[2][Note 1] His father was killed on active service in France a few months before his birth and he was brought up by his mother with only her income as a domestic servant.

The Typhoon was subject to severe propeller-induced vibration and to counter this Page developed anti-vibration mountings for the engine and a sprung seat for the pilot.

The Tempest fighter was to be designed to incorporate a laminar flow wing, and the shape of the aerofoil section would be critical in minimizing the effect of air compressibility at 500 m.p.h.

[6] In October he met Teddy Petter who was recruiting a design team for English Electric to develop a jet powered replacement for the Mosquito to specification B1/44 (later to become the Canberra).

When the meal was over, Petter brought out a set of drawings which were too big for the table and the two got down on hands and knees crawled over the design and started its analysis.

[9] Page was certain that to obtain the required high performance, the weapons load and fuel would have to be carried in the fuselage, and that this would need two wing mounted engines.

[4]Prior to this he had worked closely with Petter in building the design team; concerning Roland Beamont's lack of engineering qualifications, Page had pointed out they would "have plenty of good engineers but what was needed was a test pilot with operational experience" [13] In the summer of 1948 English Electric started to develop a design proposal for a supersonic fighter under experimental research specification E.R.103 which would eventually become the Lightning.

[14] By July 1948 their proposal incorporated the stacked engine configuration, a high mounted tail plane, but was designed for Mach 1.5 and a consequence it had a conventional 40° degree swept wing.

[17] On 29 March 1949 MoS granted approval for English Electric to start the detailed design, develop wind tunnel models and build a full size mock up.

[22] After Petter left, the stress of re-establishing the Warton organisation, while maintaining tight control of the Canberra development and the P1 design resulted in period of ill health for Page.

Key projects in BAC and later BAe were three supersonic strike aircraft of great penetrability, the experimental TSR.2 (1964) and the multi-national Jaguar (1968) and Tornado IDS (1974), both with an excellent combat record.

[2] “It has always seemed odd to me that, particularly in UK, financial, commercial and business school people with little or no practical experience or training in the industry are considered to be suitable for the top boardroom posts whereas engineers have been regarded with suspicion.