at the 1952 Farnborough show...
...Standing in the aircraft park, Duke had watched as the test pilot, John Derry, and his navigator, Anthony Richards, broke the sound barrier in their black de Havilland Dh110. Then catastrophe ensued. The jet disintegrated, its crew perished and 28 spectators were killed by flying debris.
Minutes later, Duke took off in the Hunter. It was, he recalled in his autobiography Test Pilot (1953), a lovely day for flying. Eight miles above Odiham he dived the fighter at 40 degrees, descending at 50,000 feet a minute. Minutes later, the Hunter's sonic boom reverberated around Farnborough. The show had gone on. "It was characteristic of you," prime minister Winston Churchill wrote to Duke, "to go up yesterday after the shocking accident."...
