Britain's 300 MPH Most Successful Mistake
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- The Fairey Delta 2 was a speed demon born almost by accident. What began as a stopgap transonic fighter-a silver dart that looked more like a spacecraft than a warplane-shattered expectations by breaking the sound barrier on its early flights without even engaging afterburners.
On March 10, 1956, test pilot Peter Twiss unleashed the Delta 2's full potential. Streaking over France's Châteauroux airbase, he obliterated the world airspeed record, clocking 1,132 miles per hour, a staggering 300 miles per hour faster than the American F-100 Super Sabre's previous mark.
The Royal Air Force seemed destined to adopt this revolutionary breakneck interceptor until Britain's 1957 Defense White Paper changed everything. Combat aircraft were out; guided missiles were in. The Delta 2 was grounded before it could even take off.
But this wasn't the end. The team behind Britain's fastest fighter found new life for their creation across the Channel...
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Sadly Britain has a history of shooting itself in the foot when it comes to aviation. So many "if only ..." moments. Britain could be on top of the aviation world now.
You mean as it used to be.
@@usernamesreprise4068 Yes, I meant *still* on top. Sad that it is not, so much brilliant innovation not capitalised on.
And automotive and anything else worthwhile. Elitist and arrogant conservatives compete with socialist and bitter Labor to turn the UK into a 3rd world country. Those with talent are driven out. It was known as the brain drain when I was a kid. My parents joined the exodus in the 1960's. I'm glad they did.
Blame the austerity from BOTH political parties. The Conservatives wanted tax cuts and the Libs wanted more social programs. (But let's face it, who has been in power for the longest periods since WW2?)
You gave away your Empire, so you decided you no longer needed to be self sufficient in defence. You became content to outsource your security to the Americans.
@@i-love-space390 Very true sadly, but despite all the great things you could say about Churchill I believe his biggest fault was being totally in love with the Americans given that his Mother Jenny Jerome was American, but sadly it wasnt a two way street, the Americans came out of the war very bullish and with the very real intention of getting rid of the British Empire and replacing it as the worlds policeman with itself, and I believe Churchill was quietly all for the idea. hence in reality America has been shafting us every chance it got ever since.......to the point we now virtually qualify as a third world nation.
Yet again British politicians lack of foresight & ambition. Held back our fantastic aviation engineers. It's absolutely criminal the amount of times they've done this over the years. Never ever did it enter their heads, how much profit could be made from selling such a great platform. On many occasions I've wondered to myself, who do British politicians actually represent. It's obvious they never ever believe in investing in British creations & British citizens. Sorry for the political talk but I'm nearly 60 now & the amount of times I've witnessed these people destroy my once proud country. Makes me wonder what they do for the British public that is positive.
I watch that all the time from TX and it appears that they are hell bent on erasing British identity.
You’re not wrong just look at the huge number of amazing inventions and innovations by British companies and universities that get neglected till picked up by overseas companies
Not sure why you're so upset with British politicians, you've voted for them and their policies. They represent you, so it's all your fault.
@@crazybluechicken That my friend is a statement that a Crazy Blue Chicken would make!
And what doesn't get cancelled, gets sold along with all patents to foreign owners.
It seems a common comment amongst everyone here, that overall, Westminster has been the Acheilles heel for British Industry and Aviation in particular. The very strange story of TRS2 comes to mind.
Britain was utterly broke after World War 2 and austerity set in for at least 30 years... that's the reality. So, while the Establishment could still develop amazing aircraft, there was no money to compete with American exports. Much of the time, it took American money and development to make a design really successful and enable economy of scale - the AV-8B comes to mind. The Avro Arrow was another case study of economics interfering with the realization of a great design.
@@LilMissMurder3409 Because the UK was not just broke, but bankrupt, it was entirely dependent on US guarantees to avoid a catastrophe. That reality was brutally exposed by Eisenhower during the Suez Crisis, where even metioning those guarantees was enough to bring us to heel.
Facing that reality, successive governments told all major industries that they would have to rationalise radically if they wanted a place in the world.
When Michael Edwardes took over at BL, it was probably already too late. When he asked for £1bn to develop a replacement engine range for the B series he was denied. Whether that was an institutional Treasury failing, or a recognition that the 'cousins' might not be too impressed is unkown.
Rolls Royce is the only survivor, and it was nearly broken by the high bypass fan engine development, aka the RB211.
@@LilMissMurder3409 And it could have had a great future also, as with the Fairey Delta 2, but once again politicians misread the room and jumped the wrong way, ie. prioritising missile air defence over manned interceptors.
Yep, the Miles M.52 was almost complete and ready to fly, and break the sound barrier a year before the US, until the government scrapped it. Later the UK developed its own satellite launch capability and successfully launched a satellite, before scrapping the program. The UK is the only country to have developed satellite launch capability and then given it up.
Yes and it was the like of Tony Blair that unalived millions of Iraqis based on lies he mongered.
