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00:01In August 1945, for the first time in human history,
00:06civilisation stood vulnerable to total annihilation.
00:13In an instant, the accepted conventions of warfare were brushed aside.
00:19The modern battlefield would now be 50,000 feet above us.
00:24And death would travel these new frontiers on the wings of a jet bomber.
00:31As Britain prepared for peace, the country was thrown into a different kind of conflict.
00:37One that forced the nation to learn a new language of war.
00:42As soon as we'd be called upon to be used, it was nuclear war.
00:46The Third World War, nuclear.
00:49One bomb was approximately equivalent to all the bombs dropped by the Allies on Germany in World War II.
01:00Our mission was a one-way ride and you were going to blow up the world.
01:05And no one knew about it.
01:07To maintain its position in the New World Order and meet the exacting standards of this new technological warfare,
01:15Britain once again turned to its aviation industry for the next generation of war machines.
01:20There was no other country in the world who could produce an aircraft like the V-bombers.
01:28They were, for their day, like spaceships almost.
01:32As the platform for delivering nuclear Armageddon, the role of the jet bomber was set to dominate the political landscape for the next two decades.
01:43Aviation was the delivery system for the nuclear deterrent.
01:48I remember thinking, you know, gosh, you've got to be a brave man to do that because if you're doing it for real, you've got nowhere to come back to.
01:59This is the story of how Britain embraced, adapted and improved its jet technology to face up to the terrifying realities of the new era and to define how the Cold War was fought.
02:12Cut off from the rest of the other western zones of Germany by the Russian blockade, the western zones...
02:38In June 1948, Berlin became the first flashpoint of the Cold War.
02:45In a blatantly aggressive act to control the entire city, Stalin blocked rail, road and canal access to the west.
02:54There was only one way open to the beleaguered capital, by air.
02:58And at western zone airfields, supplies were loaded aboard transports which had been rushed to the sea.
03:02In a single year, 200,000 flights delivered nearly 5,000 tons of supplies into west Berlin.
03:12A point had been proved. The aeroplane was king.
03:18And while there was nothing to match the vast numbers of Soviet troops on the ground, superiority in the skies belonged to the west.
03:25By the end of the war, Britain led the world in aviation technology.
03:34But the old certainties of the empire were gone.
03:37And by the late 40s, the country was forced to align itself with America and the bomb in the new ideological conflict between east and west.
03:46And, of course, we were conscious at the time that the Soviet army, the Rompin' Stompin' Red Army, as they used to call it, was five times bigger than the NATO forces.
04:01They had millions of troops under arms, well-trained, efficient.
04:10They had some of the best tanks in the world, and lots of them.
04:15They had their tails up because they'd conquered the Germans.
04:19As tension between the superpowers intensified, a US nuclear strike force became a permanent fixture on British soil.
04:27This force is a combat-ready offence force.
04:31It is a deterrent force dedicated to the prevention of war, any war, large or small.
04:37This offence force is complemented by the joint allied early warning air defence system.
04:43Britain was, for the Americans, an unsinkable aircraft carrier moored off the northwest coast of Europe.
04:50It's a great deal easier to fly from Lincolnshire to Leningrad than it is from America to Leningrad.
05:00You know, range was a thing.
05:04Shorter range, bigger payload, all those things.
05:08As America's foremost ally in Europe, Britain would be squarely in the Soviet's crosshairs if World War III started.
05:15Of course, Europe was the primary target because the United States surrounded the Soviet Union with air bases.
05:25And they easily can reach most of the political and industrial centres.
05:32In 1949, confounding all expectation, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb.
05:40This was quite shocking because the expectation was the Soviet Union was not capable of developing high-tech weapons at this rate.
05:57The stage was now set for the next world war.
06:00A climate of suspicion, fear and mutual menace had begun to develop between the superpowers.
06:07And Britain, as the non-nuclear piggy in the middle, had nothing with which to retaliate.
06:12After the war, there was a feeling that that was the end of war.
06:18And it was suddenly realised that we had to prepare ourselves for this Russian threat.
06:23In 1951, Churchill spelled out the country's vulnerability in the House of Commons.
06:31We must not forget, he said, that by creating the American atomic base in East Africa, we have made ourselves the target and perhaps the bullseye of a Soviet attack.
06:44On the 28th of March last year, I said in Parliament, if, for instance, the United States had a stockpile of 1,000 atomic bombs and Russia had 50, and we got those 50 fearful experiences far beyond anything we have ever endured, would be our lot.
07:12Our only option was the nuclear option.
07:22That was the quickest and easiest way to give a credible opposition and deterrence.
07:29Churchill argued the country must continue to develop its own independent nuclear deterrent, regardless of the cost.
07:37This was a generation of politicians, you must remember, had seen what happened.
07:42The nuclear weapon did in the 1930s.
07:44They were damned if they were going to appease the Soviets.
07:47The prospect of Britain developing an atomic bomb had received a blow in 1946, when the American McMahon Act unanimously refused to share any atomic secrets with its wartime allies.
08:01That stupid McMahon Act.
08:04That stupid McMahon Act.
08:05The Avengers were acting fully with them.
08:08And, in the kind of way at the time, they were all active.
08:10Think they were the big boys, we were the small boys.
