Empire of the clouds

"In 1945, Britain inherited the title of the world's leading designer and builder of aircraft - a world-class achievement that was not mere rhetoric. And what aircraft they were. The sleek Comet, the first jet airliner. The awesome delta-winged Vulcan, an intercontinental bomber that could be thrown about the sky like a fighter. The Hawker Hunter, the most beautiful fighter-jet ever built, and the Lightning, which could zoom ten miles above the clouds in a couple of minutes and whose pilots rated flying it as better than sex. By the early 1960s, the designers, the extremely brave test pilots, and the legendary companies they worked for - Avro, Hawker, Vickers, de Havilland - were gone or facing a bleak future.