The bitter truth is that ALL British Governments (regardless of party) regularly abandon world beating Engineering, Innovation and achievement in almost all sectors - unless it serves their short-term political needs. As a result, the best scientists, engineers, designers and creatives end up leaving Britian to obtain the funding and recognition they need. Post war British Aviation was almost killed off by this political failure. But most high technology sectors have suffered the same fate.
Just as they have recently done with Reaction Engines.
Bending over for the usa
TSR 2 springs to mind. My uncle was involved with that. His bitterness was visceral.
Politicians should all have done basic science or engineering. Most are totally ignorant and rely on grifting advisors to make decisions.
Spot on. Either self serving mercenaries or wide eyed yokels who are easily manipulated. Democracy is the last stumbling block for these 'politicians' and they are hard at work curtailing that, intent as they are on the suppression of free speech.
Canada made a similar delta wing interceptor, named the Avro Arrow CF105. It was cancelled by the government in 1959 for the same reasons the British cancelled their Delta 2. They were looking to save money by using a missle defence. But the Canadian government destroyed all the airframes and blueprints fearing the information would be leaked to the Soviets.
And yet, look at the Mig 25 Foxbat……..
Didn't want the Yanks to get it since Ike pushed the useless Bomarks on Dief and asked for all Arrow info. Actually saw a test flight at Malton.
Wow, no one here ever heard that story before🙄
" we made a fantastic aircraft"
" burn it to deny it to the Russians"
" you're a genius sir "
Britain never cancelled the FD2. It was always intended as a research vehicle to investigate the advantages of delta wings. It was never a "warplane" as this video keeps saying and was never intended as such. It was far too small and, as someone else pointed out, the Lightning was well on the way to becoming the the high speed aircraft. The airframe would go on to test the ogee delta used on Concorde in the 1960s, still working as a research vehicle as intended. The part that the references the FD2 in France is just wrong. The Mirage delta wing aircraft was already flying when the FD2 went there, the FD2 was not examined by French engineers, it was only in France for 3 months of testing and Dasault's comment is out of context.
one day over Korea.
"why does that Mig say "Rolls-Royce" on the engine cowling??"
oh , yeh , about that ...
Traitor Anthony Eden.
Labour government leaves chat.
one day after the war ... why have the Americans denied Great Britain access to nuclear weapons they had more than 50% invested in mampower and know how ? !! oh yer .. they wanted to f**k the British Empire !!!
@@snowflakemelter1172 Labour has a history of being an embarrassment!
@@snowflakemelter1172 Labour has a history of being an embarrassment.
Rolls-Royce were given permission in September 1946 to sell 10 Nene engines to the USSR, and in March 1947 to sell a further 15. The price was fixed under a commercial contract. A total of 55 jet engines were sold to the Soviets in 1947. Seventeen Soviet engineers trained at the Rolls-Royce factory in Derby in 1947 to maintain and repair the engine. The Soviets reneged on the promise to not use it for military purposes, and reverse engineered the Nene to develop the Klimov RD-45, and a larger version, the Klimov VK-1, which soon appeared in various Soviet fighters including Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15.
It would be an understatement to say the Brits were naive in believing that the Soviets would stick to their word re the use of the engines.
@@billyray577 Given that there were quite a number of "Soviet sympathizers" in various places in the UK government and Secret Services, it would come as no surprise to me if much of the British failings were due to deliberate efforts to undermine the country.
@@davidforbes7772red robo was a Soviet shill who helped crash Leyland
@@davidforbes7772 Maybe, but I lean to the notion that it was "all their own work".
@@davidforbes7772 Good point.
We didn't lose our edge we bloody gave it away, gifting the Soviets the engine's to power those same Migs
Those engines were outdated by the time the Korean war began. The engine RR Nene/ Klimov KM2 as Russian built version seen only a few supplied. They gained little from this technology transfer. the same transfer to the USA was far more important. All RAF post 40s designs used different type of turbojets.
The build of the engine led to Mig-15 design causing performance issues due to its size and all Soviet turbojets afterwards were Axial flow designs derived from German technology. Indeed the Soviets had the first working turbofan engine all held back by Soviet "Red" tape and poor engineering and manufacturing experience in the field.
The Mig-15 was not able to compare to the F-86 in the end as upgrades were limited compared to the F-86 and had a poor kill ratio to contemporary western fighters largely due to pilot training and ability after the VVS pilots left it to the PLAAF and its role was to destroy bombers hence its heavy armament.
The biggest problem over the years was what we gave up to please our "special relationship" not what we let the Soviets have.
This channel is so crap it fails to mention this. I came here to write this but see you beat me to it
@@petegarnett7731 Your biggest problem is this - Brits gonna Brit.
And now you have pretty much Britted yourselves out of existence
@@petegarnett7731 Tube Alloys was a yes please Britain, then after WW2 it was"thanks for that but we dont need to share nuclear technology with you anymore", just keep letting us use your islands as an air and SSBN base and paying those debts while we cancel Germany's".
