{"id":41,"date":"2013-12-10T15:41:53","date_gmt":"2013-12-10T15:41:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/srfb\/?p=41"},"modified":"2013-12-10T15:41:53","modified_gmt":"2013-12-10T15:41:53","slug":"the-new-jerusalem-and-the-new-sparta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/tdby\/2013\/12\/10\/the-new-jerusalem-and-the-new-sparta\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Jerusalem and the New Sparta"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Edgerton produced a great sound bite\u00a0early in the first programme of\u00a0James Holland’s two-part documentary for BBC2, Cold War Hot Jets<\/em>: the now familiar ‘warfare Britain’ was intent on creating the New Jerusalem and<\/em> the New Sparta.\u00a0 Peter Hennessy also appeared, and the first quarter of the programme suggested that its content would be as terrific as its title.\u00a0 Fairey featured only via\u00a0a \u00a0brief shot of the delta-winged 1956 record-breaker\u00a0taking off, but no matter.\u00a0 Perhaps more disappointing was that James Holland began the programme in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, talked at length about Frank Whittle, and twice\u00a0used rare footage of Armstrong Whitworth’s Flying Wing to illustrate\u00a0postwar invention; but failed to link all three as highlighting my native city’s centrality to British aviation’s innovation and ingenuity.\u00a0 Before losing its way and focusing upon RAF pilots spying for the Americans in the late 1950s (e.g. flying U2s over the Soviet bloc), the programme emphasised the legacy of World War Two and the belief that in aviation at least Britain could still take on the world, not least the Americans.\u00a0 Yes, Edgerton briefly mentioned the escaltion in R and\u00a0D costs when developing jets as opposed to piston-engined aircraft, and the sorry tale of Comet was told again to illustrate how De Havilland – and thus UK plc – lost a unique opportunity to dominate the global market in civil aviation, but Holland failed to spell\u00a0 out how high unit costs could only be significantly reduced by long production runs securing economies of scale.\u00a0 Manufacturers of military aircraft in the late 1940s and 1950s were competing against each other for RAF\/FAA contracts, with only modest potential for export scales, and so they got hit twice: no guarantee of securing a contract, let alone volume sales, and soaring R and D costs.\u00a0 No wonder Fairey\u00a0suffered so much\u00a0in the postwar era, particularly with\u00a0prototypes\u00a0like the Rotodyne rendering civilian projects ever more uneconomic.\u00a0 The Rotodyne utilised propulsion technology remarkably similar to the jet-tipped propellor Wittgenstein patented at Manchester University in 1911 when\u00a0 studying aeronautics\u00a0 prior to following a fresh\u00a0path as a philosopher at Cambridge from the autumn of that year.\u00a0 My colleague Ray Monk’s mention of this on last week’s ‘In Our Time’ programme on Wittgenstein sent me off to consult his acclaimed biography of the one-time aeronautics engineer, and to read the diary of David Pinsent.\u00a0 The latter, to whom the Logicus Tractatus<\/em> is dedicated, moved from philosophy at Trinity to training for the bar, to a succession of wartime positions (having been declared unfit for military service) that culminated in test flying at Farnborough.\u00a0 Pinsent died flying in 1918, but while working at ‘The Factory’ he must have met the impressive array of scientists\u00a0based there during the war, including Frederick Lindemann\u00a0 (the future Lord Cherwell, close confidant and highly influential adviser to Churchill, himself an enthusiastic supporter of the fledgling RNAS at Eastchurch and elsewhere\u00a0 before and at the start of World War One).\u00a0 Lindemann is closely associated, through his\u00a0direct experience as a pilot in 1917 at Farnborough, with working out the science behind how to spin and survive.\u00a0 Parke and Hawker are regarded as the first pilots to work out that pushing the joystick forward as far as it could go was the best course of action in a spin, but Lindemann set out to establish the reasons why.\u00a0 In my interview with Jane Tennant on 5 November she talked about her father’s belief that he was one of the first, if not the first, to establish the appropriate course of action.\u00a0 Yet she also made clear that CRF didn’t really like flying, and ironically was not that comfortable as a passenger.\u00a0 My questions focused upon family background and the formation of the company in 1915, and my archival work has all been related to this.\u00a0 I’m back to the London Metropolitan Archives next week to check out Esther Bellamy’s intuitive suggestion that the absence of records in 1905-6 for CRF at Finsbury Technical College is because this was when he was laid low by a serious motorcycle accident – will I find evidence of academic success and due certification in the FTC documents for 1907?\u00a0 The same day I hope also to visit Kew, as I have drawn up a list of Murray Sueter’s papers re his role in establishing the RNAS on Sheppey and his early procurement activities, and these\u00a0appear more pertinent than those in his archive at the RAF Museum.\u00a0 I will be at Colindale two days later to check out boxes of Fairey papers from the earliest days of the company, and after that I shall have enough material to start drafting my first chapter, which will be very<\/em> basic and in need of extensive rewriting and expansion over time.\u00a0 Nevertheless it’s clearly time to put pen to paper, and follow P.G. Wodehouse’s advice that the key to writing is the ability to attach one’s backside to a chair.\u00a0 I’m reading Evelyn Waugh’s wartime diaries at present, and while staggered by his gargantuan appetite I am nevertheless impressed by the self-discipline that produced a manuscript of Brideshead Revisited<\/em> in the face of so many distractions (how did he manage to stay sober long enough to write\/rewrite a novel of that length?!).\u00a0 Lord Marchmain’s\u00a0passing was\u00a0duly\u00a0chronicled\u00a0on D-Day – I hope when I eventually record on paper CRF’s death it won’t be against a backdrop of such a\u00a0world-changing event – come the\u00a0moment let there be peace and quiet, however boring that may seem!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Edgerton produced a great sound bite\u00a0early in the first programme of\u00a0James Holland’s two-part documentary for BBC2, Cold War Hot Jets: the now familiar ‘warfare Britain’ was intent on creating the New Jerusalem and the New Sparta.\u00a0 Peter Hennessy also appeared, and the first quarter of the programme suggested that its content would be as … <\/p>\n

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