Cold War Hot Jets

The jet engine is one of the most transformative inventions of the modern age. A crucial discovery in World War II flowing from a golden age of British inventiveness, it was a technology that truly came of age in the 1950s during the early years of the Cold War. Across two programs, James Holland will explore the nail-biting race to build a jet engine before the Nazis, and then the years in 1950s when jet technology came of age in a race to prepare Britain for a potential World War III with the new Soviet enemy.