So "special" we were.
The biggest disasters in post war British Aviation was not the Aircraft but the stuffy British Politicians. Many brilliant designs died at the hands of the houses of Parliament.
TSR2!!
@@chrismaton01 Everyone British of a certain age only needs mention of those four characters to understand exactly the massive cock up that represents!
A very generous description.
Britain was broke and deep in the red after WW2. In the following decades of post-war austerity, it's one thing to design a ground-breaking aircraft; another entirely to develop and build it at profitable economies of scale. Blaming politicians through the lens of technical anorakism is unfair in my opinion, especially when you consider the fact that the Soviet Union had turned belligerent and Britain needed an air fleet it could not really afford, nor compete with the jaw-dropping scale of US industry of the time.
If Whittle's jet engine was accepted buy the War Minstry before the Battle of France and Britain began, the N@zziz would've kept well away fro us. But, no, the War Ministry wanted prop planes (though we got the fabulous Spitfire and reliable Hurricane). I am surprised that they didn't insist on 1920-30s biplanes *exclusively* for the BoB, no monocoque single wing fighters...
I think this is the prettiest plane ever. I didn't know it existed until seeing it at Cosford, and was struck by how pretty it is. And how very, very, pointy.
It really is very pointy indeed
That's XG777. XG774 is also preserved, at the Fleet Air Arm museum. It was converted by BAC to have an ogival wing planform like Concorde, becoming the BAC 221.
...and tiny.
Fairey Delta 2 is now on display at the RAF Museum at Cosford
Pop in sometime and give her a cuddle, along with the Bristol 188 Flaming Pencil and my one true love, XR220. If only they would bring the Avro 707 back out of storage and display her again.
There is also one at Yeovilton. An incredible aircraft
Oh, now they're proud of it.
my great grandfather worked on this plane and was good friends with the test pilot Peter Twiss
So to my grandfather, he worked at MoS and RAE Bedford. We have a signed pic of FD2 with Peter on the wall. Peter used to buzz his house in Sharnbrook much to my grandfathers' amusement. The aircraft was left on the runway in France. Dassault amazingly created the Mirage out of nowhere...
I seem to recall my Dad worked with Lickley and perhaps Peter Twiss took a shine to my mum too. It’s a small world @thesnazzycomet
So that's where the Concorde's "droop snoot" came from ?? - although the Delta2's whole cockpit hinges forward, wheres only the Concorde's nose forward of the cockpit windows tilts. 1952 !!- what a time to be alive in aviation! :)
Not only did Concords (Ive always left off the french "e") nose droop, its mach proof outer windscreen also slid down inside it.
Peter Twiss, the pilot of the record-breaking 1132mph flight, came to our school and gave a talk about his exploits. Even all these years later, I remember how bitter-sweet that talk was.
What a stunningly eye-catching design.
I remember that Delta 2 fighter well, I built an Airfix plastic model of this one in my younger days. I still have it!
No, you built a FROG model of it, so did I - four in fact over time.
It was an Airfix. I only built Revell and Arfux models. None other.
@VidarLund-k5q Airfix never made an FD2, @foxstrangler has it right, the only FD2 kit around was the FROG back in the 60s-70s. Various other firms re-popped the FROG kit, but Airfix wasn't one of them.
The UK made some amazing aircraft for its military during the 1950s and 60s. Strangely, they all got shitcanned before going into full-scale production (except for the Vulcan.) Same with missiles.
That's what happens when you have Soviet turn coats in parliament.
@@barrybarlowe5640 Which we Americans are now experiencing the last four years. 😮
@@barrybarlowe5640OOOOrrrrrrrrr: it could be the result of some back handers to allow a certain failing American aircraft manufacturer to succeed - as history has now shown!!!
Rather corrupt oligarch puppets. Decisions made based on certain connectioms getting yheyrcof our and the politicians their cut. Sans as today.
Not exactly true, the Hawker hunter for example served for decades in air forces around the world, the Harrier being another success, there are more I could mention
The Sandys Paper, and then later in 1964 Harold 'Treason' Wilson with Denis Healey, did to British aviation what Goerring only dreamed of doing in 1940.
Wilson inherited a terrible economic situation and his government had to reduce spending as a result. Defence cuts were part of that. It certainly wasn't treason.
was it wilson or healey that was the child rapist ? actually i think maybe both were monsters
Problem was that TSR2 was completing development too late - just at the time we were getting Polaris submarine launched ballistic missiles which rendered nuclear bombers an anachronism. True however that most of our technical brilliance is binned by the politicians who are only interested in short-term successes.
Back in the 50s and 60s politicians didn't have such a short term view as now. Even now, defence has to be looked at for the long term because new weapons take ten years or more to get into service. The TSR2 wasn't all wasted though, its avionics lived on in the Tornado.
Narrator keeps calling it a "warplane", which it never was. Strictly a test plane.
