The sun glistened off the fighter’s fuselage as World War II flying ace John Derry reached the peak of his climb, some 40,000 feet above the rolling Hampshire countryside.
Now for the dive. He thrust the joystick forward and pushed the jet’s nose down into a steep descent through the scattered clouds.Below him, a crowd of 130,000 people attending the Farnborough Air Show looked up, shielding their eyes, eagerly awaiting the reappearance of the legendary pilot, who was the first Briton to break the sound barrier.
It was a feat he was intending to repeat that day: Saturday, September 6, 1952, 70 years ago this month. At ground level, the public address system crackled into life, and the announcer informed the spectators that Derry’s plane, a prototype of the twin-engined De Havilland 110, was approaching.
A triple sonic boom resounded across the airfield and then the aircraft swooped out of its dive and streaked towards them, flashing along the runway at some 700mph at a height of no more than 50 feet above the tarmac.
Among the excited spectators was Mail reader Maurice Boyle, then an 18-year-old national serviceman, who was there with his pals from their nearby army barracks. ‘There was this sleek silver shape speeding almost silently towards us,’ says Maurice. ‘I couldn’t believe how fast it was.
‘It was past in just a few seconds and then we heard the deafening roar of the engines as the sound caught up with the plane’s motion.’
At the end of the runway, Derry threw the plane sharply left and then into a 270-degree turn to bring it across the runway and over the heads of the crowd.
About a mile away, and travelling at some 500mph, Derry planned to pull into an upward roll. But unbeknownst to him there was a fatal flaw in the design of his aircraft’s wings which would turn what should have been a thrilling display into a scene of unimaginable carnage.
The outer parts of the wings ripped off under the stress of straightening up from the turn. The resulting shift in its centre of gravity saw the plane rear up with such force that the cockpit tore away, with Derry and his flight observer Tony Richards still inside.
As they smashed into the ground close to the runway, they were thrown out of the wreckage and against the metal crowd barriers.