08:11We just got to show them.
08:12They didn't know everything.
08:13To have influence in the New World Order, Britain would need its own atomic bomb.
08:25And, without the help of the Americans, the country would have to go it alone.
08:31If you want to be involved in the deterrent, you have to be able to do your own deterring.
08:37And that's a powerful bargaining tool.
08:40If you can start World War Three, you have to be listened to.
08:43As work got underway building the bomb, the Ministry of Supply started to draw up requirements for a new jet bomber.
08:51A plane that could fly higher, faster and further than any bomber of the past.
09:05In January 1947, the Ministry of Supply issued this, specification tender number B3546.
09:12It was an order for an urgently needed new jet bomber.
09:15One that would set challenging new hurdles for Britain's aviation companies.
09:19They were asking for a bomber that could fly at least 50,000 feet.
09:23That is, out of range of any Soviet missiles.
09:26It also had to have a long-range cruising speed of 580 miles per hour.
09:32Finally, it had to be capable of carrying a five-ton atomic bomb.
09:36It was an extraordinary sense that you could do what you set your mind to.
09:45It was an extraordinary sense, too, that the resources would be available to carry through extraordinarily ambitious projects of aeronautical design.
09:54The first successful bid came from Avro, based in Manchester.
09:59This was a company with pedigree, responsible for bombers like the Lancaster and Lincoln.
10:05Avro's bid was radical, to say the least.
10:16The young designers of the Special Projects Department, known as the Avro Babes,
10:21had borrowed the idea from a glider they discovered on a scouting mission to Germany in 1945.
10:26This is the incredible first sketch drawn by a young designer called Bob Lindley.
10:36Initially, it was met with derision, but what would emerge from this was a truly astonishing aircraft.
10:44The fantasy of every schoolboy in Britain.
10:47Tony Blackman was a Vulcan test pilot.
11:11It must have looked incredible when the first designs were drawn up and when it first emerged from that hangar.
11:18Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, something completely different.
11:21But it was right on the edge of technology at that time.
11:24They really did a superb job.
11:27No-one's done this delta wing like this, have they?
11:30Certainly not on this scale.
11:32Well, at that time, no.
11:33We knew very little in the UK about wing design at all, or delta wing design,
11:38and we had to get help by the Germans who had done a lot more work on it.
11:42When they flew the aircraft, they discovered that it buffeted at high speed.
11:48If you look up here, the outer leading edge on the Mark I had to be drooped to get rid of the buffet,
11:57but it took several years to actually find the solution.
11:59So, presumably, there were a number of advantages to having the delta wing?
12:03Oh, yeah, well, obviously, you could, apart from the strength, very strong.
12:07And, of course, you could accommodate the engine, which is very important.
12:10And, as you can see, the engines don't show at all.
12:14They're completely buried in the wing.
12:16But a very tiny cockpit?
12:18Oh, cockpit was minute.
12:20And the view out there was appalling.
12:22I went up there quite recently, and I looked and thought,
12:24how on earth did I ever manage to fly that?
12:27The second company to win a contract was Handley Page, arch-rivals of Avro.
12:36The company had built the World War II Halifax bomber
12:39and were working on an aircraft with crescent-shaped wings,
12:43designed for high-altitude cruising.
12:46The design was the brainchild of the chief aerodynamicist, a German.
12:53The plane's development, however, was dogged with accidents and delays.
12:59The government decided another, less-advanced aircraft was required as backup.
13:06The third company to be awarded a contract was Vickers Armstrong,
13:10the banker as far as the Ministry of Supply were concerned.
13:13Vickers promised a new jet bomber that met all the criteria,
13:17but didn't push the technological envelope quite so far.
13:20More importantly, they also claimed that they would come in under budget and on time.
13:25Now, you might think it's odd that they should build three bombers.
13:29Why not just build one?
13:31The reason is actually that experience from the Second World War
13:35showed that you couldn't tell which kind of aeroplane would do best.
13:39So they built three in the expectation that some would be better than others.
13:45True to their word, on the 18th of May 1951,
13:50the Vickers Valiant was the first of the new jet bombers to lift off the runway.
13:55Two years later, it went into full production.
13:59I couldn't believe it because I'd been flying piston-engine aircraft exclusively up to then.
14:06The Valiant just took off and went up like a homesick angel.
14:11I was watching the altimeter and it was going round and round and round and round really fast,
14:16trying to catch up with the aircraft.
14:19Determined not to be overshadowed by the Valiant, Avro pulled out the stops to get the Vulcan airborne.
14:26In August 1952, here at Woodford, the Vulcan was finally rolled out from its hangar.
14:33Approaching the aircraft was an urbane figure in a pinstripe suit.
14:39This was Rowley Falk, the test pilot, who had flown captured German aircraft at Farnbridge during the war.
14:45Falk oozed self-confidence and calm imperturbability.
14:49But no-one had ever flown a plane like this before.
14:53And as he stepped into the cockpit, I can't help thinking he must have had just a few nerves.
14:59Tony Blackman was Rowley Falk's friend and protégé.
15:02He couldn't have been a better guy to develop the aircraft.
15:05He was absolutely perfect, because not only was he a wonderful demonstration pilot, but he was a great salesman.
