On an even more positive note the governments of France and Britain agreed to build a supersonic airliner,  John Glenn  became the first American to orbit the Earth, Telstar became the first active communication satellite "Dr No", the first James Bond film, was released and Liverpool offered the World both a television police show called Z Cars and "Love Me Do", the first 7" single by a pop group called The Beatles.

Fifty years later however, Mike Morris asked me to provide a 1962 themed diorama for a British Pathe film night staged by Gloucester Film Makers at St George's Church Centre, Brockworth, on 15 October 2012.  This gave me a chance to both dust off some old favourites as well as let some new models take a bow.

In January 1960 the U.S. Air Force gave Lockheed's Skunk Works the go-ahead for the design, manufacture, and testing of twelve A-12 reconnaissance aircraft. "The aircraft that were to become the Blackbirds were the first to use the 'stealth' technology we developed for radar avoidance," said Chief Designer Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, "The idea of attaining and staying at Mach 3.2 (more than three times the speed of sound) over long flights was the toughest job the Skunk Works ever had and the most difficult of my career".

Aircraft operating at those speeds would require development of special fuels, structural materials, manufacturing tools and techniques, hydraulic fluid, fuel tank sealants, paints, plastics, wiring, and connecting plugs. Everything about the aircraft had to be invented.

The A-12's first flight was in 1962 followed by the YF-12A in 1963 and the SR-71 in 1964. With in-flight refuelling, the SR-71 attained global range and in the 1970s  chalked up records for speed (2,193 mph), altitude (85,069 feet), a trans-Atlantic timing of one hour, fifty-four minutes over 3,470-miles from New York to London and a world speed record of three hours, forty-seven minutes on a 5,463-mile flight from London to Los Angeles. In March 1990, the year the Air Force retired the Blackbirds from service, an SR-71 streaked across the United States in a record sixty-eight minutes on the 2,400-mile flight coast to coast.

This Italeri model of the A-12 was supplied with markings for a later SR-71 numbered 17974.  "Ichi Ban" was the first SR-71A to fly a combat mission, on 21 March 1968, and the last one to be lost, on 21 April 1989.  Both crew members ejected safely over the Philippines and presented one of the "bang seats" as a throne to the cannibal king whose tribes people rescued them from the sea.

Although strongly associated with Gloucestershire through RAF Little Rissington's Central Flying School and the RAF Kemble based Red Arrows, the Folland Gnat was also the last design of William Edward Willoughby "Teddy" Petter CBE, born in 1908 as the son of Sir Ernest Petter, one of the founders of Westland Aircraft of which he later became Technical Director in 1935. In this post he designed the Whirlwind and Welkin twin engined fighters as well as the single engined Westland Lysander army co-operation aircraft.

Petter left Westland in December 1944, after wanting to take over aircraft production as well as design, and moved to English Electric where he created the revolutionary Canberra bomber based on an idea by Westland's Chief Engineer, Arthur Davenport.

Petter also began work on the supersonic Lightning but left English Electric in 1950 over both his desire to be in charge of design as well as production and his increasing doubts over the size and cost of the next generation of fighter aircraft.

With English Electric Lightning development continuing under his former assistant Freddie Page, 1951 saw Petter joined Folland Aircraft, founded from the remains of British Marine Aircraft in 1937 by Henry P. Folland, former Chief Designer for the Gloster Aircraft Company.

First flown in August 1962, XP503 spent most of its active career with 4 FTS before returning to Hawker Siddeley for trials out of Bitteswell, Leicestershire, in 1969. Retired to instructional use at RAF Halton by 1977, the aircraft was acquired by Phoenix Aviation at Bruntingthorpe in the mid 1990s before sale to an American owner in 2000. Registered as N503KC, there have been no reported sightings of the aircraft since.

The prototype Gnat fighter, fitted with a Bristol Orpheus engine, flew for the first time on 18 July 1955 and was was ordered by Finland, where the Gnat was found to need a great deal of ground maintenance, Yugoslavia, where two evaluation aircraft were dispatched by rail, and India - where it proved to be a formidable opponent for Pakistan's Canadair Sabres in the wars of 1965 and 1971. Although faster to altitude and harder to see than the Sabres, control and hydraulic system issues were addressed before the Gnat began licensed production by Hindustan Aircraft as the Ajeet ("Unconquerable").

