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The Dawn of the Jet Age in Austerity Britain: David Lean's The Sound Barrier (1952)

2010; Routledge; Volume: 30; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01439685.2010.523990

1465-3451

Adrian Smith,

Political and Economic history of UK and US

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Michael Korda, Charmed Lives: a family romance (Allen Lane, London, 1980), 73. 2. In 1943, Korda was outbid by Two Cities for the Life of Marlborough but a year later paid £50,000 for the multi-volume history: ibid., 14–15 and 105; David Reynolds, In Command of History: Churchill fighting and writing the Second World War (Allen Lane, London, 2004), 14 and 16–19. 3. Korda, Charmed Lives, 106, 138–156, 451, 220–221 and 347–348; on Korda and the President of the Board of Trade, see Philip Ziegler, Wilson: the authorised life of Lord Wilson Rievaulx (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1993), 70–71 and Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson (HarperCollins, London, 1993), 81 and 119–120. 4. Sir Alexander Korda to Winston Churchill, 5 June 1952, Prem11/123, National Archives. 5. The Sound Barrier (David Lean, London Films, UK, 1952). 6. Adrian Smith, Ramsay MacDonald—Aviator and Actionman, The Historian, no. 28, autumn 1990, 14–15. 7. Chamberlain belatedly endorsed the Inskip review's prioritising of Fighter Command, but critics insist his thinking regarding air power remained dangerously out of date, for example, Nick Smart, Neville Chamberlain (Routledge, London, 2010), 218–220. 8. Re the airpower campaign as portrayed in Book I of Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. 1. The Gathering Storm (Cassell, London, 1948), see Reynolds, In Command of History, 97–100, and on Churchill's frequent use of aviation imagery, see ibid., 523. 9. On the establishment of the RNAS and Churchill's abortive apprenticeship as an aviator, see Randolph S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. II. Young Statesman 1901–1914 (Heinemann, London, 1967), 687–705, regarding his role in re-establishment of the FAA, see Adrian Smith, Mountbatten: apprentice war lord (I.B. Tauris, London, 2010), 88–91. 10. Jeffrey A. Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet: the Anglo-American fight for aviation supremacy (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2007), 25–26. 11. Neville Duke to Martin Gilbert, 20 July 1987, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. VIII. ‘Never Despair’ 1945–1965 (Heinemann, London, 1988), 772; Neville Duke, Test Pilot, 2nd edn (Grub Street, London, 1997), 129–31; 615 flew Spitfires until 1950, and then Meteors until the RAAF squadron was disbanded in 1957. 12. Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet, 6, 16 and 5. 13. Churchill's tolerance of pre-jet long-haul flight was clearly exhausted when he flew to Washington for the last time: Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: the struggle for survival (Sphere, London, 1968), 24 June 1954, 588. 14. David Edgerton, England and the Aeroplane: an essay on a militant and technological nation (Macmillan, London, 1991), 90 and 100–101. 15. Fiona MacCarthy, Grand Designs, Guardian, 20 November 2004. 16. For Lean's life and career see Robert Murphy, Sir David Lean (1908–1991), film director, www.oxforddnb.com, 2004, and Kevin Brownlow, David Lean: a biography (Richard Cohen Books, London, 1996). 17. In Which We Serve (Noel Coward/David Lean, Two Cities, UK, 1942); Smith, Mountbatten, 153–157. 18. Brownlow, David Lean, 44–45; David Lean, l988 Directors’ Guild Lecture on The Sound Barrier, quoted in ibid., 295–296. 19. Ann Todd, The Eighth Veil (William Kimber, London, 1980), 72–73; Brownlow, David Lean, 266, 269 and 289–290. 20. Lean's favourable comparison of Rattigan with Coward quoted in ibid., 282. 21. David Thomson, Unhealed Wounds, Guardian, 10 May 2008. A similar argument is advanced in Michael Wood, At the Movies, London Review of Books, 3 July 2008, and less sympathetically, in: Raymond Durgnant, A Mirror for England: British movies from austerity to affluence (Faber & Faber, London, 1970), 207. 22. Ibid. Lean and Todd's first two films were: The Passionate Friends (David Lean, Rank-Cineguild, 1949) and Madeleine (David Lean, Rank-Cineguild, 1950). 