15:11Politicians and the air staff had to be persuaded that we were going to make it a success of the aircraft.
15:18And Rowley had to chat all these people up, have lunch with all the important people,
15:23and he'd rush out in his grey pinstripe suit and fly the aircraft immaculately.
15:29Within weeks of its first test flight, the Vulcan was unveiled at the Farnbridge Airshow.
15:35The new Avro 698 four-engine jet bomber.
15:43As the plane thundered past the runway, the crowd were transfixed by a vision of the future.
15:50And at the top of the take-off climb, Rowley Falk did something no bomber had ever done before.
15:56He barrel-rolled the aircraft.
15:59Those sort of manoeuvres could hardly fail to impress anybody who had any interest in aviation.
16:06A bomber barrel-rolling was unheard of.
16:09That was the show-off antics of the fighter boys.
16:13Rowley Falk was later reprimanded, not on safety grounds,
16:16but because it was considered unbecoming behaviour for a bomber.
16:20At any rate, there's no denying his joyful pirouette through the sky
16:24had changed the image of the slow, lumbering bomber forever.
16:27And, of course, the crowd loved it.
16:32Two months later, the third plane in the V-Force, the Victor,
16:36took to the skies at Boscombe Down.
16:39This was the most electronically and aerodynamically advanced bomber
16:43the world had ever seen.
16:45It could go faster, higher, and with greater destructive power
16:49than all the Lancaster bombers of World War II combined.
16:53They were, for their day, like spaceships almost.
16:57And the same with the Vulcan.
16:58I mean, they were so far advanced.
17:00You have got to think of the Victor or the Vulcan beside a Lancaster
17:07or a Shackleton.
17:09To see the huge step forward that had been made,
17:13this generational advancement, was considerable.
17:17A year later, the Victor appeared at the Farnborough Air Show
17:21with a flamboyant paint job.
17:23Yes, I first saw it in its strange colour scheme it had at first at Farnborough,
17:28the black fuselage and the silver wings.
17:31And even then, it was an impressive aeroplane.
17:34I can remember the Vulcan coming across it,
17:36and it came across at fairly low level, reasonably fast,
17:39making it on smoke and a lot of noise, and disappeared.
17:42And then the Victor appeared, and it came across fairly sedately
17:45at about 1,500 feet or so, and we thought,
17:48Yeah, that's different.
17:50And then he barrel rolled.
17:52And, of course, that word got back to Manchester pretty quickly.
17:55I think the Vulcan had to do it the next day.
17:58It became a sort of battle between the two companies at that time.
18:05The following year, Russian make-fighters shot a Lincoln out of the sky
18:09as it flew down the Berlin corridor.
18:18The days of the propeller-driven bomber were over.
18:33Right on cue, the Royal Air Force unveiled its new jet bomber squadrons,
18:37a high-tech nuclear strike force.
18:41I went on one occasion with my grandfather,
18:43when he was Ministry of Defence, to RAF Cotsmore.
18:46It was a V-bomber base,
18:49and we actually set us off a scramble.
18:57You saw these black trails going off into the sky,
18:59and this thunderous noise.
19:02I mean, so your chest shook with the sound waves hitting it.
19:06And I remember thinking, you know,
19:08I don't know if they scare the enemy,
19:10but my God, they frighten me sort of thing.
19:16Britain was also catching up in the arms race.
19:19By 1952, Churchill's government had tested the country's first atomic bomb.
19:26But that same year, the stakes had been raised even higher.
19:30The Americans exploded a thermonuclear device.
19:35It was quickly followed by a Russian megaton bomb.
19:39The A bomb had been superseded a thousand times by the H bomb.
19:45Churchill demanded Britain keep pace, and to hell with the cost.
19:58It was the price to be paid for a seat at the top table,
20:01and a chance to influence superpower aggression.
20:04In 1957, Britain went thermonuclear.
20:11The Valiant swung into a 1.8 G turn,
20:15through 140 degrees on its planned escape course.
20:20Why does Britain do it?
20:34Well, because it's a great power.
20:36It needs the H bomb to remain great power.
20:39There's another very important reason,
20:40and that is that the H bomb, like the A bomb,
20:44is seen as a relatively cheap way of fighting war.
20:47You need high-tech, relatively cheap warfare,
20:51and that's what the bomb does for Britain.
20:54We believed that we were preventing war from happening
20:57by being prepared for war.
21:00Wasn't it Theodore Roosevelt who said,
21:02the man who wants peace prepares for war?
21:05I believed that to be true.
21:08Or the other thing he came up with was,
21:11walk quietly and carry a big stick.
21:13I mean, as far as we were concerned, we had a big stick.
21:16Now armed to the teeth with the technology to deliver,
21:20Britain needed men prepared to take on the burden
21:23of the independent nuclear deterrent
21:25and risk all in a Third World War.
21:32The RAF began the search for chaps with the right stuff.
21:36I was personally interviewed by an Air Vice Marshal,
21:47who then was, in 1958, Bing Cross.
21:50I don't think I'd ever spoken to an Air Vice Marshal before.
21:53Do you go to church? Do you play rugby? Do you have a mess kit?
21:58Those were three of the standards that Bing Cross was looking for.
