes, if you like.
00:15:26Whereas the Meteors were seen as air defence aeroplanes only.
00:15:31There was never a ground attack version of the Meteor
00:15:35except a private venture by Gloucester.
00:15:38The Air Force had no interest in a ground attack Meteor.
00:15:42Simply because the Vampire was the more agile thing.
00:15:45It was the kind of aeroplane you'd want to be here
00:15:48squeezing around among tanks near the ground.
00:15:53By the late 1940s,
00:15:55de Havilland had begun work on a new fighter bomber
00:15:58which would be powered by the new, more powerful Ghost engine.
00:16:02The DH-112 was designated the Vampire FB Mark VIII
00:16:07but the design was so extensively changed
00:16:09that it was re-designated as the Venom.
00:16:27One of the most noticeable features
00:16:29that identified the Venom easily from the Vampire
00:16:32was the shape of its wing.
00:16:35This had a straight trailing edge
00:16:38instead of the tapered wings of the Vampire.
00:16:41It was also of thinner section
00:16:43and was equipped to carry jettisonable wing-tip fuel tanks.
00:16:55Its armament was the same as the Vampire.
00:16:58Four 20mm Hispano cannon mounted in the belly.
00:17:02It was also able to carry up to 2,000 pounds of bombs.
00:17:21The new Ghost turbojet produced 4,850 pounds of thrust
00:17:26which could push the Venom along at 640 miles an hour
00:17:29which was a substantial improvement
00:17:31over the Vampire's 540 miles an hour.
00:17:37The type first flew at Hatfield in September 1949
00:17:41and became operational with the RAF
00:17:43three years later in August 1952.
00:17:51Nineteen RAF squadrons in Germany, the Near and Far East
00:17:55were equipped with the Venom
00:17:56and it won many export orders from air forces all over the world.
00:18:11The Venom was later modified to accommodate extra radar
00:18:15and a radar navigator in an enlarged cockpit.
00:18:18This variant entered service from 1953
00:18:21as an interim night fighter.
00:18:27By the end of the 1940s, the first line squadrons
00:18:31that made up RAF Fighter Command
00:18:33were almost entirely equipped with jets.
00:18:35Those squadrons still operating the last piston-engined aircraft
00:18:39were converting as soon as the new jets could be delivered.
00:18:49As soon as I got back from India, having been flying DC-3s
00:18:55I was about a week late for the start of the test flight at school
00:19:04and the second day I was there I think
00:19:09they said, well you missed a week's lectures
00:19:12on how these jets and things work
00:19:14but you've got to fly one so in you go and off you go.
00:19:16And I must say it was a most intriguing experience
00:19:21because although the aeroplane itself is extremely simple to fly
00:19:26the jet handling of course was extraordinary
00:19:29to anybody who had never done it before
00:19:35and the only instruction we really received on it
00:19:38was a hand on the shoulder and said
00:19:41for goodness sake watch your jet pipe temperatures
00:19:44which must not go over whatever they were.
00:19:48And off we went.
00:19:52But it was a strangely strange experience I must admit.
00:19:57Training new jet pilots was potentially fraught with difficulty
00:20:01as initially there were no dual seat jets.
00:20:05There was no dual version of the Vampire
00:20:08and Vampire pilots were trained by bringing them up in Meteors
00:20:13and sending them solo in fact once in a Meteor
00:20:16and then you sat them in a Vampire
00:20:18and tipped it up onto its main wheels with its nose wheel off the ground
00:20:22and said about there for landing
00:20:24and patted them encouragingly on the back and off he went.
00:20:27And that worked very well.
00:20:29The lack of a dual seat jet trainer was greatly alleviated
00:20:32by the arrival of the Meteor T7 in RAF service in 1948.
00:20:38Originally begun as a private venture by Gloucesters
00:20:41the T7 was based on the Mark 4
00:20:43with an extended fuselage to accommodate the enlarged cockpit.
00:20:47The aircraft was a great success
00:20:49and over 700 were built for the RAF and Navy
00:20:52as well as winning orders from overseas air forces.
00:20:57In 1952 the RAF began to take delivery
00:21:00of the new Vampire T Mark 11 trainer.
00:21:04The cockpit was basically the Mosquito cockpit
00:21:07grafted onto the Vampire airframe.
00:21:11Well it was very uncomfortable.
00:21:14I didn't go much on it at all.
00:21:17We had in the past as I said been training these young men
00:21:22on the Meteor 7 to the point of them going solo
00:21:26and then giving them a pat on the back
00:21:29and sending them off in the Vampire with no dual.
00:21:32And so everybody was supposed to be glad
00:21:34that this dual version of the Vampire was coming in
00:21:37but when it did come in it was a gross disappointment.
