I know you got soul: machines with that certain something

by Jeremy Clarkson

  Immediately he fired the reaction-control jets, using valuable propellant that would be needed to get the ship in the right attitude for re-entry. But that seemed a long way off. Avoiding a crash was more important, so he kept on firing the jets until eventually a crew member saw the satellite and everyone could work out which way to turn. The two craft came within 700 feet of each other.

  So, we marvel then at the skill of the crews and at the technological challenges that NASA has had to overcome. But do we ever stop and wonder what on earth the Space Shuttle is actually for?

  It was conceived in the early seventies and announced on 5 January 1972 by Richard Nixon. He said the Shuttle would transform the frontier of space in the seventies into familiar territory, easily accessible for human endeavour in the eighties and nineties. This wasn’t a lie. But it did turn out to be wrong.

  Originally the plan was for 50 launches a year – nearly one a week – and even as recently as 1985 they were talking about one a fortnight. But they seriously underestimated the time it would take to turn a Shuttle round between missions. I mean, if it lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California, it must be fastened to the back of a Boeing 747 and flown back to Florida at a cost of $750,000. Because of the time and expense of everything, they never really fly more than six or seven times a year.

  There was another problem too. The inference of Nixon’s speech was that soon normal people would be going into space, not just a bunch of white, college-educated American males. But unfortunately the white, college-educated American males didn’t really hold with this. The astronauts felt that if females and plumbers were allowed up there, their status would be eroded. If a plumber can do it…

  Eventually they agreed that civilians could come along, and selected a 37-year-old schoolteacher, Christa McAuliffe. She was plucked from 11,000 applicants, spent a year in training and on 28 January 1986 was strapped into Challenger. Just 74 seconds after take-off an O-ring on the fuel tank broke, and television viewers around the world were treated to the unedifying sight of a Space Shuttle exploding.

  I was in a Fulham pub when the pictures were flashed onto a TV screen above the bar and I remember the whole place fell absolutely silent. Never again, we thought, will any of us see anything quite so violent and quite so shocking. Little did we realise, of course, that on 11 September 2001 we would…

  The Challenger accident was a catastrophe for NASA, and not only because it killed seven people. It was a catastrophe because it didn’t destroy just one Shuttle. It seriously damaged all of them.

  Suddenly the public realised that space travel was not and could never be routine. So the Nixon dream of people popping up there ‘for a laugh’, so to speak, suddenly seemed very far away. And worse, corporate satellites were banned from the cargo area so NASA would never again be exposed to commercial pressure. The military had never been fans of the Shuttle so suddenly it looked like a delivery truck with nothing to deliver, a Shuttle with nowhere to shuttle to. It looked like it was doomed.

  When operations began again two and a half years later I had no idea what they were doing. It seemed like the crews were going up there, eating Phenergan to settle their sicky tummies and then coming back again. They teamed up with the Russians so they could use the Mir Space Station as a stopping-off point, but mostly it all seemed rather pointless.

  It still does actually. Sure, in November 1998 they finally got the first piece of the International Space Station into orbit and the Shuttle became a vital part of that programme. But then came the reentry loss of Columbia, which broke apart 200,000 feet over Texas, and that grounded them again.

  Bush may say that Mars is the next goal but Bush is an idiot. Now everyone is more interested in genetic blueprints and human cloning than space travel.

  So here we are. We’ve already colonised the bit of space that surrounds our planet and we’ve already been to the Moon, which is a useless lump of rock. To progress, we have to start thinking about the moons of Jupiter and the next galaxy, and that means we’re going to need far more power than we have now.

  It seems to me, then, that today the Shuttle is nothing more than a stopgap, a device that keeps our hand in while we think what to do next.

  Each time it takes off its enormous power serves only to demonstrate that, really, it’s nowhere near powerful enough. So, far from being a reminder of how brilliant we are, the poor thing merely reminds us that when it comes to the exploration of space we’re puny and absolutely hopeless.

  GT40

  It was quite a con. I’d managed to convince the producers of ‘old’ Top Gear that we should film a feature about fast Fords through the ages.

  The suits nodded sagely as their new-boy presenter outlined his treatment. We would have a look at cars such as the Cortina 1600E and the Escort RS2000, which would bring a sense of teary nostalgia to the piece, and then we’d look at the new Fiesta turbo for the ‘yoof’ audience. ‘Everyone likes a fast Ford,’ I argued, and they agreed, giving me the green light to set it up.

  I’d given them the sort of marketing speak that TV types love, but actually there was only one reason I wanted to look at souped-up Fords past and present: because it’d mean I’d achieve a dream. I’d get to drive the fastest Ford of them all – the GT40.

  The day arrived and I went through the motions of being excited at the XR3s and the Consul GTs. They’d all been brought along by proud owners who were almost priapic at the notion of having their cars on television, so it would have been churlish to have pointed out that they were merely extras, a bit of padding leading up to the great event.

  I’d loved the GT40 since I was six. At that time Ferraris were so exotic and so alien that there seemed little point in worrying about them. I was living in Doncaster, so I was never going to even see one for heaven’s sake. Whereas Fords were different. I mean, my dad had one of those.