22:01In other words, he was looking for character.
22:03I had to go through what was called personal vetting, PVT clearance.
22:07This went into finding out what my uncles and aunts did.
22:11It was quite intense.
22:14This was to ensure that, I guess, our family and I was a true Brit.
22:21The V-bombers were so advanced,
22:23it took a crew of five highly trained men to fly them.
22:27Five people.
22:29First pilot, co-pilot, navigator radar, navigator plotter,
22:34air electronics officer, and you were a team.
22:37The expression we used to use is,
22:39the bomber crew is marriage without sex.
22:42After 18 months of rigorous training,
22:45the RAF was ready to launch the country's nuclear capability.
22:50It was a point the government was keen to emphasize.
22:53World leaders were invited to V-bomber bases.
22:57Not to buy, but to be impressed,
23:00and in some cases, to be warned.
23:03Even the new Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, got an invite.
23:08Iden wanted to show the British strengths
23:14and British technological capability,
23:17and I was most impressed of this.
23:19Yeah, I was a young man,
23:20and for me at that time,
23:22all these planes were, like, from the future,
23:26and these planes in Great Britain, especially the Victor,
23:31they were more futuristic than the Soviet planes.
23:34To be credible as a deterrent,
23:37you have to demonstrate to your public,
23:39and, of course, to the potential aggressor,
23:41that you do indeed have this capability.
23:45American Strategic Air Command
23:47was also intrigued by Britain's V-force.
23:50The same year the Victor had first flown,
23:52they had tested their own bomber, the B-52.
23:58You'd watch them go down the runway,
24:00making a lot of smoke out the back,
24:02and they'd then disappear.
24:04And eventually, after three or four minutes,
24:06you'd eventually see it creep up above the smoke cloud,
24:09and it was climbing away,
24:11but nothing like our capability.
24:14The B-52 was no match for versatility,
24:17but how did the V-bomber square up for accuracy?
24:21To find out, Valiants and Vulcans were invited stateside
24:25to take part in bombing competitions.
24:27The whole thing about the Americans was big.
24:37Their bombers were big, their stations were big,
24:42and everything about it was kind of size and money.
24:46The United States Air Force guys were obviously paid
24:48considerably more than we were.
24:50They were highly regarded, got all sorts of privileges
24:53that we never saw here.
24:55They had their own, effectively, supermarkets on base
24:57that were tax-free.
24:59So quite often the aircraft would come back,
25:00they'd come back, they'd come back,
25:01they'd come back, they'd come back,
25:02they'd come back, they'd come back,
25:03they'd come back.
25:04obviously paid considerably more than we were.
25:07They were highly regarded, got all sorts of privileges
25:10that we never saw here.
25:12They had their own, effectively, supermarkets on base
25:15that were tax-free.
25:17So quite often the aircraft would come back
25:19with a lot of stuff in the bomb bay, particularly mowers.
25:23Petrol lawn mowers in those days
25:24were a ludicrous price over there.
25:26Samsonite suitcases, I think virtually everybody
25:29in the V-Force had at least three
25:31by the time they'd done a couple of trips through America.
25:34As the American public slept,
25:36the bombers would fly target runs over their cities
25:39and simulate nuclear warfare.
25:46The mission was that one would fly for four or five hours
25:50and then drop a bomb at the end of the mission.
26:01Tucson and Salt Lake City were probably the main targets.
26:06What one or two occasion in Los Angeles,
26:09they'd set up electronics so that they could tell
26:13when we'd released our bomb.
26:15And then they can work out, using the various trajectories,
26:19where the bomb would actually land
26:21and give you an assessment of your target,
26:23i.e. 500 yards from the target or 100 yards.
26:27And all our missions were all very good.
26:32I think they were all within 500 yards of the target,
26:35where the Americans were getting much bigger errors.
26:48As the Cold War progressed,
26:49the destructive power of the H-bomb kept an uneasy peace
26:52between the superpowers.
26:54The bomb had become a bargaining tool,
26:57a tool most successful when held in reserve.
27:04It's hard to get it into perspective,
27:06but one bomb that was carried by, say, a Vulcan,
27:11was approximately equivalent in explosive power
27:15to all the bombs dropped by the Allies on Germany in World War II,
27:22which is mind-blowing if you think about it.
27:26The heady days of daredevils flying victory rolls over Farnborough were over.
27:31Pilots and crews were now living permanently on the front line of mad,
27:35mutually assured destruction.
27:37In those days, one had to sign the Official Secrets Act anyway
27:43to become a member of the Air Force.
27:47But when you joined the V Force,
27:49now things became top secret and top secret atomic.
27:54We didn't discuss it with our families.
27:57My wife and family had no idea
28:00of what I might be called upon to do.
28:03Our mission was a one-way ride,
28:06and you were going to blow up the world,
28:08and no-one knew about it.
28:12That one-way mission would be triggered
28:14if the country's eyes and ears at Filingdales in North Yorkshire
28:18detected a Soviet attack.
28:26Russian nuclear missiles were becoming more accurate
28:29with increasingly long-range capabilities.
28:32The early warning radar system would give the V Force
28:37just enough time to get airborne and retaliate.
