Empire Of The Clouds

Product Description

In 1945 Britain was the worlds leading designer & builder of aircraft
- a world-class achievement that was not mere rhetoric. & what aircraft they were. The sleek Comet the first jet airliner. The awesome delta-winged Vulcan an intercontinental bomber that could be thrown about the sky like a fighter. The Hawker Hunter the most beautiful fighter-jet ever built & the Lightning which could zoom ten miles above the clouds in a couple of minutes & whose pilots rated flying it as better than sex. How did Britain so lose the plot that today there is not a single aircraft manufacturer of any significance in the country? & what was it like to be alive in that marvellous post-war moment when innovative new British aircraft made their debut & pilots were the rock stars of the age? James Hamilton-Paterson captures that season of glory in a compelling book that fuses his own memories of being a schoolboy plane spotter with a ruefully realistic history of British decline
- its loss of self confidence & power. It is the story of great & charismatic machines & the men who flew them: heroes such as Bill Waterton Neville Duke John Derry & Bill Beaumont who took inconceivable risks so that we could fly without a second thought.