00:21:39It was introduced with no ejector seats
00:21:42which seemed ridiculous.
00:21:44Not only that but it had a flat lid on the cockpit
00:21:47which would have been very difficult to get out of
00:21:50wearing a parachute on your bottom
00:21:52and with no ejector seat.
00:21:55It was narrow across the shoulders
00:21:58and the student and the instructor
00:22:00whilst they could see clearly what one another was doing
00:22:02were fairly inhibited in terms of their movement in the cockpit.
00:22:07And of course although it did I seem to remember
00:22:10have an extra 500 pounds of thrust
00:22:12compared to the single seat version.
00:22:14It was very sluggish.
00:22:18Not really a great success but there we are.
00:22:21It was a side by side jet trainer
00:22:23that we were able to use right through for many many years.
00:22:27It just could have been so much better
00:22:29than the original concept.
00:22:32Well I spent a lot of time instructing on the Vampire T-11
00:22:38which quite remarkably was the tiny vampire fighter
00:22:43which had been stretched to take two people.
00:22:46And I found that quite a stimulating business.
00:22:50I was actually a squadron commander
00:22:52so I was looking after two courses at once.
00:22:56The syllabus was very extensive
00:23:00and I think has since been changed considerably.
00:23:04But in those days they tried to make everybody into a fighter pilot
00:23:07whether they wanted to be one or not in the first place.
00:23:11It wasn't, looking back on it, it wasn't really required.
00:23:15Why should the person whose ambition was to fly a Nimrod
00:23:19why should he have to be able to do high level aerobatics
00:23:23at 35,000 feet and so on.
00:23:25But that's the way it was
00:23:27and everybody had to pass every facet of the course
00:23:31and of course you always had a percentage
00:23:34who simply weren't built to do that.
00:23:37And it was always a matter of deep regret to me
00:23:42when I had to, when I had to scrub a child
00:23:47simply because he couldn't do a particular exercise
00:23:51at high level, for instance.
00:23:55And here's the 535, the Swift prototype
00:23:58a swept back wing fighter developed from the attacker.
00:24:01Seen here side by side at a preview before Farnborough
00:24:04they make an impressive picture of streamlined speed and power.
00:24:09The Supermarine Swift had started life in 1946
00:24:13when the Air Ministry began the process of looking for a replacement
00:24:16for the Gloucester Meteor.
00:24:19The Type 535 was the version which would enter RAF service in August 1952.
00:24:27It was powered by the Rolls Royce Avon 114 turbojet
00:24:31which meant that the Swift was capable of 685 miles an hour at sea level.
00:24:36And now the Vickers Swift, a descendant as it were of the Spitfire.
00:24:40But despite the impressive displays at Farnborough
00:24:43and detail improvements on later versions
00:24:45the Swift was not a success in the interceptor role
00:24:48and was withdrawn from first line use as early as 1955.
00:24:53The disappointment of the Swift was partially alleviated
00:24:56by the fact that the RAF had ordered one of the best jet fighters
00:24:59of the post-1945 decade
00:25:02the North American F-86 Sabre.
00:25:05The real reason for getting the Sabres across
00:25:09was because the Vampires, Venoms, Meteors
00:25:18were all out of date, really.
00:25:22Meteor night fighters, all sorts of things like that.
00:25:25And it moved the Air Force into the swept wing
00:25:30power control fighter jet area, transonic jets
00:25:37because the Hunter wasn't quite yet ready.
00:25:40It was coming along, but it wasn't there.
00:25:44And so we got into the swept wing era
00:25:49about a year or two before we otherwise would have done so.
00:25:58When you let go of the brakes, the aeroplane let off the brakes.
00:26:01That was a new experience for those of us who'd flown
00:26:04round the corner aeroplanes with fat tires.
00:26:09There was a lot more thrust there, and you felt it
00:26:14because everything was slicker.
00:26:17And it had fully powered controls, of course,
00:26:21which Vampires and Meteors didn't have.
00:26:24They flew by cable, whereas the Sabre had a fully duplicated
00:26:29hydraulic flying control system.
00:26:32So as soon as he got off the ground on his first solo,
00:26:35there was no dual version of the Sabre.
00:26:37As soon as he got off the ground on his first solo,
00:26:39the Sabre pilot did a lot of this stuff
00:26:42while he learned about the pitch control.
00:26:46He didn't get an opportunity to learn that
00:26:48until he was 50 feet above the ground on his first solo.
00:26:51Suddenly he realised it.
00:26:53And the trick, of course, was to leave the stick alone.
00:27:03By the time the Canadian-built examples had arrived in RAF service,
00:27:09the Sabre was a ten-year-old aeroplane.