28:43The famous four-minute warning being the minimum time
28:46they expected ever to get,
28:48so that virtually all 200-odd V-bombers would get airborne
28:52within the four minutes, if necessary.
28:54Never before in the history of warfare had minute-by-minute timing
29:01been so crucial.
29:03Pilots and their crews would live in a permanent state of emergency,
29:07waiting for the call to arms.
29:10This was QRA, Quick Reaction Alert.
29:19The plan was that every squadron provided one aircraft and crew on QRA,
29:25and that aircraft would be bombed up and you were in your flying kit,
29:30ready to go.
29:31You'd cock the aircraft so you could be off the ground in a matter of minutes.
29:35QRA crews were separated from the distractions of normal life on base.
29:52They'd live in cabins close to the runway, within easy reach of their aircraft.
30:01We spent an awful lot of time as a crew locked in a very small room,
30:05studying the target and all that went with it,
30:09the routing to get there, the fuel to get there,
30:12the defences we might meet on the way,
30:14the weapon we were carrying and the target itself.
30:19St Petersburg was one, Kaliningrad and all the capitals in the Baltics.
30:26The crews lived with three states of readiness.
30:30The normal 15 minutes alert, the occasional five minutes
30:35and the highest of all, just two minutes.
30:39The men were constantly tested at each level, day or night.
30:42We would each have, by this stage, been given a car.
30:45If we got a call, which would come out over the tannaways across the whole station,
30:49a Red List 805 call,
30:51we would all, the crews would all clamber in these cars,
30:54rush out to our aircraft, get in the cockpit, shut the door.
30:57Or else naturally start the engines and taxi to the end of the runway
31:02and be plugged in at the end of the runway.
31:05There were several code words.
31:06One was to start engines, one was to take off,
31:09one was to coast out.
31:11And the final one was 8 East.
31:14If that came through, that was irrevocable.
31:17You did not come back.
31:21We assumed that at that stage there were weapons falling on the United Kingdom.
31:26And so we were being released to do the job.
31:29These exercises went on 24-7.
31:34So there was, there was in the back of your mind,
31:37there was the thought, this might be the one where we're actually going.
31:41It might have been half an hour later, when we were at height and on our way,
31:47that you began to think, oh my goodness me, this is for real.
31:52This is for real.
31:53This is for real.
31:54there was no place to go and the earth one will come up.
32:02This is for real, it had been unprecedented since he was out on demand,
32:07but that's great.
32:10udo Meerly will win the prices against the Linda and her family,
32:12which side of the rib,
32:14must be able to get lost during his 2 years ago.
32:16The prospect of prolonged international tension fundamentally changed the basis of military
32:32planning. The country's war chest was bursting at the seams. Britain no longer required forces
32:38stationed throughout the globe, armed with conventional weaponry. The peace of the world
32:43now depended on the efficacy of the nuclear deterrent.
32:48Britain was spending more than 10% of gross domestic product on warfare in the early 1950s.
32:54Quite extraordinary. Historically unprecedented for peacetime. And right across the political
32:59spectrum, from right to left, it's recognised that Britain simply can't afford to maintain
33:04this level of defence expenditure in the long run. It's undermining the civilian economy.
33:12The time had come to revise not only the size, but also the character of the defence plan.
33:17A new approach was needed.
33:18I remember my grandfather, early on in his prime ministership, asking Duncan Sands, who
33:24was then the Minister of Defence, to do a review of defence capability, costs, operational requirements,
33:32likely future costings. And it was quite clear from that, that Britain could not afford to have
33:40the commitment that she'd had up till then.
33:45On the 4th of April 1957, the Minister of Defence, Duncan Sands, rose to his feet in the House
33:55of Commons to present his white paper, Outline of Future Policy. Despite the sense of expectation,
34:01the speech was, for the most part, rather dull. But then came the sting in the tail. Hidden under
34:06the section, Research and Development, Sands spelled out his decision to cut off the aviation industry
34:12at the knees. But Sands had targeted the jet fighter, not the jet bomber. Fighters, he believed,
34:19now played a limited role in modern high-tech warfare. They were expensive to develop,
34:25and there were too many private companies building them. Sands' vision focused on a cheaper, more
34:31effective Cold War weapon. A weapon that would eventually seal the fate of the V-bomber.
34:37The intercontinental ballistic missile. In America, as in Australia and Britain,
34:44the guided missile has grown from prophecy to fact. These things exist.
34:57No more aeroplanes. We're going to do it all with rockets. And I remember the newspaper
35:03hoardings and everything and thinking, ah, that's rather screwed my career prospects.
35:11But it's a sign of Britain's commitment to modernity, especially in warfare,
35:15that you can have a white paper of that radical nature. The nation's romance with the jet fighter
35:22had had its wings clipped. But there was one experimental plane that escaped the clutches of the
35:30white paper. An aircraft with a spine-shattering rate of climb and a top speed of Mach 2. The RAF's
35:39first operational supersonic jet, the English Electric Lightning.
35:44The Lightning was capable of outmaneuvering anything the Russians could throw at it. And only the very best
36:00pilots got to fly it. Martin B was just 23 when he was sent to fly Lightnings at RAF Coltishaw.