AI voice
Yep, built to ER103, an experimental requirement, 'not' an operational requirement
@@davidgibson5453 Yes all of us at the time assumed it was an operational aircraft and because of it's incredible speed we assumed it was a front line interceptor! Some like me thought it was made by the same firm as the Vulcan bomber because of the shared delta design!
@@Kennon959 You hear voices?
Britain hadn't *actually* lost it's edge when outclassed by the MiG15 ... it's just that Britain's State Of The Art aviation technology had - thanks to Government Intervention - ended up in the hands of the enemy....
...in the form of the MiG15.
The MiG-15 was designed by Germany Heinkel engineer Seigfried Gunter..
… and powered by a Soviet designed derivative of the Rolls Royce Nene jet engine, that had been ‘made available’ by the then Labour government of Clement Attlee in the interests of promoting better UK-Soviet relations in the post-war era.@@DoktorBayerischeMotorenWerke
@@calummackenzie1050 That is a completely false and misleading narrative.
The Soviet version of the Nene was called the RD-45... it is not the engine that powers the MiG-15.
The VK-1 is a completely new design created by Vladimir Klimov and is superior in performance to the Nene.,
So you had better update Wikipedia… The MiG-15 was the first Soviet jet to benefit from the British sale to Russia of the new Rolls Royce Nene and Derwent jet engines, which the Soviets immediately copied and refined. The resulting RD-500, Klimov RD-45, and modified VK-1 engines gave a powerful boost to Soviet jet technology.@@DoktorBayerischeMotorenWerke
@@calummackenzie1050 That and the fact that half of Atlee's cabinet were Soviet-loving Tankie Communists...
Wings "swept back at 90 degrees" interesting design.
actually it was 60 degrees, same with what became the Lightning built to the same experimental requirement
@@davidgibson5453 The subtitles get it right. The script given to the synthesised voice must have had a typo.
The usual Dark Skies bollocks.
As a military aviation enthusiast, I knew very little of this aircraft.
Very early into the video it was obvious to see this was an aircraft that clearly contributed to the development of both the Concorde and the Mirage!
Bravo Fairy!!
Delta 2, TSR-2, so many cutting-edged innovations, so many short-sighted British governments...
Quite a few aircraft made it through those white paper times: the three V-bomber programs, the EE Lightning, the Hawker Kestrel as examples.
Very true the FD2 project suffered from extremely bad luck in timing through no fault of it's designers and testers.
There's a lot of hyperbole here. After WW2, UK, France and the USA all had access to Alexander Lippisch's work on deltas so the advantages of the layout were known. The FD2 was never intended to be a fighter...it was a research aircraft, like the X plane series in the USA. The FD2 had no space for radar or ammunition or missiles and had limited range and endurance. The Lightning, which was already flying in the form of the P1A was going to be that aircraft. Dassault developed the Mirage series entirely independently and they had prototypes flying before the FD2 went to France for its flight tests. Fairey proposed a next-generation development but the Lightning was already working well, so it remained a paper exercise. Even after the Sandys White paper, the Lightning development continued and it entered service successfully, alongside ground to air missiles for airfield defence, as envisaged by the Sandys Defence Review. The fact is that the FD2 was a good research aircraft and it the developed form of the BAC 221 did great work proving the layout of the Concorde wing, so it wasn't a wasted effort.
thanks for this..puts into perspective
Yep. Too much hyperbole in this video.
They continue to do the same to this day
Not entirely correct re thr Mirage III. The FD2 was tested in France and the resulting data was shares. Dassault used the data as part of the Mirage III design process.
@@nickbrough8335 There's no evidence that the FD2 flights in France influenced Dassault in any way other than confirm that they were on the right track. The MD 550-01 and MD550-02 (Mirage 1 and 2) were both delta winged aircraft and 02 had already flown at Mach 1.6 in 1954. The FD2 didn't arrive in France until late 1956, when work on the Mirage lll was already well under way.
Politicians always seem to lag behind engineers.
And the rest of society as it were.
Politicians are remote, self centred, narcissistic, money driven, clueless idiots.
Short sighted bureaucrats! From leading the world to limping behind!
Yes but these same bureaucrats get a nice little drink each out of it every time.... so the people can just shut up and do as they are told.
Easier to limp than to sprint.
Elon is about to try the same thing in the USA.
@@MattyClivingthedreamI really don’t believe that one of the worlds leading entrepreneurs is going to destroy the economy of his largest ever endeavour.
That comment applies to our political system today 👍
It should not be forgotten that Mig-15's engine was British!
Yes it was a Royce that got Rolled by the thuggy soviets! 😂😂😂
Typo in the title. Should be "1300 MPH" not 300.
Didn't it beat the previous record by 300 mph ?
It's neither a typo, nor a mistake. You misunderstand the meaning. It succeeded by 300mph over the F-100 Super Sabre. And it's speed was just over 1,000mph, NOT 1,300.
The moron never gets it right.