00:27:12But it had proven itself in combat in the skies over Korea,
00:27:15and any initial problems inherent in early versions of a new type
00:27:19had long since been ironed out.
00:27:22The Sabre was the RAF's first supersonic jet.
00:27:25The combination of its performance, coupled with the experience
00:27:28of pilots who'd flown in jet combat over Korea,
00:27:31led to changes in tactics.
00:27:33Because it was so much clicker, and because we could get higher,
00:27:38we could now come in from above these Washington squadrons,
00:27:41and we could go down through them, and up again.
00:27:45We could yo-yo up and down through the enemy formations.
00:27:50And that was an amount of manoeuvre, amount of inertia,
00:27:53amount of stored energy, that you never saw before.
00:27:57Energy that you never had on the thick-winged vampire meteor pair.
00:28:03But on the Sabre, it was very manoeuvrable in pitch,
00:28:08at high altitudes, and that was entirely new.
00:28:14430 Sabres were delivered to the RAF, but by 1957,
00:28:18they'd all been replaced by another truly great aircraft,
00:28:22the Hawker Hunter.
00:28:24Ah, the Hunter, my love.
00:28:28The Hunter came in, and at that particular time,
00:28:32I had been transferred from Benson, the ferry business,
00:28:36to Bruggen, where the Sabres were.
00:28:40And the Hunter came in.
00:28:42And the Hunter was absolutely a dream aeroplane to fly.
00:28:47It fitted you like a glove, and would do anything.
00:28:51You almost had to think what you wanted done,
00:28:53and the Hunter would do it for you.
00:28:56The first production Hunter first flew in May 1953,
00:29:00and entered RAF service in July the following year as the F Mark I.
00:29:05Powered by the Rolls-Royce Avon, it was the first of what would become
00:29:09Britain's most successful post-war military aircraft.
00:29:13It was also Britain's first military aircraft capable of supersonic flight,
00:29:17albeit in a shallow dive.
00:29:20A Mark II version was also produced, based on the Mark I,
00:29:24but powered by the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engine.
00:29:28But the early Marks were prone to problems of engine surge
00:29:31when firing their guns at altitude.
00:29:34The Hunter started off in Mark I and II form,
00:29:38with the two different engines, with a lot of very basic faults.
00:29:45Cabin conditioning, demisting, de-icing of the cockpit,
00:29:49engine surging on the engine.
00:29:52Once we had developed it for two or three years,
00:29:56with the Air Force and Boscombe Down taking part,
00:30:00the big Avon engine was put in it, and that transformed the aeroplane.
00:30:05All the other shortcomings were put rightable.
00:30:12Very simply, it was just a matter of time and money.
00:30:17But in Mark IX form, I think it was probably one of the best
00:30:21engine-airframe combinations, which stood up to anything the pilot could give it.
00:30:28He could slam the engine around, he could fire his guns up to 50,000 feet.
00:30:33It was a very highly developed aeroplane.
00:30:36And of course we sold it to 20 countries overseas,
00:30:41and it was in service with 22 airforces.
00:30:44And if we had more time and more airframes,
00:30:49we could have sold a lot more of them.
00:30:59The Hunter's reputation was greatly enhanced when, in September 1953,
00:31:03Neville Duke set a new world speed record,
00:31:06flying a Mark III powered by an Avon with afterburner.
00:31:10Neville Duke, flying a Hawker Hunter jet fighter from Tangmere,
00:31:13has set up a new world airspeed record, subject of course to official confirmation.
00:31:23Checking the time at these modern high-speed bids is quite a complicated affair, as you can see,
00:31:27and four flights have to be made, two in each direction.
00:31:30Duke did this twice in one day, flying low above the sea off the Sussex coast.
00:31:36At the second attempt, he achieved an average speed of 727.6.
00:31:42His wife, watching from a beach, must have been thrilled to see him do the victory roll when it was all over.
00:32:06And certainly his daring and successful bid was a really magnificent achievement.
00:32:12The Mark VI was the most produced version, and began equipping squadrons in 1956,
00:32:27and had become the standard day fighter by 1958.
00:32:31Like its predecessor, the Mark IV, the Mark VI could carry a variety of stores on pylons under its wings.
00:32:38This meant that the 4x30mm Aden cannon could be supplemented with Britain's first guided air-to-air missile,
00:32:45the Fairey Fireflash.
00:32:47The problem of the engine ingesting spent ammunition casings that had dogged the earlier versions
00:32:52was solved by adding two bulges under the engine intakes.
00:32:56They soon became known throughout the service as Sabrina's.
00:33:00Sabrina was a big-breasted young lady in the entertainment world somewhere,
00:33:07probably Sunday night at the London Palladium on TV.
00:33:11And so if you just stood underneath a hunter and looked up, and half-closed your eyes,
00:33:16you could definitely see Sabrina.
