Brilliant and such depth in our aviation industry back in the 50/60’s!

Anyone??

It gave me the proper horn. Good ol days an’ all that.

Did they have the Vulcan bomber on it?

It gave me the proper horn.

Ashamed to admit it but +1
Harrier, Victor, Vulcan, Lightning, oooooohhhhhh.

I did!

My father worked in the aircraft industry in the 50s/60s, so he’s got a lot of first hand stories to tell. He designed bits of Buccaneers, Lightnings, Victors, Heralds, TSR2, Harriers and even Concorde. Granted, they were quite small bits, but his absolute favorite of all of them was the Lightning. As a kid he used to make some fantastical claims as to it’s performance that I thought were exaggerated beyond belief. It’s only since they’ve left service that I’ve discovered that quite a lot of what he said was true.

He was also taken on a jaunt over Hertfordshire in a brand new Victor that had just rolled off the production line at Radlett. Apparently they were the only plane capable of flying at exactly mach 1.

You may also like those BBC4 programmes about life in the 1960s. Obviously they were artificial to some extent, but even so, the people shown looked well dressed, happy, there was a sense of optimism in the air, a feeling that tomorrow would be better. The cutting edge technology seems quaint to our knowing eyes, but we were in the forefront of it’s development, White Heat and all that.. Of course things were very different in real life, but I’m pondering more and more how things have changed since the decade that I was born in, not always for the better, and asking “WTF happened to our nation?”

Was a great episode, I do love the V bombers. I like the quote about the Avro “smell” 🙂

The second episode is tonight at the samre time.

This was a repeat, right? Think I saw this earlier in the year. “Empire of the Clouds” is a good read if you’re into this stuff.

Avro “smell”

a mix of hydraulic fluid, fuel and vomit

😆

The air show when you saw the two engines seperating from the airframe 😯

Ashamed to admit it but +1
Harrier, Victor, Vulcan, Lightning, oooooohhhhhh.

+2. I’m ‘sure’ we had a Vulcan stored at our ATC grounds when I was younger. (Or am I dreaming this?!!)

Can I watch it anywhere now?

Yep, saw it first time round. Brilliant telly

I saw that. A lot of misty nostalgia, but of course it’s no good planning great planes if your project management is poor.

Shame but inevitable really. Too much time spent making planes, not enough time counting beans.

but I’m pondering more and more how things have changed since the decade that I was born in

We still do a lot of very clever stuff, you just don’t see it tearing across the skies making a big noise.

As for the planes themselves – in order to get better and better planes, to build on previous successes you now need so much money that normal sized countries can’t do it on their own. Hence collaborative efforts. It’s not a symptom of anything wrong with our country, it’s just a consequence of ever increasing sophistication.

WTF happened is that we stopped having massive wars with our neighbours so there was less need to build fleets and fleets of aircraft, the unit cost went up and it all became a bit unaffordable.

It’s no so much the aero industry, but our industrial and social base that I was referring to.

data from the UK Office for National Statistics, stated that manufacturing output (gross value added at 2007 prices) has increased in 35 of the 50 years between 1958 and 2007, and output in 2007 was at record levels, approximately double that in 1958

We make just as much clever stuff as we used to, just less everyday stuff. Cos we can afford to buy it from poor people.

Yup, thought it a fab programme. Considering a lot of those planes were designed/built/flown before I was born kinda brought it into perspective.
Thought the clips of Vulcans flying low over the crowds at Farnborough Airshow where they did some sort of wiggle and banking with power on quite amazing.
Good to hear/see some politics around that time too.
My Father would have loved that programme.

IIRC the second part is on tonight.

I did, absolutely.
I worked at Farnborough for 10 years and know most of the wind tunnels they showed intimately. They were all my babies as I was a mech maintenance craftsman and looked after test rigs all over site. My granded worked there from the 40’s through to the early 80’s too and my Dad was a weapons fitter for Canberra’s and Hunters. I got proper giddy watching that last night. 😀

The biggest issue with the TSR-2 that they didn’t mention last night is that it could never be built as it was a complete minger!

My old man flew some of those, hunters, vampires lightnings, jags and finally tornados ( which he was convinced were trying to kill him) 😆

He often comments that despite the cold war pressure, it was a huge amount of fun, the RAF was still very much a kick the tyres light the fires sort of organisation, lots of WW2 old boys still about ( he’s very very scathing of Bader) and planes that were seemingly just there to be flown. paid well and glamour and travel!!

Watched it the first time it was on, and recorded it and watched it with Cheesy Jnr as well. Brilliant TV. The 2nd part is all about commercial aviation, so not as good as the first, but still good TV

It was excellent; the bit about the crash at the airshow was a shocker though, especially the shot of the two engines plunging into the crowd. And as the presenter noted, nobody even thought of sueing anybody!

My Mum’s uncle Eddie was Chief Designer at BAC at Hurn in Hampshire, he designed the tail of the VC10 and I still remember watching the maiden flight on Granny’s grainy black & white TV. I also flew in a Comet, that must have been in about 1968. I was an Unaccompanied Minor on a BEA flight to Hannover, I kept the badge for years.