The arrival of the jet age in the mid 1940s speeds once only dreamed
of became a reality.
Two extraordinary days twenty years apart stand out.
Chuck Yeager's first supersonic flight
and Donald Campbell's attempt to become the fastest man on water.
This is a dramatisation of events as they happened on two days that shook the world.
It is 1947.
The Arab Israeli war is about to start.
A UFO has supposedly crashed at Roswell.
India has just won independence from Britain.
And far out in the Mohave deserts of California,
one man is about to pit his wits against a terrifying force
that has already claimed the lives of many of his friends.
His name is Charles Elwood Yeager.
But everyone knows him simply as Chuck.
Born in the backwoods of West Virginia,
Yeager is a maverick - a wild hillbilly turned fighter ace -
credited with fighting down more than a dozen enemy fighter aircraft
during world war 2.
Yeager is one of the finest pilots in the US army air force,
but he's about to face the greatest challenge of his life.
Today he will strap himself into a 31-foot rocket powered plane,
and attempt to fly faster than any man before.
Faster than the speed of sound.
High above the desert is the wilderness of sky
that Yeager loves to call 'the wide blue yonder.'
During the violent dog fights of ww2 many pilots were killed not by enemy fire,
but by a terrifying force of nature that lurked in the sky that Yeager loved.
Enemy pilots dived for their lives in dog fights.
Sometimes they never did pull out, and ploughed right into the ground.
More than once I almost followed them in - diving at more than 500 miles per hour,
my mustang began to shake violently, my controls froze.
Nearly let that damn stick pull out.
Scientists calculated that
this buffeting in power dives would peak at mach 1 - 760 mph, the speed of sound.
The phenomenon became known as the sound barrier,
a wall of turbulent air that would smash any aeroplane that tried to pierce it.
Now with the arrival of new jet technology,
speeds approaching mach 1 have suddenly become possible.
The enormous tactical advantage of one day breaking through the sound barrier and
flying faster than the speed of sound is now the ultimate ambition of the military.
And for the past four months,
Yeager has been working at great risk
and in top secret on America's project to become the first nation to go supersonic.
Yeager's wife Glennis drives him to the top secret airbase.
Despite only just scraping through high school,
Yeager has been selected ahead of other more qualified test pilots
because of his ability to keep cool during the moments of extreme danger
that fill his daily routine.
Glennis knows only a little of what he is doing,
but has learnt that it's better not to ask.
I really don't know why Chuck appealed to me so much.
I had dated a few soldiers but never a fighter pilot.
But also, I sensed he was a very strong and determined person.
A poor boy who had started with nothing
and would show the world what he was really made of.
The formidable plane Yeager will fly today will test him to the limit.
The bell XS1 aircraft
- X for experimental, S for supersonic,
and the first of it's kind to be flown.
The XS1 has been built to government contract at a cost of over 4 million dollars.
Based on the streamlined shape of a 50 calibre bullet,
the plane has a fearsome engine,
nicknamed 'black Betsy'.
It's performance is straight out of Buck Rogers.
Betsy can push the aircraft up into the outer limits of the atmosphere
at a rate of 20,000 feet per minute
- just as long as it's highly volatile fuel doesn't explode on ignition and
blow the aircraft and pilot into the middle of the next century.
The X1 team meet for breakfast.
For months they have lived and breathed the project,
but they have little support from anyone else on the airbase.
Yeager knows that most think the X1 is nothing more than a huge,
expensive joke.
Practically nobody at Muroc gives us any chance of success.
There were only 13 of us on the project,
and we were off by ourselves at the far end of the airbase.
I didn't have to be a genius to figure out that
they were putting plenty of distance between their own precious hides and us,
to see if the only thing I break was my own precious neck.
Yeager has brought two of his closest friends onto the project.
Capt Jack Ridley, an army air core engineer,
has been working on vital modifications to the X1's design.
Ridley is the only man Yeager trusts with his life.
Bob Hoover is backup X1 test pilot.
But he knows he will only get to fly the X1 if disaster strikes for his friend.
The only civilian on the team is Dick Frost, Bell's chief engineer.
He's been the driving force behind the X1 programme since it began in 1945.
Yeager, Ridley and Hoover arrived at Muroc in mid July.
Hoover was a happy go lucky stick and rudder man
- hell of a good pilot - but Chuck Yeager was all test pilot.
