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Aviation History
1955
1955 - 1111.PDF
FLIGHT, 223 12 August 1955 "Flight" photograph ISTOL BRITANNIA By the Technical Editor MOST of the best things of man's creation are the result ofpainstaking development. Sudden inspiration during theprocess no doubt plays its part, but nearly all the really great things, from Beethoven's symphonies to successful airliners,have undergone numerous changes before finally emerging in the form in which posterity remembers them. It is now three years since we published any detailed descriptionof the Bristol Britannia airliner. Our analysis of August 22nd, 1952, was necessarily of a preliminary nature. At that time the firstprototype had yet to fly, and the various enlarged versions of the aircraft now being developed were not even on the drawingboards. In view of this, we have prepared a further, and con- siderably amplified, description of the Britannia, tracing itsdevelopment during the past three years. It has already been announced that the first fifteen productionmachines to be built at Bristol will have the designation Britannia 100 and are to go into service with B.O.A.C. Apart from G-ALBO,the first prototype, which is the property of the Ministry of Supply, these 15 aircraft will be the only machines of their typeto be built. We have accordingly based our description upon the later types of Britannia and have referred to the Series 100 onlyfor purposes of comparison. Structure. Although conventional in that it does not make useof any unusual materials or integrally stiffened portions, the Britannia airframe is undoubtedly one of the most efficient aircraftstructures yet achieved; "clean-limbed" is the appropriate adjective to apply to it. The percentage structure weight of the laterBritannias is no more than 22.2 per cent, a value which represents the culmination of many years of structural development at Bristolin a wide programme founded on the work which was carried out in connection with the Brabazon.High-strength light alloy is the basic airframe material. Major joints are riveted and all external riveting is of the close-toleranceflush variety employing spin dimpling (and other methods fully described in our associate journal Aircraft Production during1951). In addition, the Redux method of metal bonding is widely employed in all double-skin components such as pressurebulkheads, leading-edges with a corrugated inner skin for de-icing air, box ribs, and for skin reinforcement where locally required. As the main drawing shows, the wing has a taper-box sparbounded by webs at 15 and 50 per cent chord, the latter taking shear loads only. All end-loads due to bending are accommodatedby the upper and lower skins and the span-wise stringers. As a result, the wing has already been shown to have excellent resistance
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