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00:0060 years ago, Britain was home to the greatest show on earth.
00:09Every September, thousands of people would flock to Farnborough and Hampshire
00:13and spend the day gazing skyward.
00:18What they saw scorching through the air were astonishing machines flying at incredible speeds
00:23and all powered by what seemed to be a technology from the future.
00:30That technology was a British invention and it would signal the dawn of a new age, the Jet Age.
00:43The noise and the speed, I mean for a small boy, heaven, absolute heaven.
00:52Britain had a world-class, world-beating aviation industry.
00:55Those crowds at Farnborough weren't just plane-spotting.
00:58They believed they were looking at their country's future.
01:09The Jet Age was expanding at almost an alarming rate.
01:16It was a very exciting time.
01:18You could climb up 4,000 feet a minute happily.
01:23You could dive down at 6,000, 8,000 feet a minute.
01:26Within minutes you were 50 miles away or 100 miles away from your base.
01:29It was suddenly a new world.
01:31The Jet Engine was a lucrative export and wartime allies were queuing up to buy it.
01:37It was also a powerful piece of military hardware.
01:41And in the Cold War, old friends were now enemies.
01:46Britain now faced a huge dilemma.
01:48The Jet Engine held out hope for economic revival for a nation bankrupt by war.
01:53But selling it could alter the balance of power in the new world order.
01:58The country had to decide how best to exploit this new expertise.
02:02Knowing the wrong choice could prove disastrous.
02:05On the night of the 14th of November 1940,
02:10the Luftwaffe struck Coventry.
02:33On the night of the 14th of November 1940,
02:35the Luftwaffe struck Coventry.
02:38Those planes brought down fire and destruction to virtually the whole city centre.
02:46Along with 4,000 homes and three quarters of the city's factories,
02:50this place, Coventry's medieval cathedral, was left in utter ruins.
02:55It was a single worst raid of the entire Blitz,
02:57but few of Britain's cities were left unscathed.
03:08The damage to the nation wasn't just physical.
03:18The war effort meant Britain's finances had also been hit hard.
03:23By 1945, the country was heavily in debt, and it would take years to pay off.
03:29There's a perceived wisdom that life here after the war was all about austerity,
03:36but in truth it wasn't quite as bad as that.
03:39Yes, the country had suffered during the Blitz.
03:41This place is evidence of that.
03:42Yes, Britain was horribly in debt.
03:44And it's true that we're still rationing.
03:47But the point is, unlike Europe, everything here still worked.
03:51The roads, the railways, the ports.
03:53Britain's factories were still churning out items of every description.
03:57And what Britain was doing most, and with some brilliance, was building aircraft.
04:07In the minds of her leaders, air power had saved Britain in 1940,
04:12and had been crucial for victory in 1945.
04:16During the war, the nation's myriad aircraft manufacturers,
04:20companies like Supermarine, Avro and Vickers,
04:24had built a staggering 131,500 aircraft.
04:37By 1944, more Britons were building aircraft than were serving in the army.
04:43And come peacetime, it was believed that industry would be the country's salvation.
04:49New airfields, new aircraft factories, new arms factories,
04:53all these things were being built, because this is where the future was thought to be.
04:59So Britain was at least as much as a warfare state as it was a welfare state.
05:04They were trying to build not just a new Jerusalem, but a new Sparta as well.
05:15Britain may have looked tired and drab on the ground, but in the air it was a very different matter.
05:19Hurtling over her skies were ultra-modern and very fast aircraft of futuristic shapes and designs.
05:30The country's genius at building jet aeroplanes was unrivalled.
05:35Records for speed, altitude and distance tumbled.
05:38Now for the run over the record mile. Watch out for the delayed action sound.
05:46The plane's way ahead before your eardrums catch up with it.
05:53The first four-jet airliner made worldwide news by its astonishing flight to North Africa and back.
05:58I mean the big thing about the jet engine was that it completely changed the game.
06:05Speeds went up from a maximum of about 400 miles an hour.
06:08Suddenly they were up to 700 miles an hour and beyond.
06:12And you're really pushing the envelope.
06:14The scale of ambition for the speed, for the height, for the capabilities of aviation was quite extraordinary.
06:21And the ambition was actually realised.
06:25But it was realised with huge sums of money.
06:28That was a really big change.
06:30You went from spending a few millions to spending tens of millions on the development of new aircraft.
06:35In the post-war world, the jet was a symbol of technological and scientific power.
06:42It could bring wealth, prestige and security.
06:46Britain's future would lean heavily on its aviation industry.
06:50Despite having lost a third of our wealth and all the rest of it and the shabbiness,
06:56there was this shimmering promise.
06:58And technology was absolutely central to it.
07:01It was powerful magic.
07:05But that magic had darker uses.
07:12The jet engine was changing the world.
