Original subtitles

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NARRATOR: For over 100 years, battles have raged

in the air for command of the skies.

If you don't have air supremacy, you're in trouble.

Since its earliest beginnings in World War I,

the airplane is the supreme weapon of the armed forces.

This was a real battle for civilisation, for humanity.

It revolutionised battle, and changed the ways war was fought and won.

The F-117 has obviously changed

how we design aircraft and air campaigns.

War drove innovation in the skies.

What we hear from the air force is, when the F-35 wasn't there,

all others died. When F-35 was there, they reigned supreme.

Aircraft bred a new kind of hero.

The fate of entire nations depended on

the bravery of a handful of men.

An appreciation of the extent to which

young men were willing to put their lives on the line for an ideal

is something we need to remember more often than we do.

In this episode...

..the race to build the world's first jet engine.

Frank Whittle realised that if you fly at above 30,000 feet,

you can fly faster and further.

The first combat-ready jet plane

that could have helped the Nazis win the war.

The Messerschmitt 262 is years ahead of its time.

The shocking Soviet fighter that blew

US bombers out of the sky.

For that one moment in time, the MiG-15 was a world-beater, and everybody knew it.

The blisteringly fast American Sabre

that held the line in the Cold War.

You had to point the nose straight down, and around

30,000 feet, you said, "Oh, good. I'm supersonic."

Hero of the Falklands, the Great British jump jet.

At odds of twelve to one, you had to be

good and lucky.

The supersonic strike plane with a nose

for the enemy in Vietnam. And again in Desert Storm.

We were armed, alone and unafraid.

Today, jet engines power all the world's

most deadly combat planes.

Compared to the first piston-powered aircraft,

the advent of the jet engine was a quantum leap

in aerodynamic technology.

It allowed combat planes to fly faster,

further and higher than ever before.

I loved it, because it was fast, and fast is life.

I liked the power that it had. It had a five-stage afterburner,

which gave you plenty of power to accelerate.

The skies no longer had limits.

You're seven-some miles above the surface of the Earth,

you're fully engaged the entire flight.

The jet engine let combat planes

burst through the sound barrier and fly

faster than a speeding bullet.

Going supersonic, you don't know you've done it, you can't hear the bang.

It's just a speedo telling you you've gone past Mach 1.

You're aware of the extra pressure in the controls,

but otherwise it's just a number on a dial.

Perhaps the most iconic jet-powered fighter plane is

the British Hawker Siddeley Harrier jump jet.

Powered by a Rolls-Royce Pegasus jet engine,

the Harrier was introduced in 1969.

Four progressive versions followed.

The Harrier jump jet was famous for its extraordinary ability

to take off and land vertically.

A first for a combat plane.

It achieves this by four nozzles

which direct the exhaust of the engine straight down to operate vertically.

How you actually do it is

to move the throttle to half-power,

move the nozzles down into the vertical take-off position,

and then very quickly select full power.

The engine produces 21,500lbs of thrust to lift the aeroplane.

The Harrier jump jet was the pre-eminent British fighter of the Cold War era.

Used by the Royal Air Force and the army,

it served in a variety of roles.

The army needed a close-air-support aeroplane

which could be brought into play quickly onto the battlefield.

It then went on to be developed into an air defence fighter for the Navy.

The Harrier that we had in the Navy was mainly a fighter,

but it also did the other two jobs extremely well,

which was both reconnaissance and strike when we needed to.

That was probably the secret of its success.

Used as a deterrent in the Cold War,

the Harrier would soon showcase its exceptional versatility

and raw jet power in combat.

On April 2nd, 1982,

Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands,

a British colony in the South Atlantic.

And war was declared.

The British task force sent to reclaim the islands,

8,000 miles away, consisted of 28,000 men,

over 100 ships and over 160 aircraft,

including 38 Harrier jump jets.

The main requirement was to achieve air superiority

so that the ships could operate safely.

And in order to do that, you had to be sure that they wouldn't be attacked.

When the task force arrived in the South Atlantic,

the British declared a 200-mile exclusion zone

around the islands. If the Argentinian forces entered,

they would be attacked. But in the sky,

the odds were heavily stacked against Robin Kent's jump jet squadron.

