Whisked off feet by Ainsley on Concorde

BaCK in the early Sixties, I was technical director of one of the Miles Group of firms in West Sussex. The founder, F. G. Miles, was one of Britain’s greatest unsung inventors, designing and manufacturing dozens of brilliant aircraft, including the world’s first supersonic aircraft — the Miles M.52. It would have gone into production had the air Ministry not declared ‘Man will never fly faster than sound’ and given his designs to the americans, who produced the Bell X-1 in which Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947. not only did FG, as he was known, win the King’s Cup on numerous occasions, piloting his own aircraft, but he also revolutionised letter writing. He got chatting to a young engineer, Laszlo Biro, and they discussed his problem of pens leaking at altitude and pencils fading when writing his log. This led to the birth of the Biro, manufactured at the Miles Martin Biro plant in reading, Berks. It was into this environment that I brought the wonder and joy of the Concorde adventure. Under the guidance of FG, I helped forge a partnership with Intertechnique Sa of France to develop and supply the most advanced fuel quantity measuring system imaginable. It enabled 90-plus tons of fuel to be measured at any altitude, attitude and velocity to better than 2 per cent accuracy. accuracy was essential because the fuel also helped maintained Concorde’s centre of gravity and skin temperature by being pumped continuously among its 13 fuel tanks. The heat generated caused Concorde to expand by 10 in during flight, so cooling the skin was critical. In 1996, I was taking my wife on a safari to Kenya when something astonishing happened. at the Ba check-in at Heathrow, I was told the flight to Mombasa was delayed, but we could have a personal guided tour of Concorde while we waited. It wasn’t a real Ba employee who told me this, but ainsley Harriott, the Tv chef, in disguise. The BBC had set this up as part of a new Tv show dreamworld. We were whisked off to a hangar where we met Chief Concorde Captain Mike Bannister. after a whirlwind tour of Concorde, he thanked me, saying: ‘Had it not been for you I would never have flown Concorde every day as I do.’ He then offered us something ‘not offered to many’ — to step out onto the wing. as Mike and I stood discussing the ins and outs of fuel measurement, my wife was dancing behind us with ainsley! Then Mike said he was off to new york and would we like to join him? of course we did! dreamworld really made my dream come true.

David Bernstein, High Wycombe, Bucks.