The sole jet aircraft originated by the Bristol Aeroplane Company was to pave the way for Concorde and, like so many post-War British experimental types was ahead of its time. Drawn up to Air Ministry requirement ER134T,  the twin engined machine was designed to take off from a conventional runway, attain speeds beyond Mach 2 and explore the little known science of kinetics and the subsequent heating effects on airframes.

Several firms took interest in this very advanced specification and the eventual contract was awarded in February 1953 to Bristol, which allocated the type number 188 to three airframes. One was to stay on the ground as a pure test bed while the other two (Constructors numbers 13518 and 13519) were for flight testing. Under contract number KC/2M/04/CB.42(b) these were given serial numbers XF923 and XF926 on 4 January 1954. To support the development of the Vulcan replacement Avro 730 Mach 2 bomber another three Bristol 188s were ordered and allocated the serial numbers XK429, XK434 and XK436. However, this order was subsequently cancelled with the scrapping of the Avro 730 project in 1957, the year of the Duncan Sandys White Paper on Defence.

The very advanced nature of the Bristol 188 meant that 12% chromium stainless steel was used for the construction of the paint-free outer skin over a honeycomb centre - a similarly light but strong technique to that used in building the Handley Page Victor bomber. However, problems with a new Argon arc-welding technique - known as puddle welding - caused long delays and was less than satisfactory: the Bristol 188 weighing in at 40 000 lbs. Nevertheless, W.G. Armstrong Whitworth gave much technical support to Bristol and the resulting aircraft showed how Britain could have led the World in advanced aircraft design and manufacture. Indeed, special "gloves" were made for the thin - and potentially sharp - outer wing section edges to prevent Bristol employees from becoming injured by walking in to them!

May 1960 saw the first airframe delivered to Farnborough for structural tests before moving on to Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) Bedford. XF923 undertook the first taxiing trials on 26 April 1961 but the first flight from Filton - with 41 year old Chief Test Pilot Godfrey L. Auty at the controls - was not until 14 April 1962.

The Hawker Siddeley 125 business jet first flew from Hatfield on 13 August 1962 with renowned test pilot Chris Capper at the controls.  It had originally been designed by de Havilland  as a faster, longer range pressurised replacement for the twin piston engined Dove of 1947 and was sold as the DH 125 in the USA.  However, a radically new design was chosen as a pace setter for generations of business jets that followed and the first machine flown in only 16 months.

The Dominie T1, first flown in December 1964, saw service until 2011 with the Royal Air Force as its first purpose-built jet-powered navigation trainer, replacing the Armstrong Whitworth Meteor NF (T) 14 as the RAF's standard navigation trainer for advanced students destined for fast jets with front-line squadrons. 

Aboard the twin Bristol Siddeley Viper engined Dominie, pairs of Navigator pupils would typically have received 45 hours of instruction in the air, half of them at night, with an instructor and supernumary, while flown as far afield as Malta and Gibraltar by two pilots.

The more advanced British Aerospace HS125 CC 3 remains in VIP communications service with the RAF's No.32 Squadron at RAF Northolt in north London.

As well as 1 Air Navigation School at RAF Stradishall, some of the 20 Dominies including XS736 ( constructor's number 25072) went to the College of Air Warfare at RAF Manby.  This aircraft survived essentially as modelled into the 1990s but was in the more up-to-date RAF gloss black scheme of 55 Squadron - tasked with training Weapons System Operators -  when withdrawn and cannibalised for parts in 2007.  It is now in use as a training aid at the Defence Chemical Biological Radiological and Nuclear Centre at Winterbourne Gunner near Salisbury.

The Dominie represented by the original Airfix kit was XS712 - constructor's number 25040 - which was delivered to the RAF on 28 August 1965 and has been in private hands as N19CQ since May 2011.

This Bachmann model appeared courtesy of Roger Webb of the Cheltenham GWR Modellers Group and is hauling some typical four wheeled wagons of the 1960s.  As such it carried the headcode 6B64 at the front of the train while facing the first of two Presflo wagons was the alternative passenger express headcode 1C53 - perhaps left over from a previous duty!

