8mm Forum: The Sound Barrier

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Topic: The Sound Barrier

Paul Adsett
Film God

Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted November 09, 2011 01:59 PM

Just watched the superb 1952 British film The Sound Barrier. This is a really great film starring the debonair Nigel Patrick (one of my British favourites), with Ralph Richardson and Ann Todd. It tells the story of the evolution of jet aircraft and the race to break through the speed of sound. Factually innaccurate in that regard, as American Chuck Yaeger was the first person to break the sound barrier. What I find really fascinating about this film though is that it is really a time capsule of the early 1950's when Britain had the world lead in commercial aviation. The sense of confidence and optimism of "The New Elizabethan Age" is palpable in this film. You see that most beautiful of jet aircraft The De Havilland Comet which was 6 years ahead of the first US commercial jet plane ,the Boeing 707. You can see that at the time of filming that it still had the square windows, which produced a fatal stress concentration at each of the window corners, leading to stress fatigue and the explosion of several planes, before the Comet was grounded. None of these crashes had occurred when this film was made, and the Comet was the fastest commercial plane in world aviation. It's also fascinating to see the real shots of the De Havilland works where the Comet was built, buzzing with workers assembling this revolutionary plane. This was a time when DeHavilland, Vickers, and Avroe, were all designing and building aircraft in Britain. How times have changed!

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Steve Klare
Film Guy

Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted November 09, 2011 03:07 PM

Paul, do you have a print of "Jumping Jets"? It's the Look at Life about the early days of the Hawker Kestrel which evolved into the Harrier later on. Great film! It clears the dust off my speakers!

I remember learning about the Comet in a Strength of Materials course I once took.

I'm a former Hawker-Siddeley employee myself, although it was at an avionics subsidiary here and not in the UK. Something about making instrument panels and battery chargers that isn't the same as building stuff with wings and jet engines!

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Paul Adsett
Film God

Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted November 09, 2011 04:12 PM

Hi Steve,
What is not generally known in the USA about the Comet is that DeHavilland's were the first company to come across the phenomenon of metal fatigue. In 1950 no one knew about it. It was asumed that if you designed an aircraft structure to withstand an ultimate (single event) stress load that was about 25% higher than its normal operation stress load, then everything would be fine. The structural failure caused by repeated lower level cyclic stress loads was just not understood. A Boeing engineer admitted that if it had not been for the Comet, the Boeing 707 would have had exactly the same disasterous structural problems. So Boeing were able to learn from the Comet and correct their 707 design in time.
The Comet design was subsequently corrected in the late 1950's and many Comets were flying up to about 2000, mainly in freight and military applications.
Anybody here ever fly on a Comet?

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Graham Ritchie
Film God

Posts: 4001
From: New Zealand
Registered: Feb 2006

posted November 10, 2011 04:00 PM

Paul and Steve

Regarding British Aircraft Derann once sold new prints of "Vickers Aviation" 50 years of achievements from the Vickers Corporation. Its 400ft on b/w and is very good. Another from Derann is a Look at Life from 1961 called Controlled Landing. Its been years since I last watched it but if I remember right the Comet does feature in it, the print is also very good.

Steve mentions "Hawker Siddeley", well that brought back memories of 10 years worth on the HS748. Built like a brick this aircraft could go anywhere and was ideal for the rough strips and mountains that we used them for, with the prop driven Rolls Royce Dart engine it did the job very well.

I will say this about British aircraft, like their cars they were terrible to work on. When I first started on the 748 I had to change a trim cable. It looked like the everything was built around the pully and keeper to get it out. In the end I forced the cable out between the keeper "not the thing to do" but got the job done. I mentioned the trouble I had with this cable to the hanger supervisor, he looked at me "smiled" and said your getting the hang of it, and that pretty much summed up working on British aircraft.

I have very few photos of those days..pity..they were interesting times.

we had a fleet of HS748 as well as some F27 aircraft. I took this photo on their retirement soon to be replaced with the ATR72.

before they decided on the ATR72 we did look at the British Aerospace ATP. this is the only photo of it in NZ taken by the BA photographer with me towing it from a gate. I thought the aircraft was good but they never bought any.

I took this one and only photo when I worked for Ansett NZ. the BAe146 was a shocker. Corrosion city I called it the poor material used used in the 146 made it suffer from corrosion badly, even the old 748 was really good compared with this thing.
Ansett had a fleet of 146 and once again British engineering was in the overkill mode. However they were known as the whisperjet and nice to fly in. The engines were underpowered for the weight of the aircraft it was built to heavy. Compared with the ATR72 "the plastic fantastic" that I also worked on British aircraft for the mechanic "were to be avoided" [Big Grin]

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Steve Klare
Film Guy

Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted November 10, 2011 07:04 PM

We usually called them "Hawker-Snivelly" because they weren't very nice to work for!

Derann had a number of great sounding aircraft films: I regret not getting them all.

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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...

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Colin Robert Hunt
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 226
From: Milton Keynes Buckinghamshire
Registered: Aug 2005

posted November 11, 2011 02:53 PM

Great write up on this film. Powell films released a very good print of this one in the 70's and is worth looking out for. What mediem did you watch this film on ? I understand there is a David Lean box set that has this film on.

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