00:33:18And they were called Sabrina's for that reason.
00:33:20And everybody called them Sabrina's.
00:33:22I've no doubt they were called link, you know, capsules, comma, link, collection, comma, or something,
00:33:28but we all called them Sabrina's.
00:33:30Everybody knew what we were talking about.
00:33:37At the same time as the Mark VI was entering service,
00:33:40a dual-seat trainer version, the T Mark VII, was also being introduced.
00:33:46A total of 1,972 Hunters of various types were produced right up until 1966.
00:33:54It's a testament to the Hunter's greatness that it was operated by 22 air arms around the world,
00:34:00some flying their aircraft well into the 1990s.
00:34:04Amazingly, 40 years after it first flew, 20% of all the Hunters ever built were still flying.
00:34:15In the decade after 1945, fighters were specified for specific roles,
00:34:20day, night, and in the late 40s, all weather.
00:34:26Night fighting duties were being carried out by the Meteor NF11,
00:34:30which was now being built by Armstrong Whitworth.
00:34:36The NF11 was created out of the marriage of the T7 cockpit section with the Mark VIII tail.
00:34:43The wing was similar to that of the Mark I,
00:34:45but was modified to house four 20mm cannon displaced from the nose.
00:34:51The nose was extended to accommodate the radar systems required for this kind of role.
00:34:59The variant was developed further up to a Mark XIV,
00:35:03with uprated radar systems and a clear view canopy.
00:35:14In anticipation that the RAF would need a replacement,
00:35:17de Havilland had taken its distinctive twin boom theme a stage further with the twin-engined DH110.
00:35:25Although the RAF considered the DH110 for the all-weather role,
00:35:29it was passed over in favour of the Gloucester Javelin.
00:35:32It had its handling problems, but I think the Bixen had perhaps a higher performance
00:35:42with its particular layout with its fairly large tail on two booms.
00:35:53Back to fighters for the RAF.
00:35:55The Javelin was powered by two Armstrong Siddeley Sapphires,
00:35:58but it was its distinctive delta wing that made the Javelin so easily recognisable.
00:36:04It was the world's first twin-engine delta-winged jet to enter operational service.
00:36:09Although the prototype had first flown in November 1951,
00:36:13the Javelin's development into an operational aeroplane had been fraught with problems.
00:36:18Very odd aeroplane.
00:36:20I remember Bill Wharton warned me, he said, you know, try flying it slowly.
00:36:27He said the slower you get, the more you have to push the stick forward
00:36:33until you're getting to the point where you're nearly running out.
00:36:36He said, for goodness sake, don't get to there, otherwise you'll spin in,
00:36:40and it's really quite frightening, you know,
00:36:42sort of slow and slow, pushing the stick further and further forward.
00:36:49In 1956, RAF squadrons began receiving the first Javelins,
00:36:54and although it was developed through nine variants,
00:36:57the Javelin could not be regarded as an outstanding success.
00:37:03Well, it had... I think it had...
00:37:08..three main problems.
00:37:12One was that the wings were too fat
00:37:17to make it go much above 0.9 Mach number,
00:37:24so that we spent endless money in flights
00:37:28trying to stick vortex generators and things around the wings
00:37:32in order to get rid of the buffet at a high Mach number.
00:37:40The stalling characteristics were pretty bad,
00:37:45which was another one, and the final thing,
00:37:48really the one that really made the whole project pretty useless,
00:37:52was, of course, the radar.
00:37:54And it was designed as an all-weather night fighter.
00:38:00And to be successful with that, of course, you needed the latest in radar.
00:38:04We never got the collision course radar installed in it.
00:38:10And right up to the end, we were still using
00:38:13virtually a wartime tail-chase radar.
00:38:20I flew it when I was on the examining wing of the Central Flying School,
00:38:24when we used to fly everything there was in the Air Force and in the Navy
00:38:29with our CFS examining wing ticket.
00:38:33The Javelin was a great cumbersome beast.
00:38:38We called it the Gloucester Dragmaster.
00:38:42And it had a couple of Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engines in the back.
00:38:46And it was about all they could do to push it along, really.
00:38:53Throughout the late 1940s and into the 50s,
00:38:56the world was largely divided by two dominant political ideologies,
00:39:01those for or against communism.
00:39:04The pro-communism faction was led by China and Russia,
00:39:07while the fight against communism was led by the United States,
00:39:11with Britain playing a key role in Europe and the Middle East.
00:39:35Tensions rose dramatically when the Russians sealed off all access to Berlin in June 1948.
00:39:41It took a massive airlift of vital supplies to the beleaguered West Berliners
00:39:45before the blockade was lifted the following year.