07:15But the world was also altering fast.
07:18This was the time of the Cold War.
07:20Gone were the old certainties.
07:22The empire was crumbling and two new superpowers were emerging.
07:26Britain now had to fight for its place on the world stage.
07:29To the British aircraft industry, the turbine jet had brought a golden opportunity.
07:36In this new form of air travel, Britain has the chance to make up the leeway lost in the war.
07:43The man widely regarded as the inventor of the jet engine was Frank Whittle.
07:54Years before the Second World War started, the young RAF cadet had been working on an idea that would change the world.
08:00This is the turbine jet, air and fuel ignited in combustion chambers.
08:07Now in the path of the rushing gas, insert a bladed wheel, a turbine.
08:10Link the turbine to a powerful fan. Under fierce compression, the temperature rises and the expanding gas roars from the jet pipe with tremendous force.
08:20When they started up, stand back. Its flaming breath is white hot gas.
08:31By the start of war, Whittle had proved the viability of a new, more powerful type of engine.
08:38The next step was to find out if it could fly.
08:41What I've got in front of me here is the original specification for the first ever British jet.
08:51Now you would have thought that they would have given this a name to reflect the excitement of the project.
08:57But with, I suppose, typical British understatement, this is called the E2839.
09:03It's experimental order number 28, drawn up in 1939, hence the E2839.
09:18Britain's first jet was soon ready for its maiden flight.
09:22It was 1941 when the sound of a turbojet was heard over English fields.
09:35It was just an easy arc on the fly, but for its size and time, startling performance.
09:46It pointed the way as a first watch Aladdin's cave lay ahead of us if we pursued this.
09:56The success of the E2839 signalled a bright future.
10:02But this was just a prototype.
10:07What was needed was something faster, more powerful.
10:11Something that could go to war.
10:13The Gloucester Meteor.
10:17You can see how the Gloucester Meteor descended from the E2839.
10:36It's got the same kind of fuselage and the same short stubby wings.
10:39But this was no experimental aircraft.
10:43This was a fully functioning operational fighter gear.
10:46Fast, powerful, armed with cannons with a rapid rate of climb.
10:51And you can hear the sound of those twin engines.
10:54The power and potential of those.
10:56This came into service in 1944.
10:59That's still wartime.
11:00It's the age of Spitfires, the Focke-Waltz and Mustangs.
11:02But when people heard those engines for the first time, what they were listening to was the sound of the future.
11:08I began to hear more and more about them as I got into the test flying world.
11:21Anticipation certainly was at a very high level.
11:25When it happened, I was not disappointed.
11:31The RAF flew the first squirt planes ever to go into action against the enemy.
11:35The squirts have plenty of power.
11:37And if you open up the throttle suddenly, you get a kick in the back from your seat.
11:40I heard the whistling noise.
11:45When it got overhead, I noticed there wasn't a propeller.
11:49So I downed tools and ran in the house to tell everybody I'd seen an aeroplane without a propeller.
11:54Of course, nobody believed me.
11:58For the first time, you had a totally uninterrupted view ahead of you and no large piston engine.
12:06Once you got airborne, the striking thing was the acceleration.
12:23You got a kick out of it, frankly.
12:26Yes, it was a boy's day out.
12:28Well, all of a sudden, you had this aircraft which had much, much more performance than anything you'd flown before.
12:37You could go up to 20,000, 30,000 feet above the cloud, above everything else.
12:41Long distances, extreme heights, the world was your oyster.
12:47Air forces around the world were queuing up to buy this fighter.
12:50But for those learning to fly it, it could prove a killer.
12:52To put its pilots through their paces, the RAF would teach the art of asymmetric flying, staying airborne using just one engine.
13:02On a propeller-driven plane, this was tricky.
13:05On a meteor, it could be deadly.
13:08It's the position of the engines out there on the wing that was a problem.
13:11It's where the propellers would have been.
13:13But the thrust on a turbojet was so powerful that if one engine failed, it made the aircraft very difficult to handle.
13:18The scene of devastation in the Sussex village shows the tragic aftermath of the crash of an RAF meteor jet.
13:28Reports say that the aircraft first hit a bungalow, then one of its tanks exploded and the blazing fuel added to the havoc.
13:35By the early 50s, the RAF was losing a pilot almost every other day.
13:41The meteor became known as the meat box.
13:43We didn't have ejector seats in those days.
13:48And it was difficult to bail out. A lot of bail outs were not successful.
13:52It was more on a standard that each course of, say, 20 people would lose at least two, sometimes three or four.
13:59And usually at least two were killed in accidents.
14:02Must have been 200 killed.
14:04But the appalling death rate didn't diminish the number of recruits willing to fly the jet.
14:11Britain's laboratories and factories and airfields. The whistle of the jet is spreading all around the globe.