Somebody didn’t watch the video lol. It explains literally in the opening
Maybe those are metric miles??😮😂😂😂😊
"Clumsy" was a rather polite term to use, considering.
This was know sometimes as the English mirage ,just imagine if that stupid white paper wasn’t drafted the projects that we could have had here in the U.K. lots of jobs etc ,great videos all the best
Mark 😊
3:03 your wish has been answered
@@frostyfrost4094that’s nice 😊
Even better license production of mirage in England.
I had the privilege of working on the reincarnated FD2 as the BAC 221 at RAE alongside the HP115, both were used for research as part of the Concorde program. It was an awesome A/c but not built for maintenance. I have a photo of the 221 taken by the Bedford Times at the world test pilots convention, as part of the ground creww waiting to strap the pilot in, was when I still had hair! Both A/c are now in the Yeovilton museum.
This triggered some very old memories. I must have been about five years old in the 1950s when I saw this plane flying low over Cheshire. Number 777 rings a bell, I'm not sure, but I remember the white underside and clearly visible number. My grandmother told me "That's the Fairey Delta". I also remember later asking about some loud bangs, she said it was planes breaking the sound barrier over at nearby Woodford aerodrome. No doubt the same plane, I guess it was doing the public tolerance tests of sonic booms.
From your comment we are about the same age (I was born in 1950) in all historical accounts of the FD2 testing I only found vague hints that it was ever tested in the skies overlooking parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire I used to live in a village on the border of the two counties just north of Oldham and i too used to look up in wonder and awe as this sleek silver dart used to scream overhead at what seemed incredible speed!
@@lenfirewood4089 1951. Woodford was the Avro factory site, and I did later wonder how much the Vulcan had derived from this research aircraft. I guess my grandmother was familiar with the goings on there, her son (my uncle) had worked there at start of his career. I know your Pennine hill area pretty well, I live in Rossendale these days.
You need to mention the BAC 221 which was a Fairy FD2 with an ogival delta wing that tested a version of the Concorde wing.
That's an excellent point - the BAC 221 is demonstrably how the FD2 "pedigree" made it's way into the design of the Concord.
Another excellent video. I had never heard of this aircraft. Thanks and keep up the good work.
I was an aircraft mad schoolboy in the mid-50s and had the good fortune to live near Farnborough where a lot of aircraft were tested, and of course the famous Farnborough Air Show was held. I remember seeing the FD2 at a couple of the shows at that time.
The 1,132mph speed record was actually set over a course between RNAS Ford and Chichester in West Sussex by Peter Twiss at a height of 38,000ft. The Fairey Delta 2 had just enough fuel to take off from Boscombe Down in Wiltshire, perform a curving climb to the west/south-west and then run straight in an easterly direction for the first run, perform a 180 degree turn and then perform the westerly run and descend towards Boscombe Down to land.
Later the Delta 2 did fly in France as the insurance premium against damage to windows on the ground was quoted by a French insurer as orders of magnitude less than a British company wanted for the same cover.
And that was the aircrafts Achilles heel. Less range than a Lightning F1.
Exactly. The video description implies it happened by accident as Twiss accelerated. Air speed records are always carefully planned and independently recorded to prove. It's a great story but poorly written.
The record was set over France. Fairey couldn't get an insurance company to insure it to fly in British airspace. It's all covered in the "Empire of The Clouds" book by James Hamilton-Paterson. As regards its use as a fighter: Fairey's offered to produce the world's fastest jet fighter based on the FD2 but Duncan Sandys told them not to bother, all such military aircraft would be pilotless in 5 years.
@martinradcliffe1332 The record was set over West Sussex, it's detailed in "Faster Than The Sun" by Peter Twiss. If you go to the FAA Museum at Yeovilton you can stand next to WG774 and listen to the audio of the record run playing in a loop.
The insurance problem came later when Fairey wanted to fly up the Irish Sea, a British insurance company quoted a ridiculous premium for cover for broken windows and greenhouses. When they transferred to France it was covered for a single £40 premium and there were no claims made at all.
@@martinradcliffe1332 Ah yes, Duncan Sandys. I Remember him as the bright spark stating that there was no way on earth that the Germans had ANY kind of rockets, let alone one that could reach London. About that very moment the first wave of V1 flying bombs arrived.....
Britain is a mere husk of what it used to be. Pretty much all industries have died at the hands of greed and misjudgment. Socially, fiscally, and industrially, Britain is failing. I'm 65 years old and I'm glad I have seen the best times but also that I won't be around to see its end-game.
"mere husk", "Pretty much all industries"
Really? Such Hyperbole and lack of nuance.
Finance, pharma, energy, Legal services, beverages, tourism, cybersecurity, creative industries etc are all doing just fine. There will be no "end game" for Britain.
@@jonathanbowen3640 Yep!...all gone!
@@222inverter all of these sectors are growing. The only place they have gone is to the moon Metaphorically speaking. My business is doing well.
@@jonathanbowen3640 I work in Aerospace and I've seen the decline in these sectors over decades.