We had 20 aircraft and they had 240.

So, we were concerned that, at odds of twelve to one,

you had to be good and lucky.

Though vastly outnumbered, the British Harrier pilots were

well prepared for their dangerous and deadly mission.

We developed tactics that we thought would be sufficient

to take them in a hook attack.

Key to the strategy was enticing the Argentinian pilots

to drop in altitude to meet the British fighters.

The Harriers operated in pairs.

When one of the Argentinian Mirages dropped down

to attack one of the Harriers, the second British jet

would hook around the back of the Mirage.

And one is now able to

laterally come in, probably blind, and to take a stern shot.

May 1st, 1982,

the British launched an assault to liberate

the Argentinian-held capital of the Islands, Port Stanley.

Then a senior pilot, Robin Kent and his Harrier squadron were

in the air when they spotted the enemy.

The first pair of Mirage IIIs came in.

My wingman and I engaged them,

and we were going to set up exactly that hook manoeuvre.

We subsequently realised they were not going to come down.

We ran in. They came to within about ten miles...

..jettisoned their tanks and started to turn for home.

That happened again on the second sortie, and likewise, the third sortie.

On the fourth sortie, they descended

and started to engage almost immediately.

Flight Lieutenant Barton shot down one of the Mirage IIIs.

At the end of day one, we had five confirmed kills.

Thanks to the Harrier jump jets' power and versatility,

British pilots were able to distinguish themselves

in the war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands.

They flew 1,561 sorties,

shot down 22 enemy aircraft

with a loss of five Harriers and, tragically, one British crew member.

Accidents claimed the lives of three further British crewmen.

The cornerstone of the Harrier jump jets' combat success was

its powerful Rolls-Royce engine.

And for that, thanks are due to a 21-year-old

British Royal Air Force cadet

who sparked the jet age... Frank Whittle.

It was the young pilot who invented the jet engine.

The giant leap into a new age

began less than a century ago in the 1920s.

Frank Whittle came from a very humble background.

He joined the RAF at the age of 16

as a fitter apprentice, and he also became

a pilot, a very good test pilot.

Frank Whittle wrote his revolutionary thesis,

Future Developments In Aircraft Design in 1928.

He was about 20 when he came up with this.

The key thing that Frank Whittle realised was that

the higher you go in altitude, then the air gets much thinner.

At above 30,000 feet,

you can fly faster and further with less fuel.

At a time when the fastest aircraft in the RAF were

only flying at round about 350mph,

Whittle envisaged a new fighter that would fly at least 500mph.

His concept of the turbojet engine was relatively simple.

At the front end, air is sucked into the engine.

There, it's squeezed by the compressor, creating higher-pressure air...

..which then passes into the combustion chamber, and is ignited.

Hot air blasts out the back, producing thrust.

As the turbine blades rotate,

they turn the shaft, drawing in yet more air.

Now all Whittle needed was some funding

to build a jet engine and test his theory.

But the young engineer had a problem.

The Air Ministry wasn't interested. People could not believe

you could have a machine that could, basically,

double the performance of the very best piston engine.

It's too good to believe.

Undeterred, in 1930, Whittle took out a patent

on his jet engine design himself.

Meanwhile, 500 miles away in the heart of Germany,

a young engineer, Hans von Ohain,

had secretly set to work, building a jet-propelled engine.

The UK wasn't aware of all these developments in Germany. It was kept secret.

Von Ohain admitted in his own biography

that he studied the work of Frank Whittle,

his ideas for a jet engine. This was in the public domain.

With World War II looming in the late 1930s,

the race was on to build the first jet engine.

The stakes were high. The side with the fastest plane

would dominate the skies and defeat any enemy.

With the storm clouds of World War II

brewing over Europe in the 1930s,

England and Germany were in a race to build the world's first jet engine.

British aero engineer Frank Whittle

had finally secured some private funding in 1935,

and he formed Jet Powers Ltd,

a company dedicated to building jet engines.

The German engineer found funding too.

Hans von Ohain's support was from an impressive source.

Unlike in the UK, where nobody in officialdom really wanted to know,

in Germany, they were very receptive,

and the Heinkel aeroplane company became very interested

in the potential of jet power supported by the German government.