14:18In 1952, as Cold War tensions intensified, the RAF reached its post-war operational peak, almost ten times the size it is today.
14:27To make life safer for cadets, a new jet plane was developed, with the engine buried in the fuselage.
14:35This is a jet provost. Its prime role for the RAF was as a jet trainer. A task it performed for over 35 years.
14:55It's a wonderful example of pure 1950s jet technology. More importantly for me, it's got two seats, which means it can take a passenger.
15:03To say that I'm excited is something of an understatement.
15:10The pilot on my Top Gun experience is John Corley of the Classic Air Force.
15:21It's a wonderful smell of oil and metal. It feels like an old jet. It really does. It fills the pot.
15:33It's quite a palaver, isn't it? It is, but this is your parachute. It's worth it.
15:3720% RPM, pressure is rising.
15:44And the noise of the engines rising.
15:49You can only imagine what one of those trainee pilots must have felt like getting in one of these for the first time in the 1950s.
15:55Absolutely. This would have been the first aircraft they'd ever flown in.
16:01The first aircraft they'd ever flown in.
16:11Ah, that's very nice.
16:17Ah, that's really amazing.
16:19We're absolutely hurtling towards the airfield.
16:27What a lovely fly pass.
16:32Low and quick straight over.
16:35Ah, yeah.
16:36And, you know, when you joined the RAF, and as a young pilot, you joined the RAF.
16:54You joined knowing that, you know, at least one or two on your course weren't going to make it.
17:11And yet, you've only got to be in this plane now, haven't you?
17:14I realised why so many people wanted to do it.
17:18It's so exhilarating.
17:20And you get such an amazing view of the world, don't you?
17:24It's got a pad off the window to look out on, isn't it?
17:26No.
17:30It's really clear.
17:33Ah, lovely.
17:35So I'm looking straight down at the sea.
17:38The horizon's swivelling.
17:39Ah, that's just so much fun.
17:55Over we go.
17:58Right towards the ground, hammer on the level.
18:02Wow, that is maneuverable.
18:03Whenever there's an image that sort of typifies the jet age of the 1940s and 50s, it's that silver colour, isn't it?
18:15And the rondelle.
18:16Isn't that beautiful?
18:33And there we go.
18:39Fantastic.
18:41Thank you very, very much.
18:45By the early 50s, the Cold War was driving Britain's defence spending to a staggering 10% of the national budget.
18:53The country was rebuilding its armed forces across the globe, and at the same time, developing its own weapon of mass destruction.
19:03In Australia, America, Russia, the trials continued. The Earth shook, and the sky was darkened.
19:25Geiger counters like charms against invisible death.
19:32The new bomb and the jet engine, a combination which now shadows the history of civilisation.
19:40For a nation heavily in debt, cash was still in short supply, but the country's jet industry came to the rescue.
19:48This is the Vampire, one of Britain's early jet fighters. It's got a twin boom. Remarkably, the entire cockpit is made of wood.
20:09This plane was operating at the end of the Second World War, but I think it still looks incredibly futuristic.
20:20The Vampire was a huge success. Over 3,000 were built, and they were sold to more than 30 different air forces all around the world.
20:27With the Cold War rapidly escalating, the world was now looking to jet technology to defend itself.
20:35And for buyers, that meant attending aviation's biggest stage, the Farnborough Airshow.
20:40At Farnborough Aerodrome, the Society of British Aircraft Constructors have proved once again that their inventive genius is second to none.
20:50And the great variety of aircraft and equipment, together with thrilling performances by famous test pilots, aroused the keenest interest from foreign visitors.
20:57You could see examples of every Air Force uniform in the world. They came to see what the British had to offer, and we had a lot to offer.
21:06Farnborough was the country's shop window, and everyone who came, came to buy British.
21:23Britain was clearly in the lead in the development of jet engines. It's the major exporter of jet fighters to the air forces that are re-establishing themselves in Europe, the Swiss, the Swedish, the French.
21:38It is really quite extraordinary the extent to which they dominate that market and essentially wipe the floor with American competition.
21:44The nation's post-war economy was now investing heavily in aviation. More than a quarter of a million Brits were building engines and planes. The jet had become big business.
22:01The Gloucester ground attacker, a 24 rocket meteor nicknamed the Reaper. The machine is a fast, hard-hitting, close-support fighter bomber, one of the best flying today.
22:11Both the Cold War and the aviation industry drove each other. One was driving the other all the time. It was intensifying every year, becoming bigger and bigger, and we were showing more and more interest and more and more new stuff was coming onto the market.
22:27You were conscious, even at quite a young age, that you were living in an area where the technology was just moving forward at such an incredible rate, and it was where you showed off, you know, I can do this, you can't, sort of thing.
22:44And I do remember thinking, you know, what next, what next, what next?