@@222inverter so my company (British) actually did some aerospace work (r&d) recently for the first time. For a large international company and it's an area of growth for me. Also my sister works in that sector.
"The UK aviation market is projected to exhibit a growth rate (CAGR) of 1.20% during 2024-2032. The market is primarily driven by an enhanced focus on sustainability, innovations focused on enhancing operational efficiency and passenger experience, considerable rise in regional air travel, continual improvements in connectivity technologies and the increasing investments in airport infrastructure."
The point is UK is still very competitive and world class in many sectors exports goods and services. Particularly services.
I saw Peter. Twiss in the Delta Two at Farnborough.Not forgetting the Beautiful Crimson colour. What a fantastic aircraft.
Me too. Just a lad of 6 but remember it clearly - and standing up against the runway fence when the Vulcan and Lightening took off, feeling it in your chest.
To be fair the MiG 15 was about 10 years newer than the Vampire which was actually a better aircraft than many give it credit for. However in the 1950 Britain was flat broke. Fairey built some impressive equipment over the years.
Exactly what we’ve come to expect, lots of errors.
Yep, many many errors, which is a shame, makes his other videos untrustworthy
Strange - I always thought that the FD2 - notice that the later model had the same ogive wing planform as Concord - was built primarily (as was the HP 115) to investigate the control and stability issues at both ends of the speed range of the Concord. The slow-speed issue was "Dutch roll"; the high-speed one was (presumably) the trans-sonic shift of the aerodynamic centre of the wing.
As a kid in Texas I remember sonic booms. We loved them.
Amazing to think this was only 10 years after the end of ww2- such was the technology upward curve! - almost mimicking the Delta2's rate of climb .. ;)
Good point as the Vulcan bomber by Avro was basically an upgrade to its world famous Lancaster but how different they both are given the relatively short intervals between their development cycles.
In October and November 1956, a total of 47 low-level supersonic test flights were conducted from Cazaux Air Base, Bordeaux, France; a detachment of Dassault engineers closely observed these trials, learning a great deal about delta wing aircraft from the FD2. Dassault went on to produce the MD.550 Mystère-Delta design, that "bore a striking resemblance" to the FD2; the MD.550 design would proceed to be manufactured as the successful Dassault Mirage III.
I read somewhere, the cost of insurance in Britain was that high it made the trials unaffordable but in France it was next to nothing, so the flight trials took place in France due to concern of broken windows due to the sonic boom.
@HarryBlack-tl1fk yes the councils got upset and the insurance was expensive ( maybe £1000 per flight ) so it was moved to Bordeaux were the grapes didn't mind and Dassault got to see how to build a delta properly. This must have inspired the French as the FD2 flew 300 mph faster than the existing speed record. A pity that the British government failed to spot the potential.
The issue in this nice story is that the MD.550 flew a year before the FD.2 came to France. So no, Dassault didn't need the FD.2 to design a delta aircraft
@@pycouse9681 the concept of Delta Winged aircraft was the German Alexander Lippisch who influenced others. The early jet engine that powered the Mirage III was based on the BMW 003 built by German engineers working in France after the war called the SNECMA Atar.
Plenty of copy cats around then and still are.
The idea that they were working on the Gannet at the same time as the Delta 2 is insane.
The Dassault 'Mirage', as used by the South African Air Force, was THE jet plane of my childhood. It's only thanks to this excellent video that I know that it was based on a British design.
“ If not for the clumsy way you tackle things in Britain you could have...”’ insert thousands of topics here including many web tech inventions
Fairey was backstabbed again by the UK government (and the USA) with the Rotodyne, which could have (and still could) revolutionized city to city transport over steadily increasing ranges and with the key factor of the rotor acting like a parachute.
It was not a helicopter but a gyro plane with motive power coming from separate engines such that the lift and land rotor was only operational for a few minutes and acted as passive generator/'wing' in forward and rear flight. In the case of total turboprop failure the natural rotation of adjustable rotor would allow safe descent even if tip jets had also failed, albeit with a bit of a bump. One prototype meant for water use had a skirt type inflated bottom which would have mitigated shock in an emergency landing on dry land.
On free rotor alone the Rotodyne could glide to safe put down places.
The Delta-2 was a research prototype never intended to become a fighter, "a specialised aircraft for conducting investigations into flight and control at transonic and supersonic speeds".
" Trailing behind the Soviets?" Did you mean trailing behind the captured German Engineers who had the plans on the walls when the Soviet soldiers came marching in?
Just like the west, they used German engineering and engineers even more than the Soviets, indeed the yanks made capturing advanced engineering and engineers from Germany a priority!
In this case it really was British technology as implemented by Rolls Royce - German engineers also built impressive jet engines but there were not dominant in all respects.
The amount of DAMAGE politicians have done over the years to "Man And Machine" is heartbreaking 😢
Politicians and committees always seem to scuttle innovative designs, it's annoying. CF-100 in Canada, the F-23 in the US come to mind.
