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It's early evening on September 27th, 1946 at the de Haviland

Aircraft Company in Hatfield England, just outside London.

On the company's small airfield,

36-year-old test pilot Jeffrey De Haviland Jr.

puts on his leather gloves and folds his tall frame

into the tiny cockpit of a plane called the

de Haviland 108 swallow. It's the latest experimental jet plane from his

father's company and he's about to put it to the ultimate test. The swallow is a strange-looking

aircraft. It's small and sleek, a bullet with massive wings that sweep back towards its stump of a tail.

The de Havlans hope that with these unique design features,

the swallow will go faster than any plane has gone before.

The Havlans ground crew pushes the plane into position.

He waves to a small crowd of bombers, then takes off. The setting sun stretches

the shadows of the trees and the people watching him.

Everything on the ground gets smaller as to Haviland ascends, pointing his plane towards the tidal flats of the Thames River Estuary.

That's where, in a dive starting at 10,000 feet,

he'll attempt to break the speed record.

...