00:39:48But Western Europe would have to face the Soviet threat for decades to come.
00:39:53Initially, it would be the Soviet Union,
00:39:56but it would also be the Soviet Union,
00:39:59But Western Europe would have to face the Soviet threat for decades to come.
00:40:03Initially, it was feared that whilst the West was licking its wounds
00:40:07after the end of the Second World War,
00:40:09Russia might launch a large-scale conventional attack.
00:40:13As Fighter Command's task was the aerial defence of Britain,
00:40:17it had to address some fundamental issues.
00:40:20Were there enough aircraft to oppose large numbers of Russian bombers?
00:40:24What was the state of Britain's air defence systems?
00:40:29The decision was taken to make great efforts to bring the air defence system up to scratch,
00:40:34reopen radar stations, provide more manpower and form additional squadrons.
00:40:43Massive exercises were carried out with Boeing B-29s of the United States Air Force
00:40:48and Lancasters and Lincolns of RAF Bomber Command acting as the enemy.
00:40:53The fourth type of attack I want to demonstrate to you is the frontal beam attack.
00:40:58In this case, the fighter positions himself five miles ahead,
00:41:023,000 yards out on a parallel course.
00:41:05He turns toward the B-29.
00:41:09Tracking is started at one o'clock at a range of 2,000 yards.
00:41:13He opens fire at 1,200 yards at two o'clock
00:41:16and continues until four o'clock at 700 yards.
00:41:21The fixed gun sight had to be used with a diffraction of between four and a half and five radii.
00:41:27We found that the Meteor 4 was unsuitable for this form of attack
00:41:31due to its inability to track the B-29 below 1,000 yards.
00:41:35The Vampire, with its better manoeuvrability, could track the B-29 down to 700 yards.
00:41:41It was also found that the fighter presented a very difficult target to the bomber.
00:41:47This attack, however, was found to be very difficult for the pilot to execute without considerable practice.
00:41:53For these reasons, this attack is not recommended.
00:42:17Of course, when I was an ordinary fighter pilot on a fighter squadron,
00:42:22the annual exercise would come up regularly.
00:42:27And it was an exciting time.
00:42:31You often got detached.
00:42:33I can remember one called Exercise Beware,
00:42:36where we were detached to an airfield that was practically disused,
00:42:41and part of the exercise was to regenerate it.
00:42:45So, yes, the annual exercises were really quite demanding,
00:42:49and one of the things you never forget is doing head-on attacks against Washingtons.
00:42:56If you're an air defence fighter chap, you can well remember being up there
00:43:01at 36,000 or 40,000 feet, contrailing like mad,
00:43:04and looking ahead, you can see coming towards you
00:43:08phalanxes of B-29 superfortresses also trailing like mad.
00:43:13And the idea was to make a quick head-on attack for about three seconds
00:43:18and then dodge underneath this mass of bombers.
00:43:34This mass formation business was, as we understood it,
00:43:40the way the Russians planned to operate the Tu-4,
00:43:44which was what they called the Washington, or B-29.
00:43:49They planned to come along in line abreast so as to give us a major problem,
00:43:54and it would have been a major problem for us,
00:43:56because there wasn't much time that you were in range before you were in collision.
00:44:01So that seemed to be based on good intelligence about the Russians' intentions,
00:44:06and that was what we were practising against out there in the middle of the North Sea somewhere.
00:44:12It bristled with guns.
00:44:16That was one of the difficulties about attacking it.
00:44:20Secondly, there wasn't much attacking time.
00:44:25If you were to avoid the guns, you had to do it head-on,
00:44:28and if you were going to do it head-on, you had a very, very short time
00:44:32to fire your guns before you hit the enemy anyway.
00:44:37And thirdly, of course, because of the way they flew,
00:44:40there was a great deal of mutual support in terms of their multitude of guns.
00:44:45And so, yes, it was a very difficult target.
00:44:51Bombing of Washingtons, which are American B-29s taken over by the RAF,
00:44:55is just one angle on Exercise Pinnacle,
00:44:58and Exercise Pinnacle is the biggest test of Britain's air defences held since the war.
00:45:03Mock attacks have been carried out on different areas by night and day
00:45:06in a full-scale peacetime battle that has been fought out over many days.
00:45:11I think the period from 1945 to the end of the 40s
00:45:29was a period when the Air Force was putting up with the new jet airplanes
00:45:34because they're jet airplanes and everybody needed that sort of speed.
00:45:38And so these airplanes had actually outpaced the fastest piston-engined fighters.
00:45:46Having said that, I think we would have been badly placed if a war had occurred at that time
00:45:53because I don't think they would have been found to be very effective.
00:45:57From the 50s onwards, the Hunters came into service,
00:46:04which was a very, very fine subsonic fighter.
