Flight Line

摘要

Atrue story. All those years ago, when I was but a lad, the British aircraft industry was still very much in its prime. It was in early 1964 that an aviation society to which I belonged organised a coach trip to the British Aircraft Corporation's Brooklands factory at Weybridge, Surrey to see the VC10 in production. In 1964, BAC Weybridge was thriving, with several ongoing programmes. On the civil side, Viscount production had finally come to an end after 438 examples had been built, although the following Vanguard had never really taken off with a run of just 43. Cynics say that the company lost on the Vanguard all the money it had made on the Viscount. The major activity at Weybridge at the time was the VC10. Prototype G-ARTA had flown on 29 June 1962 and the type would be awarded its certificate of airworthiness on 23 April 1964. G-ARTA - and all subsequent VC10s - made its first flight from Weybridge, the lightly fuelled aircraft taking off to make the short hop to land at the company's test airfield at Wisley, just a few miles away. The Weybridge runway was just 3,800ft long and a departing VC10 needed to make full use of every last foot of concrete. To achieve this, G-ARTA was pushed back by tractor to the very end of the runway, which backed on to the Waterloo-West Country railway line, and trains were temporarily halted. In the event it took off, safely, to the south-west in just 2,150ft. As to military types, Valiant production at Weybridge had come to an end, but BAC was partnered 50:50 with English Electric on the design and production of the wildly ambitious TSR2, promising 'Mach 2 from a dirt strip', which was eagerly anticipated by the RAF.