What a sleek, beautiful jet.
The irony is that The soviets lacked the ability to develop a jet engine and recieved their first Jet engine as a gift from the British.
This is the same engine, slightly modified used in the MiG 15
Beautiful!
The amount of times the UK has invented something is amazing. The UK will continue to innovate.
You must be joking. The FD2 was never a fighter. It prototyped some of (but not all of) the features of the Concorde. It had no guns or radar.
It also mirrors some features seen on the Convair F-106 Delta Dart.
You can't be that stupid? Re-watch the video...
no, it wasn't a fighter. it wasn't in service. but it was clearly planned as an interceptor. "it had no guns or radar" is true, because it was not in service, it was a PROTOtype. or do you seriously think it was designed for use WITHOUT radar and WITHOUT weapons?! like, just for speed fun? ...and "some of the features of the concorde" is the tilt-nose and the delta wings, that's quite it, isn't it.
@@christianlingurar7085 To both. It had *_no space_* for these items in its *_design._* I used the word PROTOTYPED in my post. Untwist your knickers.
@@christianlingurar7085 Noooo, not clearly an interceptor, it was a supersonic research aircraft built to experimental requirement ER103
Society if Britain put guns on the sea vixen, an airbrake on the swift, a good rudder on the scimitar, and higher mounted guns on the lighting…
They have a notorious tendency of getting so close to being absolute peak and then canning it or ruining it halfway
When the Mirage was conquering markets for their aircraft.
Marcel Dassault commented to the British Press.
If it wasn't for the clumsy way you do thing's.
You would have had the Mirage for yourselves!
Definitely words so true.
In my opinion if the British took the Delta 2 program more seriously they could have produced the best jet fighter in the world at the time.
They certainly produced the fastest jet in 1956 "The Fairey Delta 2, a British supersonic research aircraft, set a new world speed record on March 10, 1956, reaching an astonishing speed of 1,132 mph (1,820 km/h). This achievement broke the previous record, set just the year before by an American F-100 Super Sabre!" . The reason why so many of us Brits are pissed off and perhaps you included is that we did indeed have world beating aircraft back then but unlike the Americans our best at that time was never even commissioned due to the myopia of our political class!
Faireys offered to do what you suggested but Duncan Sandys told them not to bother as all such military aircraft would be pilotless in 5 years time
Air ministry:“ What is your most successful plane?“ Fairey:“ The swordfish, aka stringbag.“ Air ministry „What a splendid name for a warbird indeed, I say.“🧐
You missed the final chapter of its career: they were converted to the BAC 221 test plane that was a miniature Concorde and proved the aerodynamics of the unusual wing shape
The FD2 was never meant to be an interceptor. It was purely a resurch aircraft exploring supersonic flight using the delta wing.
It began as (and remained) a research aircraft to investigate supersonic flight. It was never intended to be a warplane.
Innovation and achievement has never been as important as money where British politicians are concerned.
Biggest mistakes MOD ever made... Stopped developing Nuclear Weapons, Stopped Developing jets in the early days & stopped its own space program, set us back decades after WW2.
No mention of the FD2 becoming the BAC221 when the fuselage was extended with the addition of the ogive wings. The BAC221 was the test bed for the wing design of Concorde while remaining as beautiful as the preceding FD2.
Speed, speed, speed was the most important thing for military aircraft back then. I wonder what England would have produced if they got all of the support they need from their government. As an American, I gotta admit, they would have produced some impressive aircraft.
One is at RAF Cosford museum - it is very pointy and the wings are like a knife - it looks like it is made from stainless steel
The metallurgist in me approves. Steel is a good choice for high survivability and unknown wind heating.
The first comment was totally wrong. The FD2 was purely built as a research machine just as the Bristol 188 and Avro 707 were.
Excellent vid!
I’m hooked! A legendary ‘error’ that shaped history? Let’s chat about this-what’s your take on how a slip-up turned into such a legacy?
British Engineers: "We got a fighter prototype that outclass everything in the sky today!" British Politicians: "No! That sounds bloody un-sportsman like!"
I have seen this aircraft, it's held at the air museum at Yeovil England and it's tiny !
WG777 is at RAF Cosford air museum, the Yeovilton example WG774 was converted into BAC221 to develop 'ogival' wings for Concorde
Interesting film. I don't know how true it is to state that the Britain, with the Gloster Meteor had led the world in jet technology during WW2. The Messerschmidt ME262 was streets ahead of it in design, although admittedly its engines left something to be desired, manly because war-torn Germany did not have access to the advanced metals and alloys needed for long service life in jet engines. It was the first jet fighter with swept back wings, first flew in 1941 and out-performed the Meteor. The US drew from its design to develop the Sabre and the USSR did similarly with the early MIGs.
Good video! 👍🏻🙂
Kind of reminds me of the F-106. I talked to a guy who flew those in the air guard. He said it's not ideal for dog fighting. He told me you get one hard turn, then you've lost so much energy there's not much left for a while. A characteristic of delta wings.
