Derek Smith (television producer) looking at life at a US Air Force base at Mildenhall in East Anglia. (1967) Smith produced "The Flight Deck Story", the history of the aircraft carrier, filmed on HMS Eagle and on USS Enterprise off the coast of Vietnam. He also produced "Mission To Hell", which followed the Bishop of Birmingham Leonard Wilson returning to Singapore to tell his story of war time imprisonment by the Japanese Army. Another military history film Smith made at this time was "Jump Jet", the history of the Hawker Harrier, vertical take-off or land aircraft. A film for the series The World About
Ryan X-13 Vertijet Ryan X-13 Vertijet The Ryan X-13 Vertijet (company designation Model 69) was an experimental vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) jet aircraft flown in the United States in the 1950s. The main objective of the project was to demonstrate the ability of a pure jet to vertically takeoff, hover, transition to horizontal forward flight, and vertically land. Just after World War II, Ryan engineers wondered whether the Ryan/U.S. Navy FR-1 Fireball, which had a thrust-to-weight ratio of 1 at low fuel quantities, would take off vertically. The United States Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics in 1947 awarded Ryan a contract, originally under