In fact the Brush Type 4 - later designated British Rail Class 47 - was just at home at the head of a freight as powering an express passenger train, making the diesel electric Co-Co a modern design classic still in use today.

While D1500 left the Brush works in Loughborough in October 1962, D1746 was outshopped on 8 September 1964 with the works number 526.  Later carrying the identities 47 169 / 47 581 "Great Eastern" and 47 763, the locomotive was scrapped by Sandbach Car & Commercial Dismantlers at Motherwell in September 2003.

Based on the Bedford RL British military truck, the RLHZ was originally issued to the Auxiliary Fire Service in 1953. The AFS - formed just before World War II - was at that time ready to help municipal fire brigades fight the large number of fires anticipated if Britain was ever attacked by large numbers of atomic weapons. For this reason the RLHZ - supplied by Bedford in two and four wheel drive versions - was designed to pump water from lakes, rivers, canals and other sources and maintain pressure for other appliances rather than fight fires directly themselves. In fact a number of Green Goddesses could be plumbed in series to pump water at high pressure through several miles of hose.

Thankfully, no nuclear weapons were ever detonated over Britain but until the AFS was disbanded in 1968 it often used its Self Propelled Pumps to assist local fire fighters at major incidents, especially ones remote from copious water sources.

However, as direct fire fighting was not their primary function, the RLHZs were not equipped with radios, powered cutting equipment or power steering. They were also relatively slow, with a top speed of 65 mph, did not corner well and, due to the wooden construction of the cabins, did not offer the crew of six much protection in the event of an accident. Their water capacity - in tanks without slosh baffles - was also limited to 400 gallons or 300 gallons in the case of the 4x4 variants: much less than more modern appliances.

Despite this, some vehicles were later given warning sirens and blue flashing lights ( as modelled ) and the Green Goddesses were robust and easy to maintain. They were equipped with 33 feet long extension ladders and also featured a self contained petrol fuelled Coventry Climax pump capable of moving 350 gallons a minute.

After 1968 the Bedford RLZHs were stored and maintained by the armed services and brought out to pump water during floods and droughts or to provide limited cover for Fire Service industrial actions in 1977 and 2002.

Since then though, The Fire and Rescue Services Act of 2004 has given national government the power to instruct local Fire and Rescue Authorities to make their own vehicles available in the event of future strikes and more modern Incident Response Units offer higher power pumping ability as well as other intervention equipment.

As such, most Green Goddesses have been sold with many being exported to Africa.

The Vanguard - named after the last battleship of the Royal Navy, launched in 1944 - was Coventry-based Standard Motor Company's first post World War Two design and also the first to carry a new badge based on the highly stylised wings of a mythical Griffin - a whole Griffin later being widely recognised as the badge of Vauxhall vehicles.

The beetle-back styling resembled pre-War American Plymouth automobiles and also the Soviet GAZ-M20 Pobeda which had entered production in 1946.  A two litre petrol engine very similar to the ones built by Standard for Ferguson tractors was fitted while in 1954 the three-box Vanguard Phase II became the first British car with a factory fitted diesel engine option.

Later developments of the Standard Vanguard were the Phase III, Sportsman and Ensign - the latter also being purchased in large numbers by the RAF before the Standard name was dropped by the British Motor Corporation in 1960.

A Standard Vanguard - hand painted black and white -  was also the first car ever owned by Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, who bought it from Johnny Hutch, drummer in fellow Liverpool beat combo The Big Three.  Despite being useful for carrying drum kits and friends, Mr Starkey later revealed that he had trouble getting it into second gear and that the tyres were prone to punctures.

Ringo later acquired a Radford Mini converted - possibly by Hoopers - to a hatchback to transport his drums, LLO 836D being first registered to Brian Epstein on 5 May 1966 and then to Richard Starkey on 15 June 1967. 

The reason that Brian Epstein's name is on the log books of Beatle's Minis is that he started a dealership with Terry Doran - called BryDor - which was used to get the Beatles cars at trade prices, with the caveat that other famous stars would come to them because the Beatles did. Terry Doran is also "The Man from the Motor Trade" referred to in the song "She's Leaving Home" on the Beatles' 1967 Sergeant Pepper album.

After two years,  LLO 836D was sold again. After a short spell at the Beatle City museum in Liverpool, it ended up in the hands of Naylor Brothers Restoration.