23. Retrenchment at Rank had forced the closure of Cineguild, the independent production company in which Lean held a one-third share. 24. Korda doubtless remembered how Lean had maintained a creative partnership with a previous leading lady, Kay Walsh, long after their marriage was over: she starred in three of his films, and was credited as a screen writer for Great Expectations. Karol Kulik, Alexander Korda: the man who could work miracles (Virgin, London, 1975), 310–12; Brownlow, David Lean, 281 and 283–285. Richardson starred in several pre-war Korda films, and in 1951 was entrusted with directing London Films’ low budget adaptation of R.C. Sheriff's play Home at Seven. 25. Ibid., 281. 26. David Lean quoted by Anthony Squire in Brownlow, David Lean, 286. 27. Interview with Anthony Squire, and quote from Ann Todd, in: ibid., 287–288. 28. Ibid.; Brian Rivas and Annie Bullen, John Derry The Story of Britain's First Supersonic Pilot, 2nd edn (Haynes Publishing, London, 2008), 14–15; Martin Francis, The Flyer: British culture and the Royal Air Force 1939–1945 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009). 29. Quoted in Nigel Fountain, The Wrong Stuff, Guardian, 28 September 1996. 30. David Lean quoted in Brownlow, David Lean, 281–282. Vickers’ contribution was to provide its Chilbolton airfield in Hampshire as a base for Anthony Squire's second unit. 31. Interviews with Roland Beaumont and John Cunningham in Fountain, The Wrong Stuff; Geoffrey de Havilland, Sky Fever: the autobiography of Sir Geoffrey de Havilland C.B.E. (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1961), 173–174. 32. Quoted in Fountain, The Wrong Stuff. 33. As confirmed by test pilots’ memoirs, witness the fierce desire for Fairey to stay ahead of the game evident in Peter Twiss, Faster Than The Sun: the compelling story of a record-breaking test pilot, 2nd edn (Grub Street, London, 2000), 28–29. Cunningham was very much a company man, having joined De Havilland as an apprentice in 1935, flown Mosquitos in the war and tested the company's prototype Vampire jet fighter while still in the RAF: Michael Fopp and Guy Revell, John Cunningham [Cats-Eyes Cunningham] (1917–2002), aviator and businessman, www.oxforddnb.com, 2004. 34. Benn even asked Trubshaw for his autograph. Francis Spufford, Backroom Boys: the secret return of the British boffin (Faber and Faber, London, 2004), 41. 35. As was the brief era when air traffic control and the RAF tolerated races of high-speed piston-engine and even jet aircraft: outside of Farnborough the largest post-war gathering of British test pilots was at Birmingham's Elmdon Airport in late August 1949; for a description of that weekend's hair-raising races, see Duke, Test Pilot, 139–141. 36. On the qualities of a successful test pilot in the post-war era, and the disastrous effect such a high profile job could have on a marriage, see Twiss, Faster Than The Sun, 39 and 92–94. Note that other pilots insisted a strong marriage was a prerequisite for success, e.g. Duke, Test Pilot, 146–147. 37. Wade's P1081 Hunter prototype crashed near Lewes on 3 April 1951: Trevor Wade Death of a Young and Brilliant Pilot, Flight, 13 April 1951. 38. Rivas and Bullen, John Derry, 161–164. As enthusiastic as Stewart was BBC commentator Raymond Baxter, an ex-Spitfire pilot with a 30-year mission to explain to viewers the marvels of applied science. 39. Ibid., 176–192; Duke, Test Pilot, 166–170. ‘My dear Duke, it was characteristic of you to go up yesterday after the shocking accident. Accept my salute. Yours, in grief, Winston Churchill’: quoted in Graham Pitchfork, Neville Duke—A Tribute, Aeroplane, July 2007, 30. 40. Following major structural modifications the twin-boom DH110 was adapted to meet FAA requirements for a carrier-based strike aircraft, entering production as the Sea Vixen: C. Martin Sharp, D.H.: a history of De Havilland, 2nd edn (Airlife, London, 1982), 296–297. 41. As a Canadian who quit flying to become a highly iconoclastic journalist, Waterton was bemused by the British press's elevation of test pilots to national heroes. Early in his new career he produced a savage indictment of the British aviation industry, which attracted favourable attention in the United States: W.A. Waterton, The Quick and the Dead (Frederick Muller, London, 1956); Aviation: The Bumbling Boffins, Time, 13 August 1956. 