22:51The Hawker P-1081 is a fighter that goes like greased lightning. The Vickers 535 is another. What's that, even faster? Oh, well, your guess is as good as mine.
23:02The Cold War was the most intense pacemaker, and we Brits thought that we had to be in the vanguard, we couldn't just buy things off the shelf, it was part of a sense of national sovereignty.
23:13What sold such planes was seeing them flown in the most daring and entertaining fashion. So what you'd get would be barnstorming displays, pilots thundering past at 50 feet off the deck, doing vertical climbs, barrel rolls.
23:29And often, crowds were seeing prototypes for the first time. Take a look at the Hawker P-1067. No details, I'm afraid, but it may be the world's fastest fighter.
23:43These phenomenal air displays were only achieved by the very best test pilots of the day. But at Farnborough, the desperate need to sell aircraft to foreign customers meant these men weren't just pilots, they had become salesmen as well.
23:59One of the highlights of going to Farnborough was if one met or saw the test pilots. And of course, with these people being test pilots as well as being through the war, they were heroes, they were gods, I mean. One really, we craved to meet them, as you might say.
24:18They're all ex-World War II, so they were fantastic flyers. They had to have been to have survived Bomber Command or Fighter Command.
24:31Other boys had footballers up on the walls of their room. I had test pilots on mine, as well as blondes, of course.
24:38The de Havilland 110 fighter gave a demonstration of crashing through the sound barrier over Farnborough.
24:45The DH110 was similar to the Vampire, but it had a swept wing and was much, much faster.
24:53In 1952, it was unveiled at the Farnborough Air Show.
24:58For five days, the DH110 wowed everyone with its speed and grace. It was flown by John Derry, a quietly spoken but supremely talented war veteran.
25:11And we asked Mr Derry what it was like.
25:13Well, there are no sensations to the occupants of the aircraft. The only way of telling your speed is from the instruments.
25:20I think John Derry was one we really looked up to. He seemed to be a bit young and fresh and unflappable, a bit sort of just one of the ordinary boys.
25:30He just struck as though he could be one of others, you might say.
25:33Starting to accelerate now. Going up to the speed of sound now. Passing it now.
25:44On day six of the air show, John Derry repeated the manoeuvre.
25:48As his jet ripped past the runway and started his rapid climb, the sonic boom ricocheted over the spectators.
26:04It was after this, when the aircraft had slowed down, that the appalling sight was seen of the machine disintegrating in the air,
26:09with the engines and debris crashing into a section of the crumb.
26:12The airmen are believed to have died instantly, as did some of the spectators who lost their lives.
26:21Violence of the impact resulted in 28 fatalities among the crowd, while over 60 people were injured,
26:27many of them very serious.
26:28The airmen are believed to have died instantly, as did some of the spectators who lost their lives.
26:36Violence of the impact resulted in 28 fatalities among the crowd, while over 60 people were injured, many of them very serious.
26:43The official inquest reported that Derry had died accidentally doing his duty.
27:06Duty is an interesting word, because Derry hadn't been flying for the RAF,
27:11he had been flying for a private company, de Havillands.
27:14And yet, Britain, the government, was so desperate for these foreign sales.
27:19So maybe the word duty is not so inappropriate after all, because by selling aircraft he was making money for the country.
27:30He was, in fact, flying on behalf of the nation.
27:37Almost at once, Derry's friend, Neville Duke, flew a Hawker Hunter through the sound barrier again.
27:42Flying, like progress, must not stop.
27:45The next pilot came through and went straight through the speed of sound in front of the crowd.
27:52I mean, could you see that happening now?
27:55I mean, it was a different world.
27:57We were certainly much harder, much more direct and unflappable, I suppose is the word.
28:05But the desire to sell British jet technology would have another impact that far outweighed the tragedy at Farnborough.
28:15In a world now divided between Communist East and Capitalist West, Britain found itself dazzled by the headlights of dilemma.
28:25On the one hand, its economical necessities.
28:28On the other, its ideological principles.
28:32And principles didn't always win out.
28:36It's a little known story, but with the urgent need for cash, the post-war Labour government decided to sell some of Britain's secret technology.
28:48It was a bit like selling the family silver to pay for the mortgage.
28:51And part of that silver was its jet engines.
28:54One of the largest potential customers for British jet hardware was the Soviet Union.
29:07The country had been ravaged by the war.
29:09It wasn't only Britain facing economic hardship.
29:17The Soviets realised they had to defend themselves against the ferocious military power of the US.
29:22Glancing down the list of British hardware, they asked for some meteors, some vampires and some of these.
29:28The Rolls-Royce Neen turbojet engine.
29:34They clearly knew they were charging their arm, as Stalin is supposed to have said, what fool would sell us his secrets?
29:40The request appalled Britain's military chiefs and divided the government.