00:46:07The Americans had the Sabre, which was a very fine subsonic,
00:46:10and the British started to have the Canberra, which was the world's best twin-engined jet bomber.
00:46:16So it all changed pattern from difficulties and mediocrity in the late 40s
00:46:23to getting to grips with the world's best airplanes by the 50s.
00:46:29In the Ops Room, the work is as realistic as if a modern Battle of Britain were being fought.
00:46:33Fox 3-2-4-0, 3-2-4-0.
00:46:39Hostile 2-3-5, 3 plus at 2-2.
00:46:44And here, another raiding force is attacked.
00:46:46Meteors intercepting Lancasters.
00:46:49Exercise Pinnacle is secret, but we may be sure it has proved of the greatest value.
00:46:53Exercise Pinnacle is secret, but we may be sure it has proved of the greatest value.
00:46:56But RAF Bomber Command was about to gain a distinct advantage.
00:47:02There had been those who had been campaigning for a different approach to bomber thinking since before the war.
00:47:08Well, Captain de Havilland realised that if an airplane was going to be fast and do its job successfully,
00:47:19it had to be streamlined, fairly lightish weight, and not carry a lot of heavy armament with it if it was going to have a high performance.
00:47:32So, he didn't feel at all happy with the requirements for heavy armament on the bombers with gun turrets and large crews.
00:47:46Well, eventually, he persuaded the Air Ministry to allow him to go ahead and to build what turned out to be the Mosquito,
00:47:58which was perhaps the fastest and most successful wartime designed and developed airplane that we had in the 39-45 war.
00:48:11As we now know, the Mosquito was one of the most successful aircraft ever built,
00:48:18and not surprisingly, the Air Ministry was eager to have a jet-powered version as soon as possible.
00:48:25The result was the English Electric Canberra, which first flew in May 1949.
00:48:34As with all aircraft destined for long-term production, it was perfect first time out.
00:48:42The first RAF Canberra was delivered to 101 Squadron in May 1951.
00:48:50As with the Mosquito, the Canberra was designed to operate both fast and high enough to dispense with defensive armament.
00:48:59It easily fulfilled the design concept.
00:49:02Its speed and altitude put it way beyond RAF Fighter Command's Meteors and Vampires scrambled to intercept the Canberras in exercises.
00:49:11With the Canberra, in 1950, we doubled the performance of Bomber Command, which at that time had 300 MPH Lincolns.
00:49:23The Canberra was a 600 MPH airplane.
00:49:27The Lincoln's maximum operating altitude was around about 26,000 to 27,000 feet.
00:49:38The Canberra had an operating altitude of 50,000 feet and a ceiling of 55,000 feet.
00:49:46And so it was a quantum jump forward.
00:49:50When the Royal Air Force, the rather unsuspecting Air Force, started to re-equip with Canberras in 1952,
00:50:02they exchanged their Lincolns, their lumbering old Lincolns, for these incredible Canberra airplanes,
00:50:08which had performance and manoeuvrability which was superior to the fighters of the time.
00:50:15So this was a cartridge shot for Bomber Command and it was quite a problem for them.
00:50:20But in the fullness of time came the summer exercises,
00:50:26whereby traditionally Bomber Command would set up attacking forces coming in from the low countries
00:50:34to be intercepted by the fighter defences of this country.
00:50:38And it became very, very apparent that when the Canberras came in that the Meteors weren't going to get anywhere near them.
00:50:44And progressively the Canberra force was ordered to come lower and lower and lower
00:50:51until the Meteors could actually catch them.
00:50:54And they actually had to come down to about 30,000 feet before they could do that.
00:51:09The Canberra went on to be another British success story,
00:51:13claiming many records for both speed and altitude.
00:51:18The type also impressed the United States Air Force,
00:51:21who built and operated their own versions under licence as the Martin B-57.
00:51:29Incredibly, for an aircraft conceived as the Second World War was ending,
00:51:33photo reconnaissance versions are still flying with the RAF at the beginning of the 21st century.
00:51:43...
00:52:06The Canberra was RAF Bomber Command's first jet bomber.
00:52:10In 1955 it was joined by the Vickers Valiant.
00:52:15The Valiant had four Rolls-Royce Avon turbojets
00:52:18and was intended to carry out long-range bombing missions.
00:52:25It was also the first British jet bomber to carry a nuclear bomb,
00:52:29which was dropped over the test range at Maralinga, Australia, in October 1956.
00:52:35The Valiant was the first of three new large bombers
00:52:38designed to carry Britain's airborne nuclear deterrent
00:52:41in what became known as the V Force.
00:53:05...