By April 1937,

von Ohain had fabricated his first test jet engine.

But it would take many more months to find the right fuel and mix

to make it work and not blow up the engine.

The British faced the same problem. But that same month,

on April 12th, 1937,

Frank Whittle won the race.

That was the sort of magic moment,

er, that actually was the birth of the jet engine.

And Frank Whittle was the first person

who actually designed what we now know as a jet engine.

Now the race was on to build

the world's first jet-powered combat plane.

Days after Whittle, Hans von Ohain in Germany,

also successfully ran his first jet engine.

And then set to work building a jet-propelled plane.

At the same time, Frank Whittle was grounded.

The Air Ministry didn't really want

to spend money on an unknown,

er, unquantifiable new technology.

Industry was happy just making piston engines.

They were trying to build as many Spitfires and Hurricanes and others,

cos they anticipated there might be a war within a few years.

But they didn't want to waste time.

Meanwhile, in Germany, on August 27th, 1939,

the Heinkel He 178 took flight.

The German physicist Hans Von Ohain

booked a place in the history books next to Frank Whittle.

The jet age had arrived.

After the war, Whittle and Ohain both ended up in the United States

in retirement. And they got to know each other, and they became friends.

Whittle, his lasting legacy to the world is

he transformed the world with the jet engine.

Four days later, on September 1st, 1939,

Germany invaded Poland... and World War II had begun.

Frank Whittle now got all the funding he needed.

On the 15th of May, 1941,

with their Power Jets' W.1 turbojet engine,

the Gloster E 28/39 Pioneer took to the skies.

The invention of the jet engine has been described

as the most significant invention of the 20th century.

It totally revolutionised aviation.

It consolidated the position of aviation

as the most important weapon in war.

But in the fervoured quest for faster,

higher and deadlier planes to dominate the skies in World War II,

it was the Germans who streaked ahead.

For years after their famous losses in the Battle of Britain,

the Germans had radically redesigned

their frontline fighter planes.

And in 1944, they introduced

the Messerschmitt Me 262.

The Messerschmitt 262 is the world's first operational jet fighter.

And as such, it's years ahead of its time.

The key attributes of the 262, of course, is its speed.

Powered by two Junkers Jumo turbojet engines,

the Me 262 had an operational ceiling

of over 37,000 feet,

a climb rate of over 3,500 feet a minute,

and a blistering top speed

of 541mph.

The 262 is effectively about 100mph faster

than the Allied piston-engined aircraft that are flying up against it.

They simply can't catch it in a straight line.

The secret to its speed was not only

the two turbojet Junkers engines,

the Me 262 also had unique wings

that were swept back from the fuselage.

It was so effective that all the jet fighter planes that followed

also featured a swept wing.

The leading edge of the wing, this swept, er, several degrees,

anywhere from 11 degrees to 45 or 60 degrees,

depending on the design of the aircraft.

In contrast, the first combat planes,

more concerned with stability and manoeuvrability, all featured straight wings.

Up until the advent of the jet,

almost every aircraft design was straight wing,

straight with the body of the aircraft or the fuselage.

Starting with two wings, in some cases, three,

all the way through towards the end of World War II

until the Germans introduced the first 262 jets into combat.

So the main armament of the 262 is

its four 30mm cannons.

It also has provision for 12

air-to-air rockets under each wing.

One of the Me 262's most successful missions

came in the closing months of the war.

On the 18th of March, 1945,

the 262 probably has its best day,

when 37 262s

intercept over 1,000 American bombers

heading towards Berlin in very bad weather.

It must have been pretty horrifying for the B-17 crews,

because 262s are flying way too fast.

They cannot get a beat on them. The P-51s escorting them can't catch them.

The German Me 262s had won the day.

They managed to knock out 24 B-17s,

a number of escort fighters, for the loss of two 262s.

(FIRING)

In all, the Me 262s claimed to have downed

509 Allied aircraft in World War II.

But the German fighter jet came too late

to make a real difference for the Nazis.

The 262 is sometimes described as Hitler's jet.

He had great faith in what it could do to turn around the war.

But in fact, it was really introduced far too late for that.

By that time, the skies were swarming with American aircraft.