29:45How mad are we, exclaimed the Foreign Secretary, to even consider it.
29:52But the British government was convinced their engineers would always be one step ahead of anything sold abroad.
29:59Especially a turbojet engine reverse engineered by poorly trained Soviets.
30:08So despite the risks, the cash-strapped government agreed to the deal with one proviso.
30:15They were to be used only for civilian purposes.
30:21It was to be a disastrous decision.
30:24Tensions between East and West were already becoming strained.
30:27And before long, the sales of these engines would impact on a conflict for thousands of miles away in Southeast Asia.
30:39Communist attacks, in fact, throughout Southeast Asia, there comes open aggression in Korea.
30:43In May 1950, the Cold War turned hot as North Korean forces invaded their southern neighbours.
30:52Less than a month later, the United Nations were at war with the Communists.
30:56An American base somewhere in South Korea prepares for another attack on the Reds by jet fighter bombers.
31:03Did I have any thoughts about fighting Communists?
31:06I don't think so, quite honestly. I didn't.
31:09I think I can honestly say, first and foremost, it was something that I had been trained to do.
31:15OK? I was going to poop rockets, I was going to fire guns, etc.
31:18At the start of the conflict, the West's jet fighters and bombers roamed the North Korean skies at will.
31:30But a new aircraft soon showed up, and it outclassed everything.
31:40The Russian-built Mikayan Gurevich, better known as the MiG-15.
31:47I looked down below and saw an F-80 shooting star going like a bat out of hell, closely followed by a couple of MiG-15s.
32:00The other pilot and I said, well, let's go for the buckets, you know, so we opened up the taps and went chasing after these MiGs.
32:06And so I pooped the rockets off and they went right between the two MiGs.
32:14I remember them.
32:16I thought that was pretty good for range, but this guy went that way and this guy went this way.
32:21This guy I went after just opened up the taps and zoomed up and was out of the way.
32:26I never saw him anymore, of course.
32:27The MiG-15 was at least 100 miles an hour faster than any aircraft the UK or US possessed.
32:38And that was down to three things.
32:40With no ejection seat, it was light.
32:43It had swept back wings.
32:45But the third reason was it was powered by a British engine.
32:50So much for the promise of keeping it for civilian purposes.
33:00As far as the MiG was concerned, we knew that the aircraft had the Neen engine in it, which had been sold by Rolls-Royce to Russia.
33:09The MiG could out turn, out climb, out zoom, out accelerate.
33:15It went very, very fast, very quickly.
33:20The MiG-15 became one of the most successful fighters ever flown.
33:28More have been built than any other military or civil jet aircraft.
33:33So ironically, production of Soviet copies of the Neen engine far outstripped the Rolls-Royce original.
33:50As a result of the MiG-15, no UN pilot could feel safe in Korean skies.
34:00Relations between Britain and America soured.
34:03US officials questioned the UK's moral backbone.
34:07They even threatened to restrict aid.
34:14In the end, as the two nations were allies in the conflict, the matter was quietly dropped.
34:20Britain was stuck between the two leading superpowers and concerned that America's increasingly fervent anti-communism would provoke a Soviet attack.
34:30And if the unthinkable should happen, then Britain would be first in the firing line.
34:34The British government preferred to play a more placatory card.
34:39And by being America's friend, they hoped to calm US hardline attitudes to Soviet Russia.
34:44The Americans might listen to Britain's mediating words.
34:47I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. One nation.
34:57Yes, one nation. Power and riches enough to crush a universe with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.
35:06My father and the other Soviet diplomats knew that Americans, I wouldn't say too primitive, but looking too straight,
35:17and too ideological, and they have no experience in the diplomacy.
35:25If the button's ever pressed, we're all set to go.
35:35Seconds after the alert, these defending meteors are screaming into the sky to clash with a still invisible foe.
35:42To maintain its influence in the world, Britain had to stand shoulder to shoulder with the US.
35:49In the escalating arms race, this policy didn't come cheap.
35:54The UK was spending vast amounts on its military, not only to defend itself against the Soviet threat, but also to be the ally of America.
36:00But in 1950, Britain still had huge debts. Tea, bacon and sugar were all rationed. Just the year before, the pound had been devalued to encourage cheaper exports.
36:12The need for foreign currency was paramount. Aviation and the jet engine were still Britain's best bet for a brighter, safer future.
36:20One plane beyond all others offered the country that opportunity.
36:31When the comet appeared at the Farnborough Air Show in 1949, it was a sensation.
36:36It represents the first of a new generation of jet airliners and holds promise of a briefer, smoother passage for the air traveller of tomorrow.
36:47Even the royal family's first jet experience was in a comet.
36:51The plane was fast becoming the jewel in the crown of British aviation.
36:58We were pretty battered well into the 50s, certainly in the cities.