00:53:16At the coronation review of 1953,
00:53:19the crowds were given a tantalising glimpse of these extraordinary machines,
00:53:23the Avro Vulcan and Handley Page Victor.
00:53:28These aircraft were the result of the ingenuity, vision and expertise
00:53:32of British designers who continuously strove to push back the frontiers of knowledge
00:53:37in all aspects of aircraft design.
00:53:41...
00:54:03...
00:54:16An early example of the British aviation industry's imaginative thinking
00:54:20was the de Havilland DH-108.
00:54:22The DH-108 programme was to find a way
00:54:28of getting high performance out of modern jet aircraft
00:54:34and learning all we needed to learn about the swept wing advantages.
00:54:42And we learnt from the 108
00:54:46of the immensely high performance that that wing could give,
00:54:52but it had very serious drawbacks
00:54:55in that the stability of the aeroplane
00:54:59was not adequate for development
00:55:03into either a commercial airliner or military aircraft
00:55:09as we at that time were not able to produce artificial stability,
00:55:19which of course later in development of aircraft
00:55:23became something that was relatively normal practice.
00:55:34The concept of tailless flight was also investigated by Armstrong Whitworth
00:55:38who built the extraordinary looking AW-52 in 1948.
00:55:44The thing which was most outstanding
00:55:48was the disharmony of the controls.
00:55:53Laterally the controls were very, very heavy
00:55:57and forward aft they were exceedingly light
00:56:02which made it not a very pleasant aircraft to fly in that respect.
00:56:09In order to attain the degree of longitudinal control necessary
00:56:16not only did it have large elevons
00:56:21but it had movable sections of wing called correctors
00:56:27which were hydraulically operated
00:56:29which was in fact the section of wing ahead of the elevons
00:56:33which was adjustable by the pilot symmetrically
00:56:38to give you control over the full speed range.
00:56:51During the 1940s the quest for speed
00:56:54took scientists into new areas of research and design.
00:56:57Captured German data and the arrival of German scientists
00:57:01and technicians in research establishments in Britain and the United States
00:57:04proved to be of great help
00:57:06for Germany had been much more advanced in this area of research.
00:57:13A number of projects were begun to look at the properties of the Delta wing
00:57:17with a view to building Britain's first supersonic jet fighter.
00:57:24The Fairey FD-2 was ordered in 1950 but didn't fly until 1954.
00:57:30It really had very good all-round controllability
00:57:35unlike its predecessor the FD-1 which was a very different animal
00:57:40that was oversensitive and really quite a bit of a nightmare to fly
00:57:45but we were expecting something a little bit like that.
00:57:49Powered by a single Rolls-Royce Avon 200 turbojet
00:57:52the FD-2 is destined to become the first aeroplane
00:57:55to fly at over 1,000 miles an hour.
00:57:58As the test program developed it became apparent
00:58:01that an attempt at the world's absolute speed record might be possible.
00:58:06The Fairey FD-2 was the first of its kind
00:58:09to fly at over 1,000 miles an hour.
00:58:12The Fairey FD-2 was the first of its kind
00:58:15to fly at over 1,000 miles an hour.
00:58:19As soon as we had flown supersonically
00:58:22we realised that we were flying virtually every day
00:58:26at beyond the existing world speed record figure.
00:58:32So we thought well if we can do this
00:58:35and actually do it at something in excess of 1,000 miles an hour
00:58:40we'd get a lot of good publicity.
00:58:43First seen by the public at Farnborough, the Fairey Delta II is undoubtedly the aircraft
00:58:49of the moment, and the pilot of the moment is Mr. Peter Twiss.
00:58:53He'd been flying the FD-2 at fantastic speeds for some time, but now he's off on the record
00:58:58breaking...
00:58:59One of the major problems was the fuel consumption.
00:59:01As soon as you turned on the afterburner, the fuel consumption virtually doubled, and
00:59:10you had to plan your flight to be very adjacent to your airfield or a friendly airfield at
00:59:19all times.
00:59:20Because you probably only had about 20 minutes, if you did a supersonic flight, about 20 minutes
00:59:26reserve.
00:59:27In fact, in the speed record flights, which were 23 minutes, we were landing with about
00:59:3515 gallons of fuel, which was certainly not an acceptable amount, not enough to go round
00:59:42into a balk landing.
00:59:43Well, I realised it was quite a successful run, but it was in fact to be the last run.
00:59:52We had this amazing period of fine weather in March, which was, as you know from my recent
00:59:57experience, fairly unusual, and the chief engineer had decided that the aircraft had
01:00:03been flying for a week solidly, and he wanted to have a good look at it, so he said, well,
01:00:08this is the last flight, so he knew then this is the last chance we were going to get.
01:00:19Two aircraft were built, and both were remarkably reliable.