That's an interesting point - I never considered the FD2 as anything other than a potential rapid response type interceptor - as I lad wen I used to see them scream overhead I assumed they were already in service! t was only many years later I discovered they were part of an experimental program only and that incredibly they were never even commissioned unless you include the BAC 221 which was basically a modestly modified FD2 then being used as a partial test bed for features later included in the development of Concord!!
great looking jet 👍
The company that designed and built this is unfortunately no more
Additionally, not just the Delta -2 ... what was done to the TSR-2 was unforgivable.. There was no doubt HUGE payoffs to bin the TSR2 and get the POS Aardvark from the US and yes, I'm a Yank, we saw it here too.. The problem with politicians is it's all about them, NOT the people they swore to protect and defend.. Blessings to all
Beautiful plane ✈️
Damn. We don't even have the ability to paint that thing now, let alone design and build it. But at least we have some good call centres. That's progress for you.
The British government gave away the lead in designing aircraft to the US. They also, much to the annoyance of the US government, sold a few jet aircraft to the Soviets, allowing them to develop the MiG 15 and 17.
Having said all that, I met by chance two of Peter Twiss' relatives about 20 years ago. They were watching something in the air. When I spoke to them and ask what it was, they said it was Concorde, arriving from New York. And sure enough, it was. I had gone there to photograph something else and got my only photograph of Concorde actually flying.
I've seen them a number of times - from Runnymede having just taken off from Heathrow. I was also at Duxford when 002 landed.
The Twisses were lovely people...
At 7:18… how can a plane have “90 degree swept wings”? This channel covers a lot of interesting topics, but nearly always has some dumb mistakes.
Look at the angle formed by _both_ wings.
@@horusfalcon 60 degrees!
@@davidgibson5453 That may be. I don't have a protractor in my hip pocket, but it is _possible_ for a delta wing to have a 90 degree sweep from leading edge to leading edge. Would that be a good design for a delta wing? That's another question.
I saw that at Farnborough; most beautiful aircraft I have seen, even better than Concordes. I was taken there by my big brother.
@@horusfalcon There were there wings considered for Concord the chosen after wind tunnel tests one was identical to the Russian one quite a Tony Benn coincidence.
The problem is most of our politicians and almost all of our senior civil servants are educated in Oxford/Cambridge in arts/law/economics. Most are technically ignorant.
One so often hears the boast "Im hopless at maths". They wouldn't be so proud to say they couldn't read or write.
This jet's story sounds somewhat similar to that of the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow's fate.
Just to reiterate the Fairy Delta 2 took the wold airspeed record, setting it to 1,132 mph beating the previous record of 822 mph ...
NB Chuck Yeager 's Bell X-1 could *only* do 670 mph
It was the test bed for Concorde ... which cruised in comfort at 1,341 mph
Peter Twiss landed one with no engine and no rear landing gear
Brian Trubshaw always said that he knew Concorde could loop the loop - but would never say why he was so convinced ...
Back when Test Pilots ultimate aim was being astronauts ....
Recall my mother (b. 1941) talking about a 'Fairey Delta', remarking when it cracked the sound barrier, greenhouse growers under the flight path weren't impressed.
Great return to form too.
They failed to back our first jet with Whittle, then over the years many projects like this, binned. Can you imagine the income from sales had they not been so short-sighted?
300 mph ... slower than a spitfire.. ? Wrote that wrong on the headline
Is this the same Fairey company which made the boats used in the chase scene in From Russia With Love? They were beautiful designs. Still look good today imho.
Very interesting. The punchline at the end " British politicians mess up yet again"
My understanding of the FD2 was in fact an experimental platform with the view to a supersonic airliner hence Concord.
Excellent!
When I was about 8 years old and living in Streatham, south London Duncan Sands drove slowly past me in an open top car. It was election time and looking in my direction he wailed out over his megaphone, "Vote Conservative, vote for Duncan Sands." Detesting Tories even at that age I give him two fingers and he looked quite shocked. Nothing since then has made me change my mind about Tories. As for this story it is like that of modern Britain itself: inventing things that work and then abandoning them because of mean mindedness and "short termism".
3;10 The swordfish was still flying in 1945. It out lasted two aircraft that were meant to replace her.
What a beautiful aircraft
Britain's combination of brilliance and stupidity never ceases to amaze.
Like the way you note Britain lost its edge to the Soviet Mig. You know, the one using Rolls Royce engines.
Nice video filled with many technical and historical errors, not many 'facts' in this one
Including 'Duncan Sandies'. Duncan SANDS
@@jeremycruickshank8614 Forgivable, as British politicians often had names pronounced differently to that suggested by their spelling. Remember Lord Home? Such affectations didn't go over so well in Australia, as when our 1950s PM, Bob Menzies, wanted people to pronounce his name as "Mingas", he was promptly dubbed "Ming the Merciless!"😀