He was intense and serious - there was a certain sceptical look in his eyes,
probably from the feeling that people looked down on him
because of his background and education.
But by God, he'd show them...
preparations begin for today's flight.
The X1 is towed to the fuel depot.
As with all his aircraft,
Yeager has named the aircraft for his wife.
Chuck hadn't told me that he'd named the plane 'Glamorous Glennis,'
but there it was - right on the nose.
He did that on his mustang in England,
but this was an important research airplane,
and I was very surprised.
He said 'you're my good luck charm, hon.
Any airplane I name after you always brings me home.
Alone in his office,
Jack Ridley checks and rechecks his calculations for Yeager's next flight.
The X1 has been radically modified according to his design.
Today's flight will put his theory to the test.
The X1 was controlled in the same way as a conventional plane,
with elevators hinged on the tail plane operated for climber descent.
On every flight Chuck had flown faster and faster,
but at speeds over 600 mph turbulence caused sudden and violent pitching,
sending the aircraft out of control.
I hoped I'd come up with a solution.
We added a motor so that a small
but critical correction could be made to the angle
of the X1's entire tail plane during flight.
If Ridley's calculations are correct,
his modification will keep the aircraft stable as it flies into the sound barrier.
But if he is wrong, the tail plane could be torn off,
sending the X1 and his friend Yeager spinning into the earth.
At the fuelling depot, the X1 is prepared for flight.
It is filled with over 600 gallons of a highly explosive mixture
of liquid oxygen and alcohol.
The liquid oxygen is stored
at a temperature of minus 290 degrees centigrade,
in tanks right behind the pilots seat.
Fully laden, the X1 weighs a massive 2.5 tons,
with nearly a third of the weight taken up by fuel.
Yeager knows he will effectively be strapping himself into a bomb with wings.
If he is unable to fire the engine
and has to land the aircraft with the fuel still aboard,
the undercarriage will collapse and Yeager and his plane will be blown to pieces.
Today's flight plan is designed to test Ridley's
new tail configuration up to a speed of mach.95.
If we were successful,
the flight at mach 1, the speed of sound, was just a few days away.
But we knew that Chuck's injury was going to make today's test flight
his last for a long time.
...will be joined by the chaser aircraft...
continue the climb to 20,000...
Frost will fly a chase plane alongside the B29 to monitor
the X1's drop from the bomber.
Hoover will take up position 10 miles ahead,
to provide Yeager with an aiming point as he rockets past.
Let's go into the last 5 minutes protocol of relea
Yes sir.
Okay five minute warning, gentlemen...
B29 pilot Bob Cardinas is the officer in charge of the flight.
He takes the team through the launch protocol...
4 minutes, pressurise fuel tank
3 minutes, pressurise another fuel tank
Two minutes...
team's going to announce test in progress...
1 minute warning, clear to drop
Yeager particularly monitor the elevator effectiveness as you go through.94 mach...
and don't go faster than that unless
you're really confident that you can handle it.
Gentlemen that completes the briefing, are there any questions:
Have a good flight.
Ridley's moving tale really boosted my morale,
and I wanted to get to that sound barrier.
I suppose there were advantages on creeping up on mach 1,
but my vote was to stop screwing around before we had some stupid accident
that could cost us not only a mission,
but the entire project.
...let's go fly, boys...
As the crew take up their positions,
final checks are made on the mother ship.
At the edge of the runway,
radar tracking equipment is set up to monitor Yeager's flight.
B29... that would be 7 miles an hour...
...roger... clear to roll...
Far from the action,
Chuck's wife Glennis can only wait until the flight is over.
The B29 makes the slow climb to altitude.
Cardinas checks in with the progress of the chase planes.
B29... Hoover you guys on the way up?
Yeah boy...
...closing 15,000 feet... right turn now...
...roger...
As the plane continues climbing to 20,000 feet,
Ridley and Yeager head for the freezing air of the bomb bay,
and the entrance to the cockpit of the X1.
Only the streamlined shape of the X1 lies between Yeager and the desert,
8,000 feet below.
Dangling on a tiny platform,
Yeager battles against the biting wind of the slipstream
to squeeze himself into the cockpit.
Because of Yeager's broken ribs,
Ridley has cut a short length of broomstick for him,
to throw shut the heavy door latch and seal himself inside the cockpit.
Bob Hoover accelerates past the B29 to take up his position 10 miles ahead.
