The Sound Barrier Page #3

Approaching the airfield.

Roger, 1-0.

Climbing through clouds,

full throttle, ASl 320.

- Will, she's a

beauty. - Roger, 1-0.

30,000, I'm levelling out.

Auto-observer on.

I'm starting dive now. If I get

any buffeting, I'll throttle back.

Here we go. This is it.

Thirty thousand.

Twenty-nine.

Twenty-eight.

Twenty-seven.

Twenty-six.

Twenty-five thousand.

Mach 0.7.

I'm getting buffeting now.

Air brakes open, throttling back.

OK. Coming down to land now.

Ridgefield Tower to 1-0.

Clear to join circuit and land.

Runway 3-0.

- Call downwind.

- Roger.

- I said use 3-0, not the control tower.

- Your message received and understood.

Hm!

- What-ho.

- What-ho.

- How was the wonder kite?

- What do you think?

- Can I take her out tomorrow?

- No, Windy. She's my baby.

- I've nothing on AM.

- Oh, yes, you have. I've got a job for you.

I promised to deliver a

Vampire for De Havilland.

- Where to?

- Cairo.

Cai... Cairo! Ooh, whizzo!

Er, don't tell the wife.

Hello?

Hello, darling.

Yes, just a few minutes

ago. Hey, what's for dinner?

No. Piece of cake.

No, really.

I shan't be long.

Goodbye.

- Here, Windy, let's have that back.

- Here, I say...

I remembered there's a type I know in

Cairo and I could do with a little sun.

- But...

- You have a nice quiet weekend at Shoreham.

- Well, how was it?

- All right.

- Did you take her flat out?

- No, nothing like.

- Pity.

- Why pity?

I thought our intrepid air ace might be

the first man through the sound barrier.

There ain't no such thing.

You ought to check up on your supersonics,

not to mention the popular press.

What's so ruddy peculiar

about the speed of sound?

We all know exactly what it is, don't

we? 750 miles per hour at ground level.

If we go slower than that,

we can hear ourselves going,

and if we go faster, we

can hear ourselves coming.

It's a mere matter of acoustics.

- Hello, Miss Mitchell.

- Good afternoon.

19,000, Mach 0. 7.

Slight buffeting commencing on wings.

18,500. Buffeting increasing.

17,500. Mach 0.8. Buffeting's rather bad.

- She's shaking to pieces. She's disintegrating.

- Don't do that. You'll give me heart failure.

- I'm throttling back and pulling out.

- What an exquisite voice I do have, to be sure.

- Coming for a drink?

- No, got too much work to do.

How's the 902 coming along?

I want JR to find a name for her. Something

that would suggest the highest speed yet flown.

- How about the line shoot?

- There won't be any line shoot about her.

- She'll do it, all right.

- Do what?

The speed of sound.

What would happen if you put

the wings on back to front?

Oh, go away. Go away.

- Well...

- What?

- Seriously?

- Uh-huh.

Apart from the buffeting and heavy controls

and general wanging about and

other little things we know about...

what exactly does happen to an

aeroplane at the speed of sound?

I don't know. And shall I

tell you something, Tony?

- What?

- No one else in the world does either.

- Darling?

- Hoo!

- How was it?

- Piece of cake.

It's always a piece of cake.

- Sherry?

- A little one.

- What was your day like?

- Pretty good.

- Tony?

- Uh-huh?

- I've got the most wonderful news.

- Have you?

Two bits of wonderful news, in fact.

Only one's not quite so wonderful as the other,

so I'll start with the less wonderful, shall I?

Uh-huh.

You know that little house at

Andrew's Corner, Broom Cottage?

- Mm-hm? - I think

we can have it.

- But that belongs to that fellow Franklin.

- Mm, but he's leaving.

- Oh. But this place isn't so bad, is it?

- No, of course not.

But don't you see what a difference it would

make if we had a place that belonged to us?

Oh, I see all that. But the old

man will hate us leaving him.

- He'll hate you leaving him.

- Hate you leaving him too.

Oh, darling, don't you yet know after two years

what Father and I really feel about each other?

- Well, I know you don't exactly see eye to eye...

- Eye to eye?

He's always despised me

for not being born a son.

- Darling...

- It's true.

Just as later he despised Chris for not

turning out the sort of sort of son he wanted.

Well, I can't despise him in

return, because I admire him.

I admire him tremendously for what he's done.

As for what he is... Well, all I can say,

it's best I should live out of his house.

What was the other wonderful piece of news?

It'll keep.

Dinner.

Were there any other symptoms

besides this buffeting?

Well, I noticed that the controls got...

hard at Mach 0.85, in rather a funny way.

- What height was that?

- 18,000.

Hm. There's no doubt about it, we're

just on the fringe of the problem.

- Father?

- Mm?

- What problem?

- Supersonics.

- The sound barrier?

- Yes.

- That's a newspaper phrase.

- And like most of them, pretty misleading.

- You mean there isn't a barrier?

- Oh, there's a barrier all right.

But it's... spread out, on

either side of the speed of sound,

from roughly between Mach 0.85...

Mark? What mark?

You see, it's a way we have of

measuring the speeds at which we fly.

We no longer fly at miles per

hour, we fly at Mach numbers.

Now, Mach One is the speed of sound.

But why sound?

What makes a barrier? Is it sound?

- It's a combination...

- It's air.

You see, Sue, there's a limit to the

speed at which air itself can move.

Now, this rule's travelling

at... 30 mile an hour, let's say.

You can hear the air whistle

as it moves out of its way.

But if it were travelling at 750 mile

an hour - the speed of sound, Mach One -

the air could no longer move out of its

way, because it just can't move that fast.

It'd pile up in front of the rule, or the

aircraft, making, if you like, a barrier.

Now, we don't exactly know what happens to an

aircraft when it gets into these conditions.

Tony knows it buffets

as he gets near to them.

Some say the craft would go right out of

control, others that it'll break up altogether.

Now, I don't believe that, Sue.

I believe with the right aircraft and the right

man, we can force our way through this barrier,

and once through, there is a world.

A whole new world, with speeds

of 1,500 to 2,000 mile an hour,

within the grasp of man.

And Tony here may be the first

man to see that new world.

Well, let's go, shall we.

- Do you think the Americans will beat us to it?

- They may,

but we're two years ahead

in jet-engine development.

I think it's between ourselves,

Vickers and De Havillands at the moment.

It's a pity De Havillands will

have their 108 up before our 902.

Oh, by the way, Will wants a

name for her. Got any ideas, Dad?

- Yes. Prometheus.

- Prometheus? Who was he?

- He was a Greek god.

- Who stole fire from heaven.

Oh, yes, I remember. Came

to a sticky end, didn't he?

He did. But the world got fire.

How long before I can have a crack at it?

Not long, but you've got quite a bit of homework

to do first. You'd better get started right away.

"A theory of supersonic shockwaves.

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