So, as well as the 262 can perform,

it'S just completely overwhelmed in the sky.

By the 2nd of September, 1945,

World War II was over.

But the race to build the fastest and most deadly

jet-powered combat planes had just begun.

In the 1950s, a new conflict was heating up,

one that would pit the United States of America

against the Soviet Union - the Cold War.

They first faced off in Korea, Southeast Asia.

The pre-war Japanese colony had been occupied

since the Second World War by the two superpowers, and was split in half.

The Korean Peninsula is effectively divided

between the communist north and the non-communist south.

Korea was divided

on the geographical 38th parallel line.

And Russia was put in control

of the northern part of Korea,

and China and the People's Liberation Army.

In the south, you've got the South Koreans

now governed and controlled by the United States

and their thinking and politics.

And from that point, erm, there was a rumbling of dispute

over who would actually control the whole of the Korean territory.

On June 25th, 1950,

the North Koreans crossed the line.

In 1950, the North Korean people

started to move south, started to move across the 38th parallel.

So, at that point, the first combats of the Cold War had actually begun.

Within two months, before the US could muster its forces,

the South Korean army had been pushed into a corner of the country,

an enclave called the Pusan Perimeter.

But like all modern wars, dominance of the skies

was key to victory.

To do that, the US and its UN allies

needed to field the biggest and fastest planes

with the most powerful engines that they could muster.

The US fightback came in the autumn of 1950.

It was spearheaded in the air by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress,

the piston-powered bomber that, just a few years earlier, helped end World War II.

In September, US-led United Nations forces

landed en masse at Xinxiang.

And thanks to close air support, they drove the communists back to the borders of China.

You could say that America had air superiority

with the strategic bombing to start with.

The B-29s and their long range,

and their very, very capable air crews and pilots,

and a very, very heavily armed aircraft.

The US Air Force ruled the skies.

and just six months into the Korean War,

the Allied UN forces could taste victory.

Then, on November 30th, 1950,

a squadron of US B-29 bombers were

on a mission to strike an enemy airfield

deep in North Korean territory...

..when a mysterious jet-powered fighter

turned their world upside down.

In 1950, the Cold War was at fever pitch

when the two superpowers, America and Russia,

effectively faced off in Southeast Asia.

The age of the jet-powered combat plane had arrived,

and it caught the USA off guard.

Korea, November 30th, 1950,

a squadron of US B-29 bombers were headed

to an enemy airfield in the northwest corner of the country,

when they got the shock of their lives.

Having been used to completely uninterrupted bombing runs,

suddenly this new something had attacked them and passed them.

The gunners on station in the B-29

hadn't seen the aircraft coming, couldn't recognise what it was.

The pilot of the B-29 couldn't identify what it was.

It was there, and gone, and passed them so fast.

What had just happened in those few terrifying seconds

began to dawn on them that

we must actually now have MiG-15s fighting against us.

And that was a pretty terrifying prospect for anybody in the B-29s.

In the race for aerial supremacy,

the communists and their MiGs had just burst into the lead.

The MiG-15 shocks the aviation world.

Nobody is quite prepared to see the swept wing,

ultra-sleek, fast, manoeuvrable MiG-15

as it arrives in Korea. So, this was a huge, huge jump forward.

The revolutionary step-change of the MiG

is harnessing to the heart of any jet aircraft,

which is its jet engine itself.

The very powerful Klimov RD-45 motor

inside the MiG was really what made the difference.

In the Soviet-built MiG-15s,

the powerful Klimov turbojet engine

nearly doubled the average combat plane's top speed.

At 668mph,

the MiG was a world-beater.

The MiG-15 is capable of speeds of just under Mach 1.

What the MiG-15 essentially does is

it takes a new swept-wing design,

very efficient for high subsonic speeds,

and it marries that with a heavy armament -

a 37mm cannon

and two 23mm cannons,

as well as a reliable jet engine.

So, when it hits the skies over Korea,

the B-29s are really in trouble.

MORRIS: The B-29s had had pretty much

unmolested access over that airspace,

and could carry out strategic bombing very, very effectively,

until the MiG-15 arrived.

It can go to 50,000 feet, ultimate ceiling.