37:03I mean, the bomb sights were very familiar in London and everything needed a lick of paint.
37:08And yet, if you did catch the sight of the meteor or the comet, shimmering.
37:13And it was a remarkable juxtaposition.
37:20And 53 was the apogee of all this, because here was this beautiful young queen being crowned.
37:26Everest had been climbed by a Commonwealth expedition just on time.
37:29There was a perfect conjunction.
37:31But also, we did hold the airspeed record.
37:34We were absolutely in advance in so many technical areas.
37:37And looking back, I'm sure we felt it quite, I certainly did,
37:41that we were members of a success story nation.
37:51The comet could fly higher and faster than any other airliner, and by some margin.
37:56Journey times halved. It shrank the world.
38:00This record-breaking aircraft had again made the front pages
38:03by going into regular service as the world's first passenger-carrying jet airline.
38:11But more than that, the Americans had nothing like it on the drawing board, let alone in production.
38:24For Britain, the real technological competition was with the United States.
38:28And the idea here was that the Americans could throw huge resources at the development of new aeroplanes, engines.
38:35But they didn't have that spark of genius.
38:39It's a British conceit that the British inventors have.
38:43That wonderful word, boffin, is very revealing that somewhere in a Nissan hut in the home counties
38:48is some deeply eccentric, really rather unemployable person
38:51who's producing the most amazing thoughts that are going to lead us
38:55to have a technological advantage that will keep us safe.
38:57Somehow or other they'll come up with a cunning plan and a whiz-bang to see you through.
39:03If Britain could sell the comet globally, it would guarantee the demand for spares,
39:09for maintenance, for orders of new engines and possibly whole fleets of planes.
39:17The comet put Britain years ahead of the rest of the world
39:19and gave them a golden opportunity to corner the market for a generation.
39:28By 1953, de Havilland had firm orders for 50 comets
39:32and was negotiating for 100 more. Success seemed assured.
39:36As the comet is the world's finest airliner, we haven't wasted the lead which Whittle gave us.
39:41But there was a catch. This may have been a civil aircraft, but in the Cold War, every new technology had a dual purpose.
39:54If the comet could travel faster and further than anything before, then the same could be applied to a bomber.
40:04In the year the comet first flew, the Soviet Union successfully tested their atomic bomb.
40:11But they had no plane capable of delivering it any further than Paris or London.
40:21If the Soviets got hold of a comet, they could steal its secrets
40:25and build a bomber capable of reaching the United States.
40:28The Americans now tried to stop the sale of Britain's latest jet technology to any country.
40:47The British were outraged.
40:48There was far too much riding on the latest generation of comets for that.
40:53But the government did offer some provisos.
40:55One, no comets would be allowed to fly over the Soviet bloc.
40:59Two, all maintenance had to be done by British engineers.
41:02Three, all spares had to be carried by British ships and held in British buildings when abroad.
41:08The Americans were having none of it.
41:10Memories of the sale of Rolls-Royce engines to the Soviets echoed in the halls of Congress.
41:20Once again, Britain found itself caught between its economic necessity and American anti-communism.
41:26Communism in reality is not a political party.
41:31It is a way of life, an evil and malignant way of life.
41:35It reveals a condition akin to disease that spreads like an epidemic.
41:40And like an epidemic, a quarantine is necessary to keep it from infecting this nation.
41:45The British government felt America's ideological hard line masked its true intent.
41:56To dominate the jet technology market themselves.
42:00There was a simple choice.
42:03On the one hand, Britain could accept America's demands and wave goodbye to the stunning lead they held in jet transport,
42:09and all the wealth and prestige that offered.
42:10On the other, they could sell the comets, risk them falling into Soviet hands,
42:15and jeopardize the friendship with the United States.
42:22So what to do?
42:24On the 11th of November, 1953, the government decided to give the proverbial two-finger salute to the United States.
42:31Commerce would trump security.
42:34Unless you were in the Soviet bloc, you could buy a comet.
42:37The Americans were furious, but a cruel twist of fate would save Britain from the consequences of its decision.
42:46This Mark 1 comet was the last to roll off the production line.
42:52Just months after it entered service, it was grounded, along with every other comet in the world.
42:59It was with dismay that we learned that the first of the comets had crashed into the Mediterranean off Elba with the loss of 35 lives.
43:09The comet's fuselage couldn't cope with the repeated air pressure changes between take-off and high-altitude cruising.
43:20This is the tragic scene of the comet disaster near Calcutta.
43:25The aircraft carried 37 passengers and a crew of six. All lost their lives.
43:29There were other fatal crashes. Sales of the aircraft plummeted.
43:38The game was over. And this particular plane? Well, it never took another paying passenger.
43:44Now it's a museum piece. The last remaining Mark 1 Comet.
43:47With huge government investment, the plane was eventually redesigned and strengthened.
