Brabazon. The World's First Jumbo Airliner

The big aeroplane was affectionately known, after the nickname of her conceptor, the aviation pioneer Lord Brabazon of Tara. He it was who in 1942 had set up a Cabinet Committee to report on the types of civil airliner that Great Britain would need after the war had been fought to a successful conclusion. In all, his committee had recommended five types of machine and the first, the Brabazon I was about to fly - seven years later. This day would see the veteran aviator's latest triumph, coming from the same man who, in 1909, took off with a piglet in a basket strapped alongside him to prove that pigs might fly!