The Brabazon and Charlton Village

Make sure your volume is on: "...your eye was tricked into thinking that it was not going very fast..."

Show transcript

‘It was interesting to see the thing taking off on the runway because it was so large that when it was actually travelling and reached lift-off speed, it seemed to be travelling very, very slowly. Now the human eye can detect speed by the number of times the length of an aeroplane will pass a certain point; now the Brabazon, being so large, took a long time to pass the point, whereas a very tiny aeroplane will pass it many times, and so your eye was tricked into thinking that it was not going very fast.
Now the runway is about two miles long, it rises up to a high point about, I think it's about 60 feet, the rise to the top, and the turning circles at each end were enormous, I think they were about 200 feet in diameter, quite large. But it was quite an interesting thing to see it take off.'

Credit: Filton Community History
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