When the first Vickers Viscount lifted off from the grass runway at the company's airfield at Wisley, near London on a damp July morning in 1948, it climbed away not only on its own maiden flight but into aviation history. That modest takeoff, watched by a mustering of cautiously eager Vickers employees, took place with none of the extravagance that one day would be de rigueur for a new airliner debut. What the occasion lacked in pretentiousness, however, it possessed a thousand-fold in significance. Those fortunate spectators witnessed not only the first flight of a brand new aircraft, but also that of the world's first turbine-powered airliner. The event would soon be outshone by the spectacular service entry of the pure jet de Havilland Comet. However, it was the more humble Viscount, propelled by the less dramatic but equally elegant turboprop, that inscribed turbine power into the world airline story. Book jacket.