Vickers V-1000 the world's first jet-powered commercial transport aircraft, the Vickers Viscount, the world's first turboprop-powered commercial airliner, and the Bristol Britannia, a turboprop-powered aircraft capable of conducting routine transatlantic flights; all of these designs had their origins in the specifications laid out by the wartime Brabazon Committee. With these aircraft, Britain appeared to be on track to capturing a large slice of the global demand for civil aircraft for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the Royal Air Force (RAF) had been pursuing development of a new generation of strategic bombers, these being the Vickers Valiant, the Avro Vulcan, and the Handley Page
Fixed-wing aircraft went into service with the German Luftwaffe and later in the war the British Gloster Meteor entered service but never saw action — top airspeeds of aircraft for that era went as high as 1,130 km/h (702 mph), with the early July 1944 unofficial record flight of the German Me 163B V18 rocket fighter prototype. In October 1947, the Bell X-1 was the first aircraft to exceed the speed of sound. In 1948–49, aircraft transported supplies during the Berlin Blockade. New aircraft types, such as the B-52, were produced during the Cold War. The first jet airliner, the de Havilland