Empire of the Clouds

When I was a young boy, my family lived not far from RAF Leuchars. Aircraft were constantly in the skies, and we were fascinated by them in a way that today's children don't seem to be. At school, if a plane went over, we would rush to the windows to look at it, over the plaintive protests of the teacher.

            This fascination was shared by adults too; my mother taught me to identify the different types of V-bomber, and she was no petrolhead. Was it the Cold War which sparked this fascination, or the awareness that Britain had recently been saved by the RAF from being overrun by the Hun? World War Two seemed a long way away to us children, but not so to our parents.

             We went to Leuchars to see the annual air display, and watched the English Electric Lightning perform its astonishing feat of climbing vertically to the stratosphere direct from the runway. I was too young and naive to fully appreciate it. I got to sit in the cockpit of an aircraft, and familiarise myself with the RAF style of toilet, which was a bucket in a tent. My first ambition was to be an RAF pilot, one which collapsed when it became clear I was very short-sighted.

            The other day I was scanning a sale of damaged books at Waterstone's, gobsmacked by the sight of books going for a pound in there. I picked up one called 'Empire of the Clouds', by James Hamilton-Patterson. It was subtitled 'When Britain's Aircraft Ruled the World', which turned out to be a wild exaggeration once I got to reading it. It has pictures of all the old favourites, the Vulcan, Victor, and Valiant, not to mention the Hawker Hunter, which I once assembled a model of, and the Buccaneer, which my brother built.

            The book is a combination of a valediction to a lost Britain, with its delusions of victory, and its huge but hopelessly balkanised aircraft industry; and on the other hand, a searing expose of how the 'powers that be' blundered it all away, often after a few sherries over a long lunch. Arrogance and laziness are a potent combination, and our aircraft industry, on which so much depended, seems to have been well-endowed with both, to counter and defeat its amazing talent.

            Profound ineptitude at the highest levels of government played a huge role in the fiasco. Ministers seem to have preferred the half-baked nostrum to careful analysis. Tragically, it seems to me that they reflect the limitations of our whole society in that. The public, in spite of vast expenditure on education, remain to this day untrained in the assessment of relative probabilities, or the weighing of pros and cons. The author himself seems unaware that he too shares this syndrome, and his own analysis lunges between extremes in much the same way as that of the decision-makers he berates. For example, he states that the Lightning was a much faster performer than the hugely successful Dassault Mirage, having previously stated that our aircraft's worst problem was a small fuel tank. The Lightning could sustain Mach 2 for only two minutes to the French plane's twenty. Surely it's obvious that the Lightning would climb faster, unencumbered as it was by the heavy fuel? He makes no mention of this, preferring to lord it over the French for a face-saving moment.

            Another failing which he shares with many is the awe in which he seems to hold the Americans. He praises the F86 Sabre, and laments the terrible casualty rate of our own inferior Meteors and Hunters. He seems quite unaware that the Sabre also had a catastrophic casualty rate. I have heard from RAF maintainers, that the F4 Phantom, which we bought from the USA, had such unreliable electronics that the radar frequently failed just as it left the runway. It was useless.

            The deadly indifference to casualties of the post-war nation fell heavily on the pilots, who were badly paid and not valued. The bosses seemed to think there was an endless supply of expendable young daredevils, and there was; but they weren't a good choice to take care of valuable aircraft, frequently destroying plane and self in some tomfool stunt. The author seems to admire this behaviour, for unfathomable reasons.

            We have long been suffering from 'posh numskull in charge' syndrome; we could defeat Argentina in the Falklands only because they suffer from it even more. The curse of Britain is at least partly secrecy. The unholy trinity of stupidity, ignorance, and arrogance dominates the minds of the powers that be; whenever they take a decision in secret the consequences are appalling. Only public debate can restrain their fecklessness.