36:08So, look at that. That's, um, bigger than I thought. I mean, this must have been
36:21every young pilot's dream, isn't it, to fly on this? I think so, because, er, it was the first
36:26supersonic aeroplane, er, in level flight that we had in the Royal Air Force. It really was a bit of a hot rod.
36:32We could go supersonic in the climb. A couple of minutes up to 36,000 feet is pretty quick going from,
36:43from, er, take off. That's, that's, that's pretty impressive. And it just, it just moves fast. It's just,
36:48everything happens fast. And then look at the sweep, 60 degrees of wing sweep, you know. This is all,
36:54you know, you really are being a bit of a bird man there. So it's good fun. We had a simulator,
36:58so we did all the training in the simulator. And then, er, one day they struck you in and said,
37:03go. It's a very dense aeroplane. So all the pipes are next to each other. So we've got hot engines,
37:07hydraulic pipes, fuel pipes. And so we had an awful lot of fires. And, er, often, er, the fire resulted
37:16in, er, loss of control. And then the pilot would eject. But it didn't kill a lot of people. But, er, we lost a lot of aeroplanes.
37:23One of the Lightning's key roles was to intercept Russian bombers in the North Atlantic.
37:28The Russians, they might be going to, er, Cuba. And they'd come down and exercise with their fleet
37:33in the Atlantic. But most of the time, they were probably sort of practicing, er, their war mission
37:37against, against us. And that's why, one of the reasons why we would intercept them so far out.
37:42Because, er, we knew they had a capability to launch a standoff weapon, um, against the UK.
37:47And what would those sort of encounters be like?
37:50I think, probably, the very first one was apprehensive. Er, because you wonder what you're doing,
37:55and if he's going to do something to you, or you may be asked to do something to him.
37:59Er, but on the other hand, fascinating. You know, you actually see
38:03the opposition for the first time face to face.
38:08Well, that's the thing about the Cold War, isn't it? That most people never saw the enemy.
38:12Yes. But you are absolutely on the cold face. You're the front line, aren't you?
38:15Yeah, but, er, but after a few interceptions, you'd find that, er, you could get up fairly
38:20close to the bomber. And you might be a hundred meters away, and you could see, you could see a
38:25chap in the, in the rear, tail gunner's position waving at you. And you would wave back, okay?
38:31It was the Cold War.
38:41Pilot John Ward decided to take the lightning out, to give me a sense of its sheer power.
39:01Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
39:13It's just amazing, isn't it? My goodness me.
39:33John. That was absolutely amazing. It really was incredible. And just to see that immense power
39:47and speed, I mean, it's a blur going past me. It's something you never get over. You know,
39:51I'm still hooked on the adrenaline. You can see it dripping out of me now, you know?
39:54And what was it like to fly? Well, it's a marked two airplane, you know, faster than a rifle bullet.
40:01Yeah, that's saying something, isn't it? And first time I ever flew one of these solo,
40:04I was changing the radio channels in the climb out over, over Norfolk and the,
40:10saw a little flicker on the instruments and suddenly realised that even though I was climbing
40:13in cold power, I was supersonic. That's just absolutely ridiculous. 1950s technology. Yeah.
40:21You know, this is, this is when British industry was producing some awesome pieces of kit.
40:26An awesome piece of kit indeed. The Lightning was retired in 1988,
40:31one year before the Berlin Wall came down.
40:37Britain was a country about to experience rapid social change. Gone were the days of doffing your cap
41:02to patrician leaders. Government was about to discover the public had a voice.
41:09On Good Friday in 1958, a group of academics, scientists and religious leaders gathered in
41:14Trafalgar Square to march in protest against the escalating arms race.
41:18And this business of hydrogen bombs and nuclear weapons is supremely a moral issue.
41:26They'd have been happy if 50 people had turned up, but instead 10,000 braved the rain and the snow.
41:34Over the next four days, they walked 60 miles to this place, the atomic weapons establishment
41:39in Aldermarston. The campaign for nuclear disarmament had begun.
41:47Britain's bomb has no deterrent value. It can make no difference at all to the situation between
41:52America and Russia. I think we should ban it. Definitely. Because someone's got to make the first
41:58move, hasn't they? They all thought, I'm sure, that they were doing good or trying to stop what was
42:04happening. But this had already happened. I mean, we'd already exploded an atom bomb in Japan. We'd already
42:10exploded in Christmas Island. The Americans had worked out thermonuclear weapons in Nevada desert.
42:18So really, it's like the moment you invent something, you can't de-invent it, can you?
42:26It was an argument that would be brought into sharp and terrifying relief.
42:32On the 14th of October 1962, a U-2 spy plane flew high over Cuba to see if there was any truth to
42:39the rumours that the Russians were building missile bases on the island. The pictures they brought back
42:44would take the world to the brink of Armageddon.
42:53Do you, Ambassador Zoran, deny that the USSR has placed and is placing medium and intermediate
43:02range missiles and sites in Cuba? Yes or no?
43:05You will have your answer in your course.
43:15I'm prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over, if that's your decision.
43:21Americans were lucky living protected by two oceans.
43:25So for them, enemy of the gates, or technical capability to reach their territory,
43:32generated this fear. If they technically can do it, they will do it tomorrow.