43:55But by then, American manufacturers had developed their own airliner.
44:00The comet was swept from the marketplace.
44:04The comet air disasters meant Britain lost its lead in jet transport and with it all the riches that had promised.
44:10But out of this tragedy, there was, I suppose, one small silver lining.
44:15The comet's technology could no longer fall into Soviet hands.
44:19And Britain's special relationship with the US was saved.
44:24The country now found itself a junior partner in the relationship with its superpower ally.
44:31And with it came new responsibilities.
44:34Washington knew the Soviets would soon develop the capability of bombing mainland America.
44:45US strategy was simple. Strike the USSR first.
44:51The task, however, wasn't straightforward.
44:55If the Americans wanted to drop a nuclear bomb on Russian cities,
44:59there was a significant and dangerous obstacle they had to overcome.
45:02Namely the Soviet air defences, surface-to-air missiles and interceptor planes.
45:08The best way to avoid these was by flying at high altitude or at night.
45:13But that meant seeing the target was nigh-on impossible.
45:20What was needed were reconnaissance flights to take photographs of radar images of the targets.
45:25If it then came to a real attack, the bomb aimer could match these photographs and images with what he had on his screen.
45:30He no longer had to see the target with his own eyes.
45:34This was all well and good, except for the small but not insignificant matter of flying over Soviet territory in the Cold War.
45:40But overflights were nothing short of spying and highly provocative.
45:57The US Air Force was forbidden from carrying them out.
46:00If the Americans couldn't fly over Russia, then maybe someone else could.
46:06An ally, perhaps. An ally such as Britain.
46:09Initially, the Labour government refused.
46:15But when Churchill was re-elected in 1951, he gave the spy missions the green light.
46:20Operation Jiu Jitsu was born.
46:25The name Jiu Jitsu was very secret.
46:29I certainly never knew, never heard of the name until years afterwards.
46:34If the operation had gone wrong at the time, they would have been in quite an uproar politically.
46:41The Russians would have made much of it.
46:49In the early 50s, RB-45 Tornado bombers arrived at an airbase in Norfolk.
46:55Although these were American planes with American ground crew, the decals were RAF rondels.
47:03The crews were British.
47:05And the mission was top secret.
47:08The planes had been redecorated with RAF rondels and markings.
47:13For critical reasons, the Americans did not want to fly these flights.
47:18The RAF had agreed to do it, so if we had gone down, it would have been a British problem.
47:25We were invited down by the chief intelligence officer, who took us into the operations room in Bomber Command.
47:35And they had a map on the wall, which they uncovered for us.
47:40And there were the three routes.
47:43And we were asked to choose one.
47:48The route arced down through southern Russia, to Ukraine, to the industrial complexes there.
47:55It was the longest route, and probably had the most difficult targets.
47:59So, we chose to do that one.
48:08Rex Sanders was one of Jiu Jitsu's navigators, responsible for taking hundreds of radar images of Russian targets.
48:14You are guiding the aircraft, basically using radar, until you get to the Russian border, and then you start on your photography.
48:31We did over 20 targets, each one requiring about a 50- or 60-mile run into it.
48:38And you went from one target to another.
48:42There was no let-up at all. It was very hard work.
48:45There were airfields and factory complexes and things like that.
48:51Probably one or two oil fields in there.
48:54Deep in Soviet territory, Sander's secret mission was rumbled by Russian air defences.
49:00We were well over halfway in this exercise, and all of a sudden, the aircraft went into a steep bank.
49:10I called out what is happening to the skipper, who replied rather rudely that we had been subject to anti-aircraft fire.
49:20The flag, as we called it, and he was turning for home.
49:27We had instructions before the flight that if we came under fire, we were to come out.
49:35The risks of being shot down had become too great.
49:38Rex Sanders had flown his last Jiu Jitsu mission.
49:42I think the mission was successful in the broadest terms.
49:46It played a large part in the Cold War.
49:51It put the Russians on the defensive.
49:55They themselves were very upset that we did what we did, and several air force chiefs were sacked.
50:03Geneva was the appropriate and attractive place chosen for the first Big Four summit conference.
50:08By the mid-50s, relations between East and West appeared to be improving.
50:13First, the focus was on President Eisenhower.
50:15And here our Premier Bulgarian of the Soviet Union with Mr. Khrushchev.
50:20Sir Anthony Eden came to propose the British plan for peace.
50:23Was it too much to hope for the raising of the Iron Curtain and the ending of the Cold War at last?
50:31At the Geneva Peace Conference, President Eisenhower proposed an open skies policy.
50:36This would mean that any nation could fly over another without fear of being shot down.
50:40No one was fooled by this.
50:43The Soviets simply didn't have an aircraft capable of flying over the US, as Eisenhower was well aware.