800 - five minute warning...
There are at least a dozen ways that X1 can kill you,
so your concentration is total.
I'd been flying higher, around 40,000 feet,
and faster than any military pilot had yet flown.
Anyone will brain cells would have to wonder
what the hell he was doing in such a situation,
strapped inside a live bomb that's about to be dropped outside of a bomb bay.
But risks are the spice of life
and this is the kind of moment a test pilot lives for.
The butterflies are fluttering,
but you feed on fear as if it's a high-energy candy bar
that keeps you alert - focussed.
You count on experience,
concentration and instincts to pull you through.
And luck. Without luck...
B29800... Rock tower... chaser... 1 minute...
Yeager this is Ridley.
You all set?
Hell yes... let's get it over with.
...here is your countdown...
ten nine eight seven six five four three two one... Drop.
The moment of truth.
If you're going to be blown up,
this is likely to be when.
You light the first chamber...
slam back in your seat - tremendous kick in the butt.
Nose up and hold on.
Yeager begins to accelerate towards his test speed of Mach.95.
With just one rocket thruster fire,
he is already travelling at over 500 mph.
Climbing faster than you can think,
you have never known such a feeling of speed while pointing up at the sky.
This beast's power is awesome.
Suddenly, as the X1 rockets past 600 per hour,
it smashes into violent turbulence.
It's the moment of truth for Ridley's calculations.
At Mach.95,
Yeager makes the vital adjustment to the tail plane.
There is no room for error.
"...make a note here... elevated... effect..."
Ridley's tail plane has worked.
The test is over.
But not for Yeager,
who keeps accelerating, towards Mach 1.
"Fire on four..."
At 45,000 where morning resembles the beginning of dusk,
you turn on the last of the 4 chambers...
God what a ride...
Just as he hits the full destructive force of the sound barrier,
Yeager disappears from sight.
For a moment it seems Yeager is lost.
"Hey Ridley... make another note here...
there's something wrong with this mach meter...
it's gone screwy..."
"if it is we'll fix it.
Personally I think you're seeing things"
"I think I am jack"
At precisely 10:18 on October 14th 1947,
Chuck Yeager has made history.
The first man to break through the sound barrier.
His sonic boom, the world's first,
marking the beginning of the supersonic age.
The flight and my report were kept secret for seven months.
But when we went public,
the news made Yeager the most famous pilot in the world.
I did it... I'm still living!
Yeager and Ridley continued to work on the X project for nearly a decade,
eventually taking their flights up to three times the speed of sound.
Yeager went on to help train the first generation of astronauts,
and saw the X1 programme culminate in man's first landing on the moon.
It is 1967.
Twenty years after Yeager's first supersonic flight.
In swinging London,
the Beatles are about to release 'Sergeant pepper';
America is just a year away from putting man on the moon...
In South Africa,
the first heart transplant is about to be carried out.
...and in the lake district of Northern England,
one man is about to make a bid to break the world water-speed record.
In a cottage in the village of Coniston, Donald Campbell,
world famous record breaker, sits playing a game of Russian patience,
watched by his old friend,
newspaperman, Keith Harrison.
...it's been over two months Donald.
What about the backers?
Backers?
What backers.
Jet plane... jet boat... doesn't really matter.
Once you're committed, you're committed.
Ace of spades... queen of spades...
those are the cards Mary Queen of Scots drew,
right before she was beheaded.
Someone's for the chop.
I hope to God it's not me.
Coniston water. The lake district.
For nine gruelling weeks,
Campbell has been risking his neck to get a new water-speed
record in his jet-powered boat 'Bluebird."
It has been a battle against appalling weather... Endless mechanical problems...
And, with no sponsorship,
time is running out fast for Campbell.
Already famous for pushing a jet-powered car to 400 mph on land,
Campbell is obsessed with breaking the 300mph barrier on water.
But in a world now dominated by pop culture and the space race,
Campbell's old fashioned values appear out of date - and out of style.
If you break this record - what does it prove?
I think perhaps most important of all
it still proves British leadership in engineering terms and,
and I think it shows that the British when they make their minds up
can jolly well overcome all obstacles and achieve anything.
So really... this is based on British patriotism?
We're all playing for a team old boy, and we're all playing for the same team.
Camped out on the banks of the lake is John Lomax,
an amateur filmmaker from Liverpool.
