Faster Than A Speeding Bullet

The quest for speed from the early aviators to dreams of aircraft of the future. This is the story of Air Speed records and the advances in technology which have contributed to the various aviation successes and failures. On the bitterly cold morning of December 17th. 1903, Orville Wright coaxed the Wright Flyer off the sands at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina and launched the era of powered flight. He also launched a race that has gone on unceasingly ever since; the race for ever more speed. Thirty-five years later, at the start of World War Two, fighter aircraft were flying at around 300 miles per hour. A dozen years later Chuck Yeager doubled that speed and broke the dreaded sound barrier, in the Bell X1. By The 1970's ordinary fare paying passengers were crossing the Atlantic faster than a speeding bullet, in the Concorde.

• documentary