  So when I heard that a Ford was going to Le Mans to take on these exotic alien spaceships from Italy I could sense, even then, that David was loading his sling in readiness for the battle with Goliath. What I didn’t know then is that the GT40 had been born out of spite.

  In the early sixties Ford had been on the verge of buying Ferrari but at the last minute, worried that his beloved race team would be drowned by big-company bureaucracy, Enzo had pulled out of the deal. Henry Ford was so livid at the public rebuttal that he ordered his enormous empire to build a car that would go to Le Mans and make Ferrari look like a team of part-time amateurs.

  The Americans initially offered up a 4.2-litre V8 that produced 350 bhp and a top speed of 207 mph. But this was deemed too wet so it was increased in size to 4.7 litres. And that didn’t work either.

  The early prototypes were nose-light, tail-happy, unreliable dogs but, driven by his need to humiliate Enzo Ferrari, Henry Ford ploughed on. The British team working on the chassis and body, which was 40 inches tall hence the GT40 name, fiddled with aerodynamics and the complexities of fitting a spare wheel under the stubby bonnet. The Americans meanwhile worked on the engine, eventually going the whole hog and coming up with a massive 7-litre V8.

  This did the trick and in 1966 Ford won the greatest race of them all. And not just once either but four times on the trot. Here, then, was a blue-collar street fighter beating a blue-blooded aristocrat. It made a little boy in Doncaster very happy indeed because, so far as I was concerned, it was my dad’s Anglia out there, doing the business.

  And now, nearly thirty years later, I was about to climb into a real GT40 and take it for a spin.

  It wasn’t a racer. It was one of the seven road cars built by Ford to commemorate the victories. There were plans for more, but a road test in a respected American car magazine was critical, saying the detuned V8 with just 300 bhp on tap was not gutsy enough and that, with its big boot on the back, the car was ugly. Ford was incensed and the road project was canned.

  I didn’t care though. I was about to drive a dream and as I opened that low, low door my heart was beating like a
washing machine full of wellingtons.

  I got one leg inside and knew I was in trouble. It didn’t really slide under the dashboard as I’d imagined. So I took it out again and went in backside first, but that didn’t work either. Eventually, with much huffing and puffing, I did get my feet onto the pedals and my bum into the seat, but then the door wouldn’t close because my head was in the way. I had the car. I had the keys. I had the right insurance. But I was just too tall. It was a crushing blow.

  In some ways, though, it was a good thing. They say you should never meet your heroes because they will always be a disappointment. True: when I was four Johnny Morris told me to ‘bugger off’ when I asked for his autograph. And I think it’s the same with cars.

  The simple fact of the matter is that the road-going GT40 is slower, more uncomfortable, less safe, less well equipped than, say, a Golf GTi, and nowhere near as nice to drive. Had I been able to take it for a spin I would have been let down. And that would probably have been worse than not being able to get inside.

  So what about the new GT, built to celebrate Ford’s centenary. Although it can’t be called a GT40, because Ford sold the rights to the name to a kit-car company, it does look like one. Bigger, yes, and sharper round the edges, but there’s no mistaking the shape. It’s beautiful, and brutal and wonderful.

  But unlike the old car, this one is spacious, easy to drive and extraordinarily fast. With a 5.4-litre V8 engine, lifted straight from the Lightning pickup truck, you get 540 lbs feet of torque, 540 bhp and as a result a top speed of 212 mph. That makes it not only faster than the GT40 but faster than any other road car on the market today. The blue-collar, Bruce Springsteen heart still beats.

  Happily, I’m due to get one and I’m sure we’ll have many happy miles together. But when all is said and done it is a fake, a facsimile of the real thing.

  I shall enjoy the car in the garage. But I love the one in the poster above my desk.

  Yamato

  It was an Italian engineer who first came up with the notion of a battleship. Vittorio Cuniberti reasoned way back in 1903 that soon naval vessels would not only have to face attack from the surface. Torpedoes would make them vulnerable from below and, who knows, one day bombs could be dropped by ‘aero craft’ making ships susceptible from above as well.

  His solution was simple. The modern ship, he reckoned, would have to be fast, supremely well armoured and fitted only with massive guns. No more pea-shooters for close-range stuff. Just lots and lots of monsters.

  This way, the battleship could use its speed to get to the right place while its armour resisted any attack from above or below. And then, when it was correctly positioned, the enemy could be bombarded with a hail of 12-inch – or better still 16-inch – shells.

  There was no point fitting smaller supplementary guns. The splashes made when their shells missed the target would obscure the view for the main armament and make life difficult for the loaders in the magazines. If there was only one type of shell in there, the chance of sending the wrong type to the wrong gun was eliminated.

  Sound military reasoning, I’m sure you’ll agree. But there was another advantage to such a huge and powerful ship. Prestige. Let the world know you have a ‘battleship’ and suddenly you are a force to be reckoned with.

  Japan was the first nation to start building such a thing but, inevitably, it was the British who got theirs into the water first. It was constructed in just 100 days, it was christened by King Edward VII and it would give its name to every battleship that ever there was.

