Click to play videoThe 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.
Brown had hit an invisible barrier and survived. His, was not an isolated experience.
“All the leading nations of the world had very serious problems with fighter airplanes going out of control, or beginning to go out of control as they flew faster and faster,” says aerospace historian Dick Hallion.
Close to the speed of sound, vibrations made the controls useless. It seemed like the barrier really was unbeatable. Since 1943 the English had been developing a jet aircraft called the M52. Some years later the Americans took over the Project.
“Before the M52 was cancelled we were instructed to give all the data to the Americans,” says Brown
In the research sent to America was one technical innovation that would make all the difference: the moving tail, which drastically reduced the aircraft’s resistance to air. The supersonic age had arrived, not with a whimper but with a sonic bang.
The first jet fighter to benefit from the all-moving tail was the F86 Sabre. The Sabre could now reach the speed of sound in a dive with the pilot still in control.
“To this day this aircraft is still regarded as one of the most beautiful aircraft ever built. Even compared to other jets the lines on it are so smooth, so clean, so flowing you look at it and it looks like its going fast,” says Gill Hassler, veteran F-86 Fighter pilot.
In the skies over Korea in 1950, jet engaged with jet in combat for the first time. American Sabre was pitted against Russian MiG. By the end of hostilities, the F-86 had shot down 792 MiGs at a loss of only 72 Sabres - a victory ratio of 10:1. The Sabre outgunned the MiG by superior targeting technology.
The Sabre versus MiG rivalry was seen even in the ‘71 Indo-Pak war. Only this time the upgraded MiG 21 got the better of the Sabre.
(A CNN-IBN Nat Geo presentation)
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