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Top Gun: The story of air power
Published on Fri, Apr 06, 2007 at 23:03, Updated on Sat, Apr 07, 2007 at 10:49 in 
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The story of air power is a short one-the shortest in military history.
From delivery of the first piloted airplane to the United States Army in 1908 to the Raptor, which maybe one of the very last piloted fighter planes, has taken less than a hundred years. But in that short time the warplane became the most decisive weapon of all time.
The fighter, the bomber, the pathfinder, the spy, each evolved according to its military need. The warplane has not only fought wars. It can now actually prevent them. The story of war-and peace-in our time is the story of the warplane. CNN-IBN and National Geographic Channel present Top Gun.
From the very first moment a machine took to the skies it needed to change. As it quickly grew in power, it exposed weaknesses in structure and design. Struts and wires gave way to streamlined wings. Cloth and wood to steel and aluminium.
Years of combat made strength a priority and speed a necessity. And then, came a change that rendered all previous evolution obsolete. It was the arrival of the Jet Age.
The beginning
On September 27, 1946 a dashing, 36-year-old, test pilot called Geoffrey De Havilland set out to make history. He was preparing to beat the world record of 616 mph and become the fastest man on the planet. To do so he would be flying close to the speed of sound. Geoffrey De Havilland took to the air but at Mach 0.9, a whisker from history, the plane simply disintegrated in mid-air.
The death was a shock. Keen to uncover the cause for the crash, engineers decided to repeat De Havilland’s flight plan with a strengthened aircraft.
Eric Brown, one of Britain’s top test pilots, was roped in. And it wasn’t long before his world too, began to shake apart.
“You had an aeroplane going along and literarily doing this almost a blur oscillating so violently but with the G, I couldn’t get my arms up to reach the blind to eject,” says Brown.
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