  It was called HMS Dreadnought.

  This 17,900-ton monster was protected with armour eleven inches thick and bristled with ten 12-inch guns. That she could move at all was astonishing. That she could do 21 knots was phenomenal. But she could because she was the first large warship ever to be fitted with a steam turbine – a new device that extracted the energy of dry, superheated steam as mechanical movement.

  At the time Britannia ruled the waves. Everyone had known that for two hundred years. But Dreadnought was something else. Dreadnought turned the Royal Navy from a formidable fighting force that could have taken on the navies of France and Russia, at the same time, into something that could have taken on the world.

  Unfortunately, for Britain at least, other countries had also adopted Cuniberti’s ideas. They included Japan, America, Brazil, New Zealand, Argentina, Russia, Turkey, Chile, France and, most worrying of all, Germany.

  Germany had made it plain that its battle fleet would be so strong that ‘even the adversary with the greatest sea power’ – that would be us – ‘would be loath to take it on’.

  Germany had a big advantage too. Its fleet only needed to prowl around in the Baltic and the North Sea, so the ship designers didn’t need to worry about storage for food and fuel, or crew comfort – they’d only be at sea for short periods. British battleships, on the other hand, had to cover an area extending from Hong Kong and Australasia through every ocean on earth. That meant our crews would be away for months so we had to ‘waste’ space on larders and beds. This made the Royal Navy ships unbelievably expensive. Dreadnought had cost £2 million. Ten years later its sisters were costing £3 million and the only way was up.

  Such was the value of our dreadnoughts that Navy commanders had to think up new tactics for using them. In the past they had attacked and killed, and then attacked again. But such was the firepower of the enemy’s new battleships, and such was the cost of ours, that they had to start thinking about defence.

  And not just defence from other battleships either. One puny little mine or one nasty little torpedo could sink these enormous gun platforms if it got past the armour.

  There was a psychological issue too. If the Navy had lost a dreadnought, the effect on morale back at home would have been catastrophic. You could have told the British Tommy that his wife was ugly or that he had a small willy and he wouldn’t have minded. But sink one of his battleships and he’d crumple, a broken and disconsolate man.

  The result was simple. In the new Navy, with its new big ships, attack became a dirty word. Defence was everything.

  So, when the First World War erupted, our ships hung around their home base. And the Germans? Well, they didn’t much want to risk their dreadnoughts either so they too stayed close to home. For the first couple of war years all that happened in the North Sea were brief, high-speed forays by minelayers.

  And then came Jutland, in which the cheaper, less well-armed and armoured battlecruisers from both navies beat the hell out of each other. As the smoke blew away, the giant dreadnoughts were in range and the scene was set for the world’s first battleship battle. It didn’t happen though because the German commander decided a victory would have been good but not that important in the scheme of things, whereas a defeat would have been utterly catastrophic. So, he ordered his fleet to turn for home. And run.

  His opposite number from the Royal Navy could have given chase. We had more, better, faster ships but he was fearful the Germans might have laid mines in their wake. So he too turned away. The result was astonishing. In the entire course of the First World War not a single battleship was sunk by another battleship.

  After hostilities were ended the German fleet was scuppered and a treaty drawn up to limit the size of battleships in the future. This lasted for, ooh, about twenty minutes. Then everyone started gearing up for Round 2.

  By now there were several variations on a theme. Some battleships were coming along with almost no armour at all to make them fast. Some had a protective shell only where it mattered. Others were iron clad from prow to stern. There was much debate on what type of guns should be fitted too and, more importantly, where they should go. The British decided at one point that they wouldn’t have any at the back ‘because we do not run away’, but actually there was a sound reason for this.

  If you have guns fore and aft, you need to turn the ship sideways so they can all be brought to bear on a target. And a ship that’s sideways on to the
enemy is a juicy target. If all its guns are at the front, the ship is much harder to hit.

  Sounds sensible. And it was, but the British Navy did have one disadvantage over all the others. We had tradition. There was a sense in the Senior Service that ‘we do it this way because we always have’. Rate of fire was considered more important, for instance, than accuracy. Because rate of fire is what had won the day at Trafalgar.

  Still, as the Second World War kicked off we were still a force to be reckoned with on the high seas. Unfortunately, the Germans had pretty much caught up again. And so, at 5 a.m. on 24 May 1941, began one of the most famous and disastrous naval battles of all time.

  The battleship KMS Bismarck had been dispatched to the North Atlantic by German High Command to destroy as many merchant ships as possible. As was the way with battleships, the captain had been ordered to avoid at all costs any British warships. They really didn’t want their pride and joy damaged.

  But the British couldn’t allow such a killing machine to roam around the Atlantic at will, disrupting the vital supply lines from America. And since the only way to stop a battleship was with another, we had to bite the bullet so to speak.

  The Bismarck was located and shadowed by four cruisers, none of which could do much to stop it. So they kept their distance until our big guns rolled up. The big guns in question were the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battle-cruiser HMS Hood.