On 10 March 1956, a slender British delta streaked down a measured course over the English south coast and did something no aircraft had ever done: it flew faster than 1,000 miles per hour in level flight. When the timekeepers finished their sums, the Fairey Delta 2 had not just broken the world air speed record — it had shattered it.

The new mark was 1,132 mph. The old one, held by an American F-100 Super Sabre, had been 822. No one had ever raised the record by anything close to that margin. And the pilot who did it, Peter Twiss, had two years earlier crash-landed the very same aircraft after its engine quit in mid-air.

A research jet, not a weapon

The FD.2 was never meant to be a fighter. It was a pure research aircraft, built to explore flight at the edge of the sound barrier and beyond, with a sharply swept delta wing and a long, needle nose. Only two were ever made. Yet in raw speed it embarrassed every operational jet on earth.

Its most famous feature was practical rather than glamorous. At the steep nose-up angle a delta needs to land, the pilot could see nothing ahead, so Fairey hinged the entire nose to droop downward for takeoff and landing. Fifteen years later, engineers building Concorde borrowed exactly that idea.

The story of Britain’s record-breaking little delta.

The man who dead-sticked a rocket

Peter Twiss was no stranger to trouble. A Fleet Air Arm pilot in the Second World War — he shot down enemy aircraft over the Malta convoys and flew night intruder missions in Mosquitos — he joined Fairey as a test pilot in 1946 and would eventually fly more than 140 types. On 17 November 1954, the FD.2’s engine failed and took the hydraulics with it. Twiss glided the powerless jet down to a landing at Boscombe Down, saving the aircraft and earning a royal commendation.

That same repaired airframe carried him into the record books. The team had quietly suspected for a while what it was capable of.

The record run itself demanded two passes over a measured course in opposite directions, at height, with the results averaged. Twiss flew them flawlessly. The margin was so large it startled even the record-keepers.

The record Britain wasted

Here is the melancholy twist. Britain held the fastest aircraft in the world and did almost nothing with it. The FD.2 was research only; no fighter was ever developed from it, and the 1957 Defence White Paper soon slashed manned combat-aircraft projects across the board. One FD.2, WG774, was later rebuilt as the BAC 221 with an ogee delta wing to help design Concorde — a quietly fitting second act.

Twiss lived to 90, appeared in films flying a Swordfish in Sink the Bismarck!, and watched his record stand as a symbol of what post-war Britain could build when it dared. For one day in 1956, a two-off research jet from a company better known for biplanes was, quite simply, the fastest thing with wings.

The Fairey Delta 2 and its 1,132 mph record run.

Period footage of the 1956 record.

Sources: Flight Magazine (1956); Guinness World Records; Fleet Air Arm Museum; The Guardian and Telegraph obituaries of Peter Twiss.