42. Given subsequent delays this was misplaced optimism. On the absence of an RAF jet fighter to match the performance of a MiG-15 using a Nene-derived engine at the time of the Korean War (in actuality British—piston-engine—combat aircraft flown in Korea were FAA), see Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet, 118–119. 43. Peter Hennessy, Never Again Britain 1945–1951 (Jonathan Cape, London, 1992), 427–429. 44. Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet, 8 and 7. 45. Late on the Tuesday afternoon Duke was first to mark the lifting of a ban on sonic booms above Farnborough. All day wait—then came THE BANG, Daily Mirror, 3 September 1952: quoted, along with Mollie Panter-Downs description of the Airshow for the New Yorker, 20 September 1952, in: David Kynaston, Family Britain 1951–57 (Bloomsbury, London, 2009), 122–124. 46. Rivas and Bullen, John Derry, 130–133, 171 and 144. 47. Ibid., 105–111; General Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos, Yeager: an autobiography (Pimlico, London, 2008), 121–144 and 64–65; Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff (Bantam, London, 1981), 35–48 and 54. 48. Wolfe, The Right Stuff, 46–49. regarding the contribution of Pancho Barnes’ bar to the history of Muroc Field/ Edwards Air Force Base, see Yeager and Janos, Yeager, 145–156. 49. By 1944–1945 experimental, Griffon-engined Spitfires were exceeding 600 mph in dives from 40,000 feet, albeit pushing the airframe and the propeller close to disintegration. Jonathan Glancey, Spitfire: the biography (Atlantic Books, London, 2006), 114. 50. Rivas and Bullen, John Derry, 84–85; Yeager and Janos, 99, 114–115 and 123; and on how pressure waves cause a sonic boom: Duke, Test Pilot, 163–166. NACA engineers coined the term ‘transonic’ in 1941, meaning speeds approaching Mach One. 51. The M52 was intended to reach 1000 mph at 36,000 feet in 90 seconds: interview with Dennis Bancroft, Miles’ chief designer, in: Speed Machines: Breaking the Sound Barrier (Ian Bremner, Channel 4, UK, 2003); Rivas and Bullen, John Derry, 86. 52. Because De Havilland boasted its own engine design and production wing, the DH108 used a high-performance version of the Vampire's Goblin engine, capable in 1948 of securing Cunningham (minus a pressure suit) the world-record height of 59,446 feet. The Goblin IV could produce nearly 4000lbs thrust at full power, but the X1's four liquid-fuelled rocket chambers could generate 50% more power. 53. The Ministry of Aircraft Production delegated to the Brabazon committee responsibility for implementation of the 1943 report, and until 1946 it dealt directly with De Havilland over development of the DH106. The committee's over-arching principle was that, because the domestic industry could not match the low unit costs of high-volume American manufacturers, it had to rely upon superior technology—as in the Swallow/Comet. Sharp, D.H.: a history of de Havilland, 229–230 and 299–304; Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet, 33–39. For a scathing assessment of Whitehall's post-Brabazon decision-making regarding civil aviation, see Correlli Barnett, The Lost Victory British Dreams, British Realities 1945–1950 (Macmillan, London, 1995), 228–248. See also Edgerton, England and the Aeroplane, 90–92, and regarding the contrasting fortunes of military aviation: David Edgerton, Warfare State Britain, 1920–1970 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006), 102–103. 54. For Cunningham's view of events late in life, see Fountain, The Wrong Stuff. 55. Brownlow, David Lean, 281 and 762 n. 7. 56. Rivas and Bullen, John Derry, 86; Martin Sharp, rev. Mark Pottle, Geoffrey Raoul de Havilland (1910–1946), aviator, www.oxforddnb.com, 2004. 57. Sharp, D.H.: a history of de Havilland, 306–307; Rivas and Bullen, John Derry, 88–93; de Havilland, Sky Fever, 169–172. 58. Aviation buffs debated the film's accuracy in letters to the editor of Flight, but the fullest critique—by a former Gloster Meteor test pilot—did not appear until five months after the film: John Grierson to the editor, Flight, 5 December 1952. 