50:49In effect, he was trying to get a licence to fly spy missions over Russia.
50:53Needless to say, Khrushchev politely declined the offer.
50:56What Eisenhower and Khrushchev both knew was the US could fly over the Soviet Union any time it liked.
51:06The Americans had developed an aircraft that could cruise 13 miles above the Earth, at the very edge of space.
51:18At that altitude, it was far beyond the reach of anything the Russians could throw at it.
51:23The spy plane was known as the U-2.
51:42Western overflying Soviet territory was more or less the game under the existing rules.
51:51You are flying with right intercept, sometimes successful, sometimes not.
52:00And U-2 flight changed all this because it was so high that it was impossible to intercept, technically impossible.
52:09Such state-of-the-art technology was invaluable, but the US were wary of using their own pilots.
52:21Once again, the RAF were asked to do the Americans' dirty work.
52:27To this day, the British government have never admitted their involvement.
52:31As a result, the RAF pilots won't talk.
52:36So I've come to Arizona to meet the man who trained them, Major General Pat Halloran of the US Air Force.
52:43When they first showed up at our training base in Del Rio, Texas, we were surprised that they were there.
52:51We had no idea. Those of us in the squadron had no idea that they were even coming.
52:56And I'm not sure they knew. Because in talking to them, they thought they were coming to America to fly some new exotic fighter airplane.
53:03And they saw the U-2, they couldn't believe it, with those big ungainly wings and a blider-like appearance.
53:11So it was later when we discovered that they were actually being teamed up with the CIA.
53:21Working with the CIA, the RAF pilots flew repeated spy missions for almost two years,
53:27photographing Soviet Union industrial and military sites.
53:36And do you think, kind of looking back on it now, was that a brave decision by the British, do you think?
53:41Absolutely. When we did find out, we thought, good heavens, what if one of the Brits had been shot down?
53:46There'd be hell to pay back in Parliament, I'm sure, and the Prime Minister were probably looking for a new job.
53:51But we thought it was very gutsy of the UK to do that, but we applauded them for doing it.
53:58All we know about the individual missions is they used Air Force bases in Turkey.
54:05And if the RAF pilots were caught, their cover story was they were employed by the US Meteorological Office.
54:11We know those missions took place in around 1958-1959, but while we don't know the details, we do know when those U-2 overflights came to an abrupt stop.
54:24On May the 1st, 1960, Soviet radar defences locked onto a U-2 spy plane.
54:40In the end, it wasn't an RAF pilot caught deep inside Soviet territory, but CIA operative Gary Powers.
54:54When he was shot out of the sky, it was immediately clear detente between East and West would never materialise.
55:00On display in Moscow, what's alleged to be the wreckage of the U-2 spy plane, which Russia claims to have shot down by rocket.
55:10Here is Captain Powers. He's to be put on trial, says Mr. Khrushchev.
55:14There was an open trial trial against the U-2 spy plane, Francis Gary Powers.
55:28Initially, the Americans denied Powers had been spying, but with a high-tech plane full of photographic equipment,
55:33and with Powers himself to interrogate and parade before the world, it was clear what had been going on.
55:38But the incident was more than just bad PR for the USA. It had a far bigger impact.
55:48At the 1960 Paris peace summit, Khrushchev demanded an apology.
55:54None was forthcoming.
55:56So the Soviet Premier went home.
55:59It was a shock because he couldn't understand why.
56:12Why they did it.
56:16Of course, the American Hawks wanted to destroy detente and have more investment in the military-industrial complex.
56:25From my perspective, American Hawks won sending Gary Powers on May 1st.
56:40Now, even at high altitude, jet aircraft were no longer safe from surface-to-air missiles.
56:46But spying from the sky wouldn't stop.
56:48Just a day after Gary Powers was convicted of espionage by a Russian court, a new technology was launched, the spy satellite.
56:59The role of the jet had to change.
57:02As the hope of peace in the Cold War vanished, and the UK technological lead was eclipsed,
57:08Britain could no longer simply export fighters and pilot spy planes.
57:12Now, the nation would pin its hopes on the jet bomber.
57:19Next time, Britain under threat of annihilation.
57:23When we were at height and on our way, you began to think,
57:27oh my goodness me, this is for real.
57:30Now, to stake a claim at the top table of international power, Britain needed its own nuclear deterrent.
57:44A generation of aircraft, able to fly higher, faster and further than ever before were created.
57:50All flown by men prepared to risk everything in a third world war.
57:56Because these new jets were the platform for delivering Armageddon.
58:00And the second part of Hot Jets is here next Friday, same time, nine o'clock.
58:14And there's more in BBC Two's Cold War season with Strange Days.
58:19Cold War Britain on Tuesday.
58:21Stay with us for more on that in just a moment.
58:24And we're playing K for Keeps with Stephen Fry and QI here next.