Sukhoi Su-27 ‘Flanker’, or derivation of (I can never keep up with them!).

Very true David, and after I pressed ‘submit reply’ I sussed out what you meant.
Must have been a bit of a moment watching your fellow crew disapearing off to the moon, I saw an interview with him and he was very professional about the whole thing.
Amazing times, from riding the most powerful manned vehicle, to the serenity of walking on another body, which we will never see the likes of again.

(why have Sky News got a picture of the Space Shuttle behind the statement from his family???? Don’t they know anything?)

He was Vice Chairman on the commision that investigated the loss of Challenger.

Very sad news, possibly the most iconic man and name in aviation.
Apart from his tremendous work in astronautics, it’s worth remembering that he served in the Korean war with the US Navy before becoming a NACA test pilot, and flight testing a range of types from the Century series of jets to the X Planes.
RIP

As for the Thunder City accident, the pilots last words to his wife are chilling. Surely there’ll be criminal charges brought?

Genuine question, but why?
The pilot is a link in the servicability and safe operation of the aircraft, he does the walk around checks and makes the decision as to whether the aircraft flys or remains on the ground for further maintenance.
Going from the report, the warning signs from the immediately prior flights were ignored.
In this case, where the pilot kept all his records on a laptop, which then went missing before the investigation team could access it, suggests that things weren’t right.

Re the ejector seats thing, my understanding is that some jets are deemed safe to operate with inert seats, these tend to be low performance, straight wing types, where a landing ahead or turn back to the airfield could be deemed achievable.

I think it can be often overlooked just how complex a military aircraft is, as designed it is a compromise of performance & being able to fulfil a combat role, and that of incredibly high maintenance attention and a huge stores back up by its military operator to keep it functioning. Loss of aircraft and down time in maintenance and storage is factored in from the beginning.
The Lightning represents the very pinnacle of that.

The programme was a disapointment for me, it was far too ‘light’ and bogged down with unsubstantiated superlatives.

The sad thing is, is that it was clearly a rehash of the excellent ‘The 650 mph Men’ which the BBC showed about 12 years ago, the brilliant period footage was lifted from that, but the test-pilots, crews, and historians interviews were dropped this time around. The older programme even managed to successfully convey the story of how the British industry was once triumphant, had it’s share of failure, and how it got to the stage it’s at now.
This programme felt that it was made for a Blue Peter audience, and the narration was bland with silly superlatives (“the Victor was massive”, ” the Vulcan was the best V bomber”), with a title like ‘When Britain Ruled The Skies’ these comments need to be backed up and explained to set them into context.
As great as some of our designs were, ‘rulling the skies’ really has to be set into context with what our allies and enemies were also achieving.
The La-15, MiG-15 mix up was tame in comparison that Rolls Royce gave engines to the Russians, giving the impression that this was done in the period that we were enemies, let us also remember that the same engines were also sent to America, an illustration of how good the engine was for the time.

To the unititated watching the programme, the Derry/DH110 accident could have been attributed to bad display practice, when instead we could have had the interesting background of high speed aircraft development pushing technology and know how to the limits and the huge sacrifice that test-pilots made.

The only advantage with this programme was the shots of various preserved aircraft (though they didn’t always seem to find the best examples!) and the interviews with some of the crews.
I can see that it was prime time BBC viewing, but the British post-war aviation story is one that deserves to be told properly and in a balanced way, for the memory of the ministers, company heads, designers, pilots, crews, workers involved in creating some truely outstanding aircraft. To my mind it needed a touch of our Alertken!

Re the above posts, I’m not sure that you could say that the Comet and Britannia, ruled the skies, hugely pioneering as they both were, the Comet didn’t have huge orders before the accidents and were a minority in the skies surrounded by conventional Connies, Strats, and DC-6/7s, the Britannia lost too much time to development, especially with the Proteus engines, and the large long-range turbo-prop airliner now appears to have been a dead end idea.
The Viscount was a very different story of course, and is up the Canberra and Harrier for production figures and export success, particularly with our nearest and greatest competing nation.

I’m hoping the next programme is better, but I can already guess where it will go with the Comet.

Does anyone know if the Shackleton and the Victor are set to remain with the IWM?