Over the last nine weeks,
he has used every spare penny
he earns as an engineering fitter to capture Campbell's attempts on film.
Lomax has seen the lake in all it's moods;
violent one moment, placid the next.
Like Campbell,
he hopes that today the surface will remain calm
enough for the attempt to be made...
'Donald Campbell was my hero
- as far back as I could remember.
I loved his bulldog spirit.
He was keeping the flag waving for Britain.
Most of the lads up where I came from in Liverpool
still believed in that kind of thing.
I wanted my film to be a tribute to him.
He reckoned I might win a prize with it.
One more trip back to Coniston and I reckoned I'd have the film finished
and Donald Campbell would have the record.'
Campbell wakes well before dawn in the small house
he has rented near Coniston Water.
He is all too aware of the risks he is taking in Bluebird.
But pride and spiralling debts give him no choice but to battle on.
Campbell knows that some are saying that
his attempt at 300 mph is little more than a death wish...
Keith Harrison starts the generator to light the boathouse.
Soon, the rest of Campbell's team will arrive.
As a press reporter,
Harrison has followed all of Campbell's exploits
and is proud to be an unofficial member of the team.
Although he knows Campbell's spirits are at an all-time low,
his major concern is with the boat.
'... l'd seen the boat first time out in all it's glory in 1955,
and Donald, like a grinning schoolboy with a new toy...
But the boat I stood looking at
that January morning was a very different beast.
Everything about it had changed.
Donald now had nothing short of a jet plane without wings
- and today, he was planning to push it right to the limit.'
...ln preparation for the new attempt,
the boat has been fitted with a far more powerful engine.
A Bristol Orpheus producing
a thousand pounds more thrust than the original.
But there is still a problem with fuel supply to the jet
- more than once the engine has cut out under power.
Campbell cannot afford any more delay and has announced that Bluebird is ready.
He just needs a break in the weather.
Campbell gets ready to leave for pier Cottage and Bluebird.
A deeply superstitious man,
he will take with him his lucky mascot, 'Mr Woppit'.
And around his neck he carries a St Christopher
given to him by his father,
the world famous record-breaker, Sir Malcolm Campbell.
Born into a privileged world,
and surrounded by fast cars and record-breaking machines,
Donald was always going to be his father's son.
Through the nineteen twenties and thirties,
Malcolm Campbell had the world at his feet and Donald always at his side.
He didn't want you to follow in his footsteps, did he?
No he did not, most emphatically he did not.
Why did he not want you to?
Well I suppose better than anybodyof course
he knew the risks and I was his son
And why did you?
Possibly because I was his son.
Harrison checks the surface conditions across the long stretch of Coniston water.
The lake is five and a quarter miles long, 180 feet deep butjust half a mile wide.
Mountainous and exposed at one end,
and wooded at the other,
conditions constantly change on the surface.
Today a wind from the northwest,
sends squalls and eddies across the water
but the surface looks better than it has for weeks...
Campbell will make his decision as soon as he arrives...
When you go down into the arena, you know,
you go down with your eyes open.
And when you go down into the arena,
you well know sometimes you are likely to get punched.
You do it with your eyes open, you take the risks.
Of course you're under tension,
of course you're frightened, everybody concerned is.
If they weren't you'd be very frightened of them.
But you keep these fears to yourself.
Campbell sets out for the Bluebird launch site.
There he will assemble his team, and decide if today is the day.
I worshipped my father.
In 1935,
I was a school boy on the bottom of the salt flats in Utah
when he was the first man to reach 300.
And on that first run,
one of the Dunlop tyres burst at 300 mph as the car left the measured mile.
And I will never forget seeing the old man by the side of that car, aunt and silent.
And I tried to top it.
And then suddenly realised this was the wrong thing to do.
Because I was sure he thought in his own mind that
he thought that on his return run,
he was going to be killed.
And that didn't daunt him.
And it didn't in anyway affect his resolution.
"What do you think, Skip?"
Let's go for it "everyone to their stations"
In the boathouse,
John Lomax gets more shots for his film as Campbell
and his team prepare Bluebird for the water.
'... There was Leo Villa, Campbell's mechanic.
They were always straight with each other but things were different that morning...
Campbell was on edge;
he'd told Villa about the cards he'd drawn the night before.
Villa was like a father to Donald
- he'd been Sir Malcolm's mechanic through the twenties and thirties
and had known Donald since he was a child.