43:37As Kennedy and Khrushchev squared up to each other, it was clear to the Prime Minister,
43:43Harold Macmillan, that despite the conflict taking place over 4,000 miles away,
43:49it was Britain that was on the front line.
43:54I remember one afternoon, my grandfather was having a meeting with the head of the Chiefs of Staff
44:01and the Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office and his Foreign Secretary, and I was in the room.
44:08And the Permanent Secretary said, Prime Minister, your grandson is in the room.
44:13He shouldn't be listening, this is classified. And my grandfather looked at him and said,
44:19if we get it wrong, it's going to have far more impact on him than on us.
44:25The President Kennedy told my father in Vienna that we can destroy you many times.
44:32Khrushchev answered, it is no difference. I'm not so cannibalistic as you. I can destroy you only once.
44:41It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against
44:49any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States,
44:56requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.
45:02On the 22nd of October, Strategic Air Command went to DEFCON 2,
45:07one notch away from war itself.
45:12And a naval blockade was set up around Cuba.
45:17These were the most dangerous days in human history.
45:24On the 27th, Black Saturday, as the British public prepared for a weekend of football,
45:29the RAF prepared for world destruction.
45:37They brought us up to the highest possible state of readiness 02, engines running on the
45:42end of the runway, guzzling fuel, whilst they finally made up their mind whether we scrambled
45:48or reverted to readiness state 15, literally in minutes.
45:56I remembered saying to Mary, to my wife, if anything happens and you see us take off,
46:03if we've been called in, what I would like you to do is take the children, put them in the car,
46:09and then drive up to west of Scotland, and I think you'd be safe there.
46:14If war began, 150 V-bombers would follow a preordained flight path east.
46:21We would go in first, take out all the targets in the Baltics and the western part of Russia,
46:29which would allow the Americans to come in with their B-52s to follow us.
46:34All the targets were strategically placed apart,
46:38so they would be flying between blasts of actual bombs going off,
46:43so they could go in and attack the cities further into Russia.
46:49Initially, we had fighter defenses, obviously, that we got to worry about,
46:53and we were jamming against those.
46:55But of course, they started deploying large numbers of surface-to-air missiles.
46:58What were called SAM-1 and SAM-2.
47:01As long as you kept turning about every minute and a half,
47:06so you did a weaving attack, in effect,
47:09they would not be able to get the missile to predict well enough to hit you.
47:14And it would level out, literally, with hopefully no more than four or five miles to go,
47:18for me to finally correct on the target position and drop the weapon.
47:28As a spent force, the V-bombers would head home.
47:42But in all practicality, there would be nothing to come home to.
47:49I mean, Britain would have been laid waste.
47:52It doesn't bear thinking about, really.
47:54It's awful. It's too awful for words.
48:01At the last minute,
48:03Khrushchev ordered his ships to turn away from the American blockade.
48:07The crisis had been averted.
48:11We credited our politicians with being rational people.
48:17We credited the Soviets with being rational people.
48:22And Khrushchev, for all his bluster and his shoe-tapping in the United Nations,
48:28at the end of the day, when confronted by Kennedy's blockade,
48:32proved to be rational.
48:35But if Britain's deterrent had been launched,
48:38it was unclear just how effective it would have been.
48:42Two years before Cuba, there was another missile crisis.
48:48A U-2 spy plane, piloted by CIA operative Gary Powers,
48:53was shot out of the sky whilst photographing military sites in Soviet airspace.
48:58What was shocking was the U-2 was flying 13 miles high.
49:03If Soviet surface-to-air missiles could hit a plane at that altitude,
49:08they could also destroy a V-bomber.
49:11The first reaction, I suppose, was perhaps Duncan Sands was right after all.
49:17The V-force had become the vulnerable force.
49:20The only option was to go under the radar.
49:25So suddenly overnight, all the tactics changed to a high-level flight over Western Europe.
49:37And as you approach Eastern Europe, you then dive down and fly as low as you can to the ground.
49:43And then when you approach the target, you would climb up to altitude,
49:48release your bomb and then turn away and try and get home.
49:54V-bombers were given new war paint.
49:57The anti-flash white was replaced by the more prosaic camouflage.
50:05The pilots were also provided with an additional piece of equipment.
50:09We were given an eye patch as well.
50:11And the reason for that was if we were near an explosion,
50:16the rays would take out one eye.
50:19You could then take off your patch and continue with a good eye.
50:23That was the thinking at the time.
50:26It beggars belief, doesn't it?
50:28But this was, I mean, we used to practice this.
50:31We would cover up the aeroplane and put on an eye patch and fly with one eye,
50:35and then take it off and fly with the other eye.
50:38Well, I have to say that wasn't a very comforting philosophy.
50:41And I suspect had we been that close to a nuclear detonation that we were blinded,
50:47that was the end of the game in any case.
50:50But the bombers hadn't been designed for low level,
50:53and they didn't adapt well to their new environment.
50:57It was extremely bumpy.
51:00I mean, I know navigators, as soon as we went low level,
51:03they started being sick.
51:05And they stayed being sick for two hours at low level.
51:09It was pretty awful.
51:11The heavy, turbulent air was playing havoc with the integrity of the Valiant.
51:15Cracks in the rear spar of the wings began to appear.