These aircraft could now swoop in

and make very, very effective attacks on the B-29s.

And initially in the war, these MiG-15s are actually flown

by Russian pilots. Highly experienced World War II veterans.

So, they are well akin

to aerial warfare, and they're causing havoc.

Tuesday, October 23rd, 1951.

A squadron of nine US Air Force B-29s

left their base in Okinawa, Japan,

en route to Namsi, a North Korean airfield.

MORRIS: It was under development. They needed to take it out.

So they were en route when they were pounced on in that area called MiG Alley.

This was the area of airspace

which led in across North Korea,

along the Yalu river and alongside the Chinese border.

It was the area where MiGs would wait on station at high altitude,

waiting for the incoming B-29 bombers

to start forming up to move in over North Korea.

And at that point, the MiGs would pounce.

So anybody in that area in a B-29

soon became very vulnerable.

Only able to reach a top speed of 365mph,

the big American bombers were no match for the lightning-fast MiGs.

The Americans would call this day Black Tuesday.

The MiG-15s could now dive down and attack

the B-29 in waves,

completely unhindered, to attack the B-29 forces at will.

On that fateful day, on Black Tuesday,

six of the nine B-29 Fortresses

were taken down in that one raid alone.

Devastating blow to the B-29 forces.

For that one moment in time, the MiG-15 was a world-beater, and everybody knew it.

Incredibly, the secret behind the MiG's success

was that the Klimov engine was, in actuality,

a Rolls-Royce jet engine in all but name.

Keen to thaw Anglo-Soviet relations,

and given assurance that the engines were for non-military use,

British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee,

gave Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin,

a batch of Rolls-Royce Nene engines

and the licence to replicate them.

FELSTEAD: Now, Stalin's response to this is, "Who would be s ostupid?"

But the Brits are, apparently, only too happy

to offer this engine.

The Soviet version was renamed the Klimov RD-45.

And a few years later, it's that Rolls-Royce Nene engine

that is powering the MiG-15

over the Korean Peninsula, shooting down UN aircraft.

To win the war, the Americans and their UN allies,

among them, Britain, France and Australia,

first had to dominate the skies.

To do that, they needed to best the MiGs urgently.

So, they radically improved their own jet fighter,

the F-86 Sabre.

The Americans had started development of the F-86.

And then it was rushed into production, rushed to Korea.

The F-86 is actually very similar to the MiG-15.

It has that single-engine,

swept-wing design.

The one key difference between the two is,

rather than the heavy cannon armament

of the MiG-15, the F-86 is armed

with six .50-calibre machine guns.

So, we're talking about just getting

more lead in the air, really, for the American aircraft.

Powered by a General Electric J47 turbojet engine,

the final version of the F-86 deployed in Korea

had 5,200lbs of thrust

and a top speed of 678mph.

That made it faster than the MiG.

And in a dive, the American F-86

could go supersonic,

faster than the speed of sound.

MATTHEWS: This is the North American F-86 Sabre jet,

built in 1952. They made

just under 10,000 F-86s in various models.

With each model of the F-86

came technological upgrades, designed to give

American pilots the combat edge.

This is an iconic aeroplane, it was a groundbreaker in many ways.

This was the first swept-wing jet that the Allies had.

With its wing swept back to 35 degrees,

the extreme buffering experienced

as a plane nears supersonic speeds is dissipated.

And the plane's wings allow it to achieve Mach speed

and slice through the sound barrier.

You had to get up to 40,000 feet,

turn over upside down and point the nose straight down.

And around 30,000 feet, you finally went through

the speed of sound, and you said, "Oh, good. I'm supersonic."

For sheer speed, the American F-86 Sabre

now had the edge over the Soviet MiG.

But the MiG had greater mobility and could still outclimb the Sabre.

In an aerial dogfight, those abilities were vital.

MORRIS: The F-86 developed very quickly,

which the US knew it had to do to keep up with combating the MiG.

In the battle to beat the MiG, the American designers

ingeniously modified the Sabre's tail section.

MATTHEWS: The original F-86 was fairly stock.

Then someone came up with the brilliant notion of the flying tail...

..for the E and the F models, the horizontal stabiliser moving.

