There is a break in the cloud, and I gently squeeze the controls to guide the aircraft into the blue brightness beyond. The Cessna 400 – a capsule of sleek, swift, American-made luxury – climbs rapidly to 12,000ft, the green flatness of Florida just visible below through a threadbare carpet of clouds.

Behind us is Bartow Airport, where our flight began, and where the streamlined, carbon-fibre and plastic Cessna was parked next to a 1940s US military biplane trainer. It looked like much more than half a century divided the two.