59. In 1945, De Havilland's directly employed workforce was over 38,000, and the annual turnover totalled £25 million. The company's output of engines, propellers and combat/trainer aircraft was prodigious, e.g. 5584 of the 6700 DH98 Mosquitos built, 1941–1945. Approximately 18% of Britain's wartime output was of De Havilland design. By 1950 the aircraft division was building two fighter aircraft (with a third—DH110—in development) and three civil airliners of varying size (with a fourth—Comet—in development); by 1959, 46,000 aircraft had been produced, of which 20,000 were powered by DH engines. Sharp, D.H.: a history of de Havilland, 223–225, 387, 295 and 388. 60. Richard Davenport-Hines, Sir Geoffrey de Havilland (1882–1965), aircraft and aero-engine designer and manufacturer, www.oxforddnb.com, 2004. See also posthumous assessments of De Havilland's character, quoted in Sharp, D.H.: a history of de Havilland, 388–389. 61. Ibid., 384–386. 62. Wayne Parish, influential editor of American Aviation, quoted sympathetically in Our American correspondent reports … , Flight, 24 April 1953. For a comparison of early GB-US jet engine development, see Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet, 34, 56–57 and 80. One Whitehall argument for exporting advanced British technology, most notoriously Rolls's Nene and Derwent engines to the Soviet Union, was that domestic research and development would rapidly render first generation (centrifugal) jet propulsion obsolescent: ibid., 56–59. 63. Interview with Anthony Squire in Brownlow, David Lean, 287. 64. Garthwaite's wartime CV is a modest version of Cunningham's: he has the DFC and bar, and the AFC, and, although a Spitfire pilot at the start of the film, must later in the war have flown Mosquitos because JR mentions his role in a raid on a Gestapo prison. 65. ‘John's much too nice a chap to tell you what he really thinks about it … The Sound Barrier was absolute bloody rubbish’: Roland Beaumont quoted in Fountain, The Wrong Stuff. 66. Sharp, D.H.: a history of de Havilland, 234. 67. Monthly Film Bulletin, September 1952; Michael Paris, From the Wright Brothers to Top Gun: aviation, nationalism and popular cinema (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1995), 176; Brownlow, David Lean, 292; reviews in www.bfi.org.uk/lean/material. 68. Other prominent guests included Douglas Bader and, appropriately, Frank Whittle. 69. Todd, The Eighth Veil, 70–72; Brownlow, David Lean, 288–290. The final cost of the film was £250,000: Alain Silver and James Ursini, David Lean and his Films (Silman-James Press, LA, 1992), 252. For a rare extended discussion of The Sound Barrier, see ibid., 97–108. 70. Arnold, told to echo the Rachmaninov of Brief Encounter, reworked parts of his score in at least two later compositions: Malcolm Arnold quoted in ibid., 292. 71. Ibid., 282; Michael Darlow and Gillian Hodson, Terence Rattigan: the man and his work (Quartet, London, 1979), 102–115, 127–129 and 134–135. On Rattigan's partnership with ‘Puffin’ Asquith, see Geoffrey Walsh, Terence Rattigan (Fourth Estate, London, 1995), 96–97, 105–105 and 139–140. 72. Ibid., 162–163; Darlow and Hodson, Terence Rattigan, 135 and 194–197; Brownlow, David Lean, 283–284. 73. Frank Rattigan died while The Sound Barrier was in production. Walsh, Terence Rattigan, 216–225. 74. Teddy Darvas (assistant editor) quoted in Brownlow, David Lean, 291. Critically, the final edit was under two hours: 118 minutes, and 115 minutes in the American version. Equally critically, the final cost was kept at £250,000. Alain Silver and James Ursini, David Lean and his Films (Silman-James Press, LA, 1992), 251–252. 75. Prime Minister's personal minutes, 14 and 19 June 1952, and George Ward to Winston Churchill, 17 June 1952, Prem11/123, National Archives. 76. Adrian Smith, A Vision Unfulfilled: Southampton's ambitions for the world's first sea aerodrome, in: Miles Taylor (ed.), Southampton: gateway to the British Empire (I.B. Tauris, London, 2007), 168–170; Paris, From the Wright Brothers to Top Gun, 177. Imperial Airways formed the basis in 1939–1940 for the establishment of the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). 77. Brownlow, David Lean, 292–293; Sir Alexander Korda quoted in Kulik, Alexander Korda, 317. On Comet's cultural significance in the Fourth Republic, transmitted via BOAC and UAT or Air France, see Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet, 131. 