Outfitted with a unique flying tail,

the American Sabre was now far more manoeuvrable.

Most importantly, it could outrun,

out-roll and out-dive the MiG.

If I were looking at a straight match between the aircraft,

I think the F-86

might have a slight edge,

given that it can dive through Mach 1, and the MiG can't do that.

It's a great delight to fly. The thrust of the engine

versus the weight of the aircraft is very advantageous.

So, it's very light and quick.

It was truly one of the last fun aeroplanes to fly, I think.

The Sabre jet was stripped to the bone for action.

It's got a highly pressurised cockpit,

and you must be on oxygen all the time.

50% of the atmosphere of the Earth is gone by 18,000 feet.

So, in the 40s, it's extremely thin.

It's in a very hostile atmospheric environment.

Temperatures down to 40

and 50 degrees Celsius below zero.

With major Allied US and UN bombing raids

strategically pounding North Korean targets,

the F-86's task was to provide

bomber protection for runs along MiG Alley.

The difference in just one year was

that the American jet fighter in 1953 was

more than ready to go head-to-head

with the MiGs for control of the skies.

Korea, 1953.

The Cold War between America and the Soviets was being played out

on the far side of the world.

Armed with an upgraded jet-powered combat plane,

the Americans were now prepared for the new era of aerial warfare.

Capable of supersonic speeds,

and outfitted with a unique flying tail,

the American F-86 F was built for one purpose -

to take down the North Korean MiGs.

In the war, the American Sabres were primarily tasked

with escorting Allied bombers on raids.

That meant they first had to pass through the northwest corner of Korea,

an area heavily patrolled by the enemy.

It was known as MiG Alley.

MATTHEWS: The MiGs would come in as high as 50,000 feet

and jump the F-86 fighters,

who were at their maximum altitude

of 45,000 feet. Then the fight would start.

An F-86 US Air Force pilot during the Korean War,

Jim Shelton, has first-hand experience

of the Sabre's awesome firepower.

It had six .50-calibre machine guns.

When you're coming down at a target and you squeeze the trigger,

you thought the aeroplane stood still while the guns were firing.

Powered by a supersonic turbojet engine,

the new American F-86 F

turned the tables on their Cold War adversaries.

The numbers are debatable, but by the end of the Korean conflict,

the US and Allied UN F-86 pilots

claimed to have shot down as many as 792 MiGs

for a loss of only 78 Sabres.

By the end of the war, the F-86

pretty much holds sway in the skies over Korea.

SHELTON JR: The MiG-15 could probably outperform.

It could climb faster than the F-86.

It's just that our pilots were so much more skilled.

But air power and pilots on their own

couldn't win the Korean War.

On July 27th, 1953,

an armistice agreement was signed.

It permanently divided the country in two,

north and south, along the 38th parallel.

By 1960, the Cold War between the USSR and the United States

was heating up again.

And both sides were rapidly re-arming to gain the advantage.

Once again, a new generation of jet engine

was about to play a pivotal role in the outcome.

The American Air Force needed a low-flying, supersonic bomber.

And the US Navy wanted a fighter jet it could launch

off an aircraft carrier to protect its ships. The answer -

the General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark strike plane.

It was the Cadillac of the fleet. That's how I used to call it.

For which role, for interdiction,

long-range, it was the Cadillac.

Of the many standout features,

the F-111 was the first aircraft

to have a swing or variable-geometry wing.

The F-111, the swing wings

from 16 degrees to 72 degrees

sweep back.

The swing wing on the F-111

gave you the capability to go fast

for attack mode, er,

or slow for landing. And it was excellent.

To generate maximum lift at take-off,

the wings are set at a 16-degree angle

away from the aircraft's fuselage.

After airborne, gear flaps up, we went to 26,

which was a good cruising altitude.

But then, when we went down, we would usually swing to 45.

At high altitudes, and to go supersonic,

the wings are swept back a full 72 degrees.

At the heart of the F-111's peerless power,

the Pratt and Whitney TF30 P-111,

the world's first turbofan afterburning engine.

It had two of 'em, and, er,

it had about 18,000 lbs of thrust per engine.

