A Yesterday's Witness special
In my aeroplane for two, I will sail away with you.
Don't waste any more time below
Let's get married and up we'll go.
In my aeroplane for two, for miles and miles we'll fly.
Oh what a sensation, a honeymoon in the sky.
This was a song being sung in 1904 within months of the news, from the other side of the Atlantic, that the first flying machine had actually managed to fly.
Tonight's programme starts in the period from the time when the first British pioneers were, literally, getting off the ground: 'The only way to learn to fly was to go and teach yourself. You started to do straight runs, getting faster each time. And then, during one of these "straights", you looked over the side and found the ground was gone!'
With old film - and music - from the archives, with new film of present-day enthusiasts who fly some of these veteran flying machines for fun, and stories by some of the intrepid pioneers themselves, we get a taste of what those golden days of flying-that 'honeymoon in the sky' - was really like.
Narrator JOHN STOCKBRIDGE
Film editor WILLIAM SYMON Producer STEPHEN PEET
(A Night at the Pictures: tomorrow at 5.30 pm)