78. South Africa had been Comet's inaugural route for BOAC on 2 May 1952, the 23-hour flight to Johannesburg halving the previously scheduled flying time: ibid., 134–135; Timothy Hewat and W.A. Waterton, The Comet Riddle (Frederick Muller, London, 1955), 38–39. Brownlow, David Lean, 293–294; Todd, The Eighth Veil, 72–73. 79. Exchange of memos between ‘DWSH’ and Winston Churchill, 27–29 June 1952, Prem11/123, National Archives. 80. Brownlow, David Lean, 294; Sharp, D.H.: a history of de Havilland, 320. 81. Richardson became the first recipient of the award not to secure an Oscar nomination. 82. Bosley Crowther, Breaking The Sound Barrier, New York Times, November 1952; Brownlow, David Lean, 295. 83. Yeager and Janos, Yeager, 167–175, 186–198 and 216–217; Wolfe, The Right Stuff, 51; Tom Charity, The Right Stuff (BFI, London, 1997), 19. 84. Footage of Yeager flying the X-1 as a Soviet ‘parasite fighter’ in Jet Pilot was recycled as the real thing in The Right Stuff. Jet Pilot (Howard Hughes and Josef von Sternberg, RKO/Universal, USA, 1957) and The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman, Warner Bros, USA, 1983); Paris, From the Wright Brothers to Top Gun, 188; Charity, The Right Stuff, 44. 85. Wolfe, The Right Stuff, 49; Yeager and Janos, Yeager, 174. 86. Wolfe, The Right Stuff, 50; Yeager and Janos, Yeager, 174. Faced with Soviet air superiority over Korea, Finletter was fiercely critical of Britain's earlier decision to export the Nene engine which, when modified, would power the MIG-15: Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet, 121. 87. Wolfe, The Right Stuff, 51; The Right Stuff: the scene is set on 20 November 1953, the day Crossfield broke Mach 2, and it dissolves into the preparation for Yeager's record-breaking flight on 12 December (the date captioned on the screen). Yeager, a technical consultant on the film, played the cameo role of Fred, Pancho's barman: Charity, The Right Stuff, 53. 88. Ibid., 88 and 86. 89. Clive James, Money into light, Times Literary Supplement, 28 September 2007. 90. David Lean, Directors’ Guild inaugural lecture, 1988, quoted in Brownlow, David Lean, 295–296; Michael Wood, At the Movies, London Review of Books, 3 July 2008. 91. A close colleague from the mid-1950s saw Lean as being in a ‘creatively constipated state. A million possibilities flooded through his brain but he could not select the right one’: Norman Spencer quoted in Brownlow, David Lean, 313. 92. Twiss, Faster Than The Sun, 34–38, 174–179 and 182. 93. Kynaston, Family Britain 1951–57, 125. 94. de Havilland, Sky Fever, 172–173; Fountain, The Wrong Stuff; Sharp, D.H.: a history of de Havilland, 316; Hewat and Waterton, The Comet Riddle, 37–39. 95. Ibid., 29–39; Sharp, D.H.: a history of de Havilland, 311–319; Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet, 130–139. Although Boeing and Douglas had no objection to the export of co-axial engine technology, in 1952–1953 a security-conscious federal administration clashed with the Churchill Government over the impending delivery of Comet 2 to non-NATO countries: ibid., 139–173. Spufford, Backroom Boys, 47–48. 96. Sharp, D.H.: a history of de Havilland, 317–320; William Langewiesche, Valujet 592, in: Aloft (Penguin, London, 2010), 111. 97. Sharp, D.H.: a history of de Havilland, 320–324; Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet, 173–174. For a contemporary account of how thoroughly the RAE/De Havilland testing and the subsequent court of inquiry were supposedly conducted, see Hewat and Waterton, The Comet Riddle, 40–160. Predictably, a similar insistence that all parties were blameless, and that the investigation and inquiry were fair and rigorous, can be found in de Havilland, Sky Fever, 181–187 98. Secret History: Comet Cover Up (Channel 4, UK, 2002); A.G.T. Peters and D.R. Newman to the editor, Guardian, 18 June 2002. Remarkably, the risk of structural fatigue as a consequence of intensive commercial flying had been foreseen by Nevil Shute six years earlier in his first post-war novel, No Highway. 99. Sharp, D.H.: a history of de Havilland, 325–327; Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet, 178.