From the bouncing bomb to Concorde, one of the towering figures in post-war aeronautics gives a tour-de-force on his careers and the lessons that he learned along the way or, as he put it, “it is a great temptation when you are my age…to blather away about all of the things that you did in the past and it is a temptation quite frankly that I didn’t resist”.

In 1934 Sir George fancied “a dabble in the aeroplane racket” and started as a draftsman at Vickers, before working with Barnes Wallis, Sydney Camm and Rex Rex Pierson. He discusses such projects as Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bomb, before moving onto the projects that he was involved in such as the Vickers Valiant and the BAC TSR2, as well as the collaborative projects of SEPECAT Jaguar and Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde, whether as Chief Designer or Managing Director or Chairman on the Board. He then goes on to explore the forces that affected the aerospace industry during his career, before looking into his crystal ball to predict the future and make a number of suggestions with the hope that “younger members of the community…. can discern any sort of a message here or there…. and have the courage to do something about it”.

The 62nd Wilbur & Orville Wright Lecture took place on 6 December 1973, the podcast was edited by Mike Stanberry FRAeS and it was digitised thanks to a grant from the Royal Aeronautical Society Foundation.