A minute ago we just announced the Old Buckenham debut of a North American aircraft, the Bronco. It's party piece is being able to fly slowly and land on a postage stamp.
Here's another North American product, but this one very much does not do slow. It's in fact about three and a half times quicker than it's odd looking cousin. This is thanks to an enormous jet engine right in the middle of the aircraft belting out 5,910 lb ft of thrust. We continue to not really understand how you convert that into horsepower but put simply this thing weighs around 7.5 tonnes and Fred, the pilot, can point the nose upwards and be climbing at 9,000 feet every minute.
Rather impressive really for an aircraft which first flew just over two years after the end of WWII. Bolivia kept flying them into the 90's and thousands were built, but today this is one of only a handful. We're extremely lucky that Fred has decided to spend his summer in the UK taking us back to a time when jets didn't bother with having pointy bits at the front in order to go very, very fast. Don't blink when he arrives, in other words, but don't worry; you'll hear him coming.
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