Mastery of the Air

Highlights from the Farnborough Airshow of 1952.

Leslie Mitchell presents us with an entertaining, high-speed, review of this international airshow attended by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh at which we see the Bristol "Britannia"; De Havilland "Heron"; Ronald Porteous does some fun aerobics in the "Egret"; the bug-like Skeeter helicopter along with it's much larger cousin, the twin engined developmental Bristol "173"; the Vickers "Viscount" and the De Havilland "Comet" which can carry 36 passengers almost 1,700 miles non-stop. The pace slows for a brief montage of pilots including some brief shots of Messrs. John Derry and Tony Richards who were killed when their De Havilland "110" appears to disintegrate in flight (some images of the flying wreckage are shown, but there is no crash scene, as such). What's clear here is that despite the tragedy, the show kept going with Neville Duke taking his high speed Hawker "Hunter" up immediately after. We also see more action from the "Canberra"; the Super Marine "Swift" - just completed the London to Brussels run in a mere 18 minutes; Vosper "Javelin"; Vickers "Valiant" bomber; and some airborne coverage of the still top secret Avro "Vulcan". The photography mixes a limited amount of airborne camerawork with some efficient ground-based work, and creates a interesting review of modern aircraft design.