01:00:24In 1960, the first aircraft was sent to the Bristol Aircraft Company to be modified for
01:00:29further research into delta wing shape.
01:00:32Well, that was really, again, an aeroplane for RAE, and they wanted to try and correlate
01:00:44their wind tunnel results with actual flight of a slender delta aeroplane, particularly
01:00:54in the transonic range, whereas they'd already had the little Hanley Page aeroplane, which
01:01:01had a very unsophisticated slender delta wing, and other aeroplanes had been used, and because
01:01:11the FD2 was available, it was converted by the Bristol Aeroplane Company to this slender
01:01:19delta form, and as I previously said, it had other things done to make it usable in that
01:01:25plan, and I think it proved quite fairly conclusively that wind tunnel tests were known as fun.
01:01:44It was very nice to fly, and it was very limited in fuel, actually, and I think one
01:01:50of the biggest was trying to get through a programme on the limited fuel on the aircraft,
01:01:57although we had a little more than the FD2, but again, it was a heavier aircraft, and
01:02:02so things balanced out a bit, but it was very pleasant, really.
01:02:08I mean, there were certain differences, we put different flight control units in, and
01:02:14the FD2 used to have a bit of lag in the system rather, and we improved it, but we didn't
01:02:24eliminate it altogether.
01:02:38But with aircraft flying faster and faster, new materials were needed to build the airframes
01:03:02in order to cope with the stresses and heat generated by high speed flight.
01:03:07In 1953, the Bristol Aircraft Company was issued with a contract to build a research
01:03:11vehicle capable of flying at twice the speed of sound.
01:03:15Designated the Type 188, it was made of stainless steel.
01:03:21The objectives were to carry out research, both aerodynamic and engine development, at
01:03:31marked numbers exceeding two, really, and to study the effects of kinetic heating, which
01:03:38occurs at about 2.5 onwards.
01:03:42At that time, the aluminium alloys were not capable of withstanding those sort of speeds,
01:03:52and this is why Concorde flew at 2.2 and limiting.
01:03:57And so they had to decide what they were going to build it with, and stainless steel
01:04:03at that time was the only material available.
01:04:07And so it was built of stainless steel, which was difficult to handle and shape and mould
01:04:14and everything, machines, so again, it didn't seem a practical proposition for future aircraft.
01:04:23But the aeroplane itself flew beautifully, it was a very nice aeroplane to handle, and
01:04:29just as well, because we had a lot of trouble with the engine surging and so on, but we
01:04:34still were able to, up to a point, carry out our programmes.
01:04:41Arguably, one of the most extraordinary results of all the research activity that was going
01:04:45on during the forties and fifties was the Hawker Harrier, which today, as a GR7, forms
01:04:51a vital part of the RAF's capability.
01:05:06The project began in 1960 as the P.1127.
01:05:11I can remember it fairly clearly, because I was used as a bit of a guinea pig, in that
01:05:19I was subjected to as little helicopter flying as I possibly could.
01:05:25In fact, I only did three 35-minute trips in a helicopter at the Ampartis Pilot School,
01:05:31and then I got straight into the P.1127 prototype.
01:05:37But one had to sort of concentrate extremely hard in those days on exactly what you were
01:05:44doing, because it was all new.
01:05:46I just had to take what I was told as being the thing to do, concentrate, and do what
01:05:54I was told.
01:05:56Completely new dimension.
01:05:58To be able to take the lift, the nozzle lever, pull it back, and gradually increase thrust
01:06:05until the aeroplane was fully supported on the engine.
01:06:09And, of course, one of the most difficult aspects of the aeroplane was the flying controls,
01:06:15which, of course, had to work at all speeds from 600 knots right down to the hover, even
01:06:24flying backwards, sideways, and maneuvering.
01:06:27And that was a tremendous technical achievement by the design team at Hawkers.
01:06:31We had a lot of very clever people working on this project, and it was quite an eye-opener
01:06:39to be able to fly it.
01:06:41Privilege.
01:06:43Today, the events of that post-war decade seem worlds away.
01:06:49In a world in which aircraft take many years to take flight, it's easy to forget that much
01:06:54of what we know about flying faster, higher, and further was achieved in an age before
01:07:00computers.
01:07:02It was a time when designers and pilots had to work closely together, trying things out.
01:07:07And if it didn't work, it was, quite literally, a case of going back to the drawing board
01:07:12and starting all over again.
01:07:16The dynamism of Britain's aircraft industry enabled the RAF to lead the world in many
01:07:21areas of aviation.
01:07:23What the industry lacked in financial resources and facilities was more than compensated for
01:07:28in talent and quality.
01:07:31And as the junior service gathered for its coronation review, it knew it could do so
01:07:37in the certainty that it was the best in the world.