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Aviation History
1950
1950 - 0273.PDF
FLIGHT, 9 February 1950 photograph \ Slow but reliable : the H.P. 42s gave many years of faithful service on Imperial Airways routes. Passengers appreciaiefl Lliuli uuiufuiL. siderable advance in speed, its four Armstrong Siddeley Tigers giving a maximum cruising speed of 170 m.p.h. In many respects it was the prototype of modern airliners* and its first flight, in the hands of Charles Turner-Hughes, made the headlmes,in the daily papers. Fourteen of them were delivered, and they finished their career with valuable war-service. In June, 1938, the prototype Douglas DC-4 (138ft span, 66,500 lb a.u.w.) made its first flight. Though the produc- tion aircraft which followed were admittedly somewhat smaller, no one who saw the great number of DC-4S per- forming regularly on the Berlin Air Lift nine years later could have credited how fearsome a monster it was con- sidered to be when it first flew. Yet the DC-4 today is now classed among medium-size aircraft! The large flying-boats have never aroused such specula- tion over their prototype flights as have the landplanes— mainly, perhaps, because water provides almost unlimited take-off and alighting space. The first really big flying- boat was the Curtiss-Wanamaker America, designed in 1913 to fly the Atlantic. When war came in 1914 prepara- tions for the flight were abandoned. Lt. Cdr. John Porte, R.N., who had helped with the design, took over the boat on behalf of the British Admiralty, and from it were evolved the series of "F" (for Felixstowe) boats which gave such fine service in the first war, comparable with that given by Sunderlands in the more recent struggle. The It is the author's view that the Shetland (150ft span), here seen with civil markings, should have gone into airline service. F.2 had a span of 102ft, and two 350 h.p. Rolls-Royce Eagles gave it a speed of 85 m.p.h. From the F.2 the Felixstowe Fury was developed. She was a triplane, the span of whose two upper wings was 125ft, or 2ft bigger than the span of a Constellation. All-up weight was 23,400 lb. Power was derived from five Rolls- Royce Eagles which had been tuned to give 375 h.p. each. * The first flight was made by Maj. Arthur Cooper on November nth, 1918, as the maroons were signalling the Armistice. So great was confidence in the big flying-boat that six of those who had helped in the design went as passengers for the fun of it. Some months later the Fury was wrecked when taking-off, much overloaded with petrol, for a non-stop flight from Plymouth to Lisbon. In 1930 the world was amazed by the appearance of the Dornier Do. X. This was a great monoplane flying-boat with a span of 157ft 5m, powered at first by 12 German- built Bristol j upiter engines mounted in a row of six tandem pairs above the wing. It was probably the noisiest aircraft, from the passengers' point of view, that has ever been built. Later the Jupiters were replaced by water- cooled Curtiss Conquerors, because the air-cooled units did not get ai sufficiently strong airstream to cool them—the Do. X was very slow. After many vicissitudes, it flew across the Atlantic and back, and gave Berliners their first sight of a flying-boat by alighting on the Havelsee—on which Hythes and Sunderlands of the Air Lift were to operate nearly 20 years later. Two more Do. Xs were built and sold to Italy. Three years later Britain produced the Short R6/28 or Sarafand, runner-up to the Do.X as the world's largest flying-boat. Powered with six 820 h.p. R/3lls-Royce Buzzards, it had an all-up weight of 70,000 1b ; the span of its biplane wings was 120ft. In 1936 came the Short C-class boats, 29 of which were ordered off the drawing-board for Imperial Airways. Their span was 112ft and from them have been developed the Sunderlands, Sandringhams and Solents. The Short Shetland, with a span of, I5oft1 was success- fully flown in 1945. If an order had been placed for 50 of them before the war ended, they could have been con-v verted for passenger use, and might have put B.O.A.C. in the lead, and flying-boats as real rivals to landplanes. Coming up to really recent times, in November, 1947, the Howard Hughes Hercules, a huge wooden flying-boat with a span of 320ft, made a short flight. Hughes was able to take it to a height of about 100ft for a mile or so as he had unlimited water space before him to put it down if all were not well. The fact that we have heard little more of it since then suggests that all was not well! And now we await the prototype flights of the Saunders- Roe Princess, of 220ft wing span and ten tons heavier than the Brabazon. The first flight is expected next year. Will there come a day when we and our descendants look back on her as an aircraft of the medium-size class ?
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