CURLY:-
And now our rivals took the field,
And we could only kick our heels
And watch the R.100 fly her trials:
Bit of a brute to look at
And built as plain and simple
As ours was built too fancy and complex.
Barnes Wallis
Was a copper-bottomed genius;
Worked out every nut and bolt himself,
A proper one-man band,
Not a committee in sight...
The R.100 cost more or less
Half as much as ours,
But she still had
Twenty tons more lifting power,
And they could put her along
Fifteen knots faster than us:
That's eighty miles an hour
To our sixty-three.
It was egg-on-face time;
No one had expected them
To be this good.
Mind you, they'd been allowed to use
Good old petrol engines,
'Cause they would just be flying
The Canadian run,
While us spoilt darlings
Had the prestige India route...
Our bosses ground their teeth
And seethed in secret conferences.
While all us flying men were busy
Wangling a ride.
And she swam as sure and steady
As a healthy whale;
She sailed through all her tests
And made ready for the crossing.
Then off the lucky beggars went,
No crowds, no fanfares,
Pulling like a train
Across the black Atlantic...
Those Canadians went daft
When she arrived...
Within two weeks a million trippers
Came to Montreal to see her.
And then she calmly trundled home
To a deafening official silence
And the news the crew would now
Go on half-pay.
That's when we heard the story:
How Lucky had run her at full speed
Through the middle of a thunderstorm
Over Quebec.
That damn foolhardy stunt
Could easily have brought her down;
l began to worry just a bit
About our cheerful chief...