51:18In the end, the entire Valiant fleet had to be scrapped.
51:23A sad ending to a plane that had served its country well.
51:28The victor fared better,
51:30but the only V-bomber robust enough to thrive at low level
51:33was the delta-winged Vulcan.
51:39With great foresight,
51:40the Air Ministry had already started designing the next generation of jet bomber.
51:45Their most advanced yet.
51:48The TSR-2.
51:55It was another generational jump.
51:58Almost as significant, if not quite,
52:00as was the V-bombers beyond the piston engine era.
52:05And I thought to myself,
52:07my word,
52:08if that continues in development successfully,
52:13we've got a world-beater here.
52:18This is a specification for the TSR-2,
52:20and frankly, it's a pretty long list.
52:22It had to have a high-altitude, long-range nuclear strike capability,
52:26so rather like the V-bombers,
52:28but it also had to be able to perform like a fighter at low altitude.
52:31On top of that, it had to be able to fly in all weather conditions
52:35and to be able to carry the latest, most sophisticated radar system in the world.
52:39As if that wasn't enough, it also had to be able to fly at supersonic speeds of up to Mach 2.
52:45If it could achieve all this,
52:47it would ensure Britain's supremacy in world aviation for years to come.
52:52One aeroplane to do everything was great.
52:57And not only was it so, as I say, so technically advanced,
53:01the engines and all the electric equipment were brilliant.
53:06It did everything that the Vulcan had,
53:08plus everything a fighter had combined into this aeroplane.
53:11In September 1964, the first TSR-2 prototype began testing at the Jet Development Centre at Boscombe Down, Wiltshire.
53:23The test pilot was Roland Beaumont, a World War II fighter pilot.
53:28But Beaumont and his team were already under pressure.
53:31They had been delayed due to problems with undercarriage vibrations,
53:35and a hostile press were moaning about the money being poured into the plane's development.
53:41The Labour Party promised if it won the general election,
53:45it would make further cuts to the defence budget.
53:48The TSR-2 was firmly on their radar.
53:53There's one basic fact. Labour has a clear majority. We have a Labour government.
54:12You know what, this truly would have been an amazing aircraft.
54:16It's the culmination of 20 years of being at the top of their game.
54:22It all gets ploughed into this one aircraft, and then they go and exit.
54:26This just makes you want to weep.
54:31As one aeronautical engineer put it,
54:34all modern aircraft have four dimensions.
54:37Span, length, height and politics.
54:41The TSR-2 had got the first three right.
54:47The Labour government is cutting back on Britain's high-tech projects,
54:53the projects inherited from the Tory governments of the 1950s,
54:58and is seeking to replace those with a new kind of technological revolution.
55:03Less military, less prestige-oriented, more concerned with economic development,
55:10more concerned with people's daily lives.
55:17We ended the war technologically rich.
55:23We were the world leaders in jet propulsion.
55:27Nobody else, not even the Americans, had gone as far as we had
55:32with serviceable, working, capable jet engines.
55:37But we gave it all away.
55:39We fritted it all away.
55:41What do we have today?
55:43We have a conglomerate BAE Systems,
55:47which builds bits of aeroplanes.
55:51Every one of those aeroplanes there that you see on that desk is British.
55:55Purely British.
55:57You can't point to that nowadays.
56:00By 1969, the V-Force had been superseded as the delivery vehicle for World War III.
56:08Britain's strategic nuclear deterrent was handed to the Royal Navy.
56:13The government had decided to opt for a submarine-launched ballistic missile
56:18called Polaris, an American design.
56:22It made sense.
56:24We were vulnerable.
56:26The submarine was invulnerable.
56:28This was a superior system,
56:30because ours, I suppose, was becoming increasingly vulnerable,
56:34and penetrating was going to be more difficult with each year that went by.
56:41Just one year earlier, the Americans orbited the moon,
56:45and for the first time in our history,
56:47we clearly saw our world for what it was.
56:50We moved from being the wide-opened spaces of the ocean
56:59to being very conscious that we live on a small dot in the infinity of space,
57:06and we are all in it together.
57:09And the jet age brought us together in a way almost more than the wireless age did,
57:15or the television age.
57:17The jet age had made the world a smaller place.
57:20It had changed our perceptions of our planet and of ourselves.
57:24It had defined where we lived and how we lived,
57:27and for 20-odd years it helped make the world a safer place.
57:30Britain's contribution had been one of technological genius,
57:34bravery and visionary creations that amply met the terrifying realities of the day.
57:39Yet the country's lead and dream of a world-beating aviation industry
57:45were ultimately brought back down to earth.
57:48An opportunity lost.
57:51We probably attempted to do too much.
58:01We spread our resources perhaps too thinly.
58:04Never again, I think, do we have the overall capability to go it alone.
58:09And that was a proud boast I think we had in the 50s and the 60s.
58:18Yes, I am proud, because we kept the peace all that time for 15 years.
58:24And a lot of people said we couldn't do it.
58:27But we did.
58:35Well, if that's got you intrigued, Cold War Hot Jets is available now on BBC DVD.
58:41And you can catch up with Strange Days, Cold War Britain, Episode 1,
58:45any time now on BBC iPlayer.