“Mismaligned” surely must mean “highly praised”? 🙂

Just done a Google search and the US Navy have one for restoration for their museum at Pensacola.

Read that yesterday. It just goes to show that the temptations of office can be very difficlt to resist.

I found the news rather sad and depressing.

I assume that this is an American series modified slightly for showing in the UK. Many aviation documentaries seem to fall into this category these days. There doesn’t seem to be anyone in the BBC or ITV willing to fund aviation documentaries with a British (or even European) slant.

Since the retirement of people like Raymond Baxter, British TV seems to have lost any interest or enthusiasm for British achievements in science and technology. All we ever get is a constant litany of mistakes, failures and disaster (both actual and financial). Is there a plot out there to destroy our souls?

To be honest Flood – I sometimes feel the same way about these British aircraft industry “hard done by” stories. British aviation enthusiasts are sometimes very begrudging to the achievements of the US aircraft industry.

If anyone serves flak over British aviation industry missing out on opportunities it’s British politicians – who consistently dashed the prize out of British manufacurers’ hands just when it was within reach.

Essentially what you say is the gist of the story – at least, the version that is common currency here in the UK. All moving tailplanes had been used on aircraft before – after all, the Wright Brother used an all moving plane to control pitch on their Flyers. However, I’m pretty sure Miles were the first to propose using it on an aircraft designed for supersonic flight. What would need to be done is a serch of the Bell archives to dind their drawings of their all-moving tailplane design and see if it predates their visit to Miles – or even whther it bears any relationship to the Miles concept.

Not often?

Often enough in that we tend to see them to the exclusion of everything else.

It would be nice to see more stuff on the British research aircraft of the period of which there were many (too many, probably) and also the French, who built stuff that made the American and British aircraft look relatively conservative in comparison.

Exactly my thoughts too. In fact, they hardly mentioned ANY of the official World Air Speed Flights at all – which was rather odd as I thought the programme was about Air Speed Records. Certainly the other two programmes cover the Land and Air Speed Records. The only official air speed record flight mentioned was Teddy Donalsdon’s 1946 606 mph in the Gloster Meteor – and then only in passing. None of the other TRUE air speed records got a look in at all – and that included the American flights as well.

I was expecting to see footage of pre-war Schneider Trophy seaplanes, the Messerschmitt 109R/209, maybe the aborted high -speed Spitfire project, Donalsdon’s Meteor, Lithgow’s Swift, the FD-2, the F-100 Super Sabre, the Hawker Hunter and Douglas Skyray. Even the SR-71 was left out.