And it had twin engines, which gave you redundancy

if indeed you lost one, which occurred to me one time

when I had, er, oil-line failure and I had to shut an engine down.

A turbofan has a turbojet engine at its core.

What makes it more powerful is an additional chamber surrounding the core.

A huge fan draws air in. Squeezed,

it then enters the combustor, where it's ignited.

The fan also sends air through a large cylinder

that wraps around the core. The extra air

cools the engine and reduces noise.

But most importantly, in the F-111,

its turbofan produces much more thrust.

This made it quiet, fast and deadly.

At low altitude, the F-111 could fly

at speeds of Mach 1.2.

Over 150mph faster than the speed of sound.

And at high altitude, a blistering Mach 2.5.

In addition to raw power, the extra fuel efficiency provided

by the two turbofan engines

extended the F-111's range.

It had an excellent long-range capability

of about 2,500 nautical miles, unrefuelled.

When the US increased its military presence

in Vietnam in the mid-1960s,

they deployed the F-111s.

In 1972, they were tasked

with destroying North Vietnamese airfields

in what was known as the Linebacker Raids.

In Vietnam, it was called Whispering Death,

because, er, they could not see it at night, or in the weather.

They couldn't hear it, it was so fast. By the time they heard it,

they couldn't get their guns around, or get a lock.

We were armed, alone and unafraid.

In Vietnam, it found its niche in life.

It was so fast and low. It could fly at night, and in the weather.

The F-111 had a state-of-the-art

all-terrain-tracking radar system,

which allowed it to hug the ground.

And it was a clue to its inauspicious moniker, the Aardvark.

The Aardvark, which was an anteater, you can tell

when you look at the F-111, how the nose looks like it's snooping

along the ground, like an anteater does,

looking for ants, sniffing for targets.

To me, it's the biggest thing. The terrain-following radar,

which looked vertically.

And it had another radar, similar, called

situation awareness radar, and it looked horizontally.

The American F-111's combat record

in Vietnam was outstanding.

It flew 4,000 missions, and only six Aardvarks were lost.

When in 1990, Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army invaded Kuwait,

it ignited the Gulf War.

Jet-powered combat planes were about to prove more decisive than ever.

The F-111's were once again called into action.

On January 17th, 1991,

Operation Desert Storm was launched.

Among the US and coalition assets,

66 F-111 strike planes.

It's all-terrain radar and ground-hugging abilities

made it ideal for Desert Storm.

It was to take out mainly the air defence sites,

destroy the airfields. That was its main purpose.

Retooled for a new war with digitally enhanced

laser-guided munitions, the upgraded F-111s

were at the tip of the spear.

So, when it went into combat, it had not only conventional bombs,

but laser-guided bombs as well.

During Desert Storm, the American F-111s were

sent to take out command and control centres.

For what would be a concrete-busting mission,

they carried an extraordinary payload.

There was a bomb called the GBU-28.

And it was a 5,000lb bomb

designed for that F-111. Bunker buster.

After decimating the Iraqis' command and communication centres,

the F-111s were redirected to tank-busting duty,

tasked with taking out armoured vehicles.

WHITEHOUSE: And they would drop these laser-guided bombs...

..right down the line. Laser-designating it, and dropping one bomb, one target.

So, it destroyed or immobilised

much of their armour. It was very effective.

Operation Desert Storm

ended on February 28th, 1991.

The American F-111 Aardvarks had excelled.

In all, they flew over 5,000 missions in Iraq.

And they destroyed over 1,500 tanks and armoured vehicles.

The last F-111 to serve was retired in 2010.

It's earned a place in the pantheon of great jet-powered combat planes

that have revolutionised aerial warfare.

And it was all thanks to Frank Whittle

and his invention of the jet engine.

HARPER: The jet engine was

invented in the early 1940s.

What did that change? Suddenly, the performance,

the speed of aeroplanes increased significantly.

The big difference is, you get there faster.

Therefore, in a given period of time, you can go further.

Today, there are some 20,000 military jets

actively being flown by air forces around the world.

With aerodynamic technology

constantly being perfected and re-imagined,

the promise is that with each new generation of jet engines,

combat planes will fly even further, faster

and engage adversaries with ever-increasing ferocity

well into the 21st century.

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