But Villa believed that either you took bad omens 100% seriously and packed it in
or you forgot about them and got on with it.
Donald knew the choice was his.
I suppose, after 64 days,
anybody would have just wanted it over with...
But he looked very much on his own.
On the opposite shore of the lake, the timekeepers set up their equipment.
Two sets of electrically fired chronometers will be triggered
as Bluebird enters and exits the course.
Under the rules for a record attempt, Campbell must make two runs.
If his average speed on the course is over 300mph the record will be his.
On a boat at the far end of the lake,
Harrison and a photographer from his newspaper are
ready to watch the attempt.
Harrison will monitor Campbell's radio transmissions during the two runs.
With Bluebird's jet engine fuelled up and ready to
Campbell climbs aboard.
The boat is slowly winched down the slip way and onto the lake.
'We'd been frozen to the bone for weeks, we'd watched and waited,
and hoped each day would be the day.
Sometimes you couldn't help but start to lose the faith...
But each time I saw that boat slide out onto the lake and Campbell take command,
you could feel the whole atmosphere change.
And the minute Bluebird was fired up;
you know this day will be the day
Sometime you could not and start to lose the faith.
Campbell heads out into the middle of the lake
and lines up for the first timed run.
Rather than join the press on the lake to film the runs,
Lomax decides to wait alone on the pier.
He wants to be in prime position when Campbell returns in triumph.
Campbell accelerates from 30 to 200mph in just 6 seconds.
Accelerating hard past 250 mph,
Campbell charges up to the first marker and the timers are triggered...
In just five seconds he has covered the distance...
But Campbell doesn't peak until he's further down the lake.
Un-timed and out of site of the timekeepers, he hits 320mph.
Even though he uses a powerful water brake,
it still takes him nearly two miles to slow down.
Everything hangs on the timekeeper's calculations.
250 miles per hour is their base line,
Campbell has gone through the course at 'plus 47' - 297 mph.
Now Campbell knows that he only needs another 6mph on the return run
and the record will be his...
He doesn't pause to refuel and heads back down the lake.
Campbell accelerates hard,
pitching over the rough wake from his first run.
He wants to be at full speed when he enters the course.
He hits 318 mph as he passes the first marker.
The rescue boats rush to the scene but Bluebird has already sunk beyond reach,
plummeting 140 feet down to the bottom of the lake.
Floating wreckage from the boat is recovered,
along with Campbell's empty helmet,
his socks, shoes, a glove, his life jacket...
And his lucky mascot, 'Mr Woppit'.
'I remember Campbell saying to the press,
'you know and I know why you are here' and then he nodded...
But I for one never wanted this ending.
I walked back up the pier.
I took a last shot of his car.
And I went home.'
'I had to phone my story in.
I'd never wanted to listen to those others,
who always said this was the inevitable end; but it was.
He knew it.
He'd crashed his jet car once and I remember him telling me,
"I knew she was going.
I knew I was going.
It must have been nearly half a minute after I lost her that we were in the air...
It was tremendously peaceful.
...Today, when I heard him say, "I'm going"
I knew those last few seconds before the crash were probably the most peaceful
in the life of Mr Donald Campbell, hero.'
Campbell was awarded the Queen's commendation for brave conduct
a month after his death.
John Lomax returned to film Campbell's memorial on the green in Coniston village.
Donald's mother Lady Dorothy, unveiled a simple memorial to her son.
For more than thirty years,
there has been speculation over the cause of Campbell's death.
Some say an object in the water caused the crash
- but nothing floating would have been heavy enough
to cause the boat to somersault.
Refuelling the boat would not have affected it's balance
and Campbell had sufficient for the return run.
But Bluebirds engine had been plagued by fuel supply problems,
cutting out completely on two earlier occasions.
The accident was most likely the result of fuel supply failure compounded
by the pitching motion from the wake of the previous run.
When the boat became airborne,
there is clearly no jet thrust seen against the water.
Campbell's boat, already unstable and now robbed of forward thrust,
flipped backwards as it hit the now impenetrable wall of air,
before somersaulting back into the lake.
It is difficult to accept that
Donald Campbell was carrying out a death wish.
The shock in his voice was far too real.
But, tragically,
his premonition of suffering the same fate as Mary Queen of Scots was born out.
When his remains were finally recovered in May, 2001,
it was clear that his head had taken the full impact
as Bluebird's cockpit collapsed against the water.