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Aviation History
1969
1969 - 0851.PDF
• -"tt&l-Y •2«'>.p-a ifim. "Flight photogragh ** The Canberra is 20 By R. A. WALKER ON THE MORNING of Friday, May 13, 1949, the first English Electric A.l lifted off the Warton runway on its maiden flight. This heralded what was to be one of the most successful jet aircraft designs yet flown, if longevity of service is any criteria. Friday the thirteenth was most certainly not an unlucky day for English Electric Aviation and its successor, British Aircraft Corporation, for twenty years later the factories are still extremely busy overhauling and modify ing Canberras for the RAF and overseas air forces, some of which are new customers. The Canberra must therefore be in a unique position in that it serves with 16 different air forces, with at least one other rumoured to be awaiting delivery, and with civil agencies in the USA; all this from a twenty-year-old design. The A.l, named the Canberra in January 1950, was con ceived in 1944 when Mr W. E. W. Petter, the chief designer for English Electric Aviation, investigated the proposal of the Ministry of Aircraft Production for a jet-propelled aircraft to succeed the Typhoon and Whirlwind in the low-level fighter- bomber role. Various designs were projected, and by June 1945 the design had evolved into a mid-wing monoplane powered by a single very large turbojet with a crew of two. Even at this early stage the project bore a resemblance to the Canberra that we now know. It had the long circular fuselage, the fairly large tailplane and the big one-piece elliptical :anopy, the main difference being, of course, the large single mgine. This engine was to be of a two-stage centrifugal type lesigned toy Rolls-iRoyce and (producing a static thrust of at east 12,0001b. The aircraft itself was to be in the 40,0001b :lass with a cruising speed of 500 m.p.h. at 40,000ft. About a month later the design was revised to show two engines mounted in the wing roots, the engines being the axial- flow Rolls-Royce AJ65s, forerunners of the Avon. By changing to this configuration the designer was able to endow the air craft with a larger weapons bay which could carry many combinations of stores including a single 8,0001b bomb. This change also permitted the fuel load to be carried in the fuse lage and any additional fuel then required could be carried in wing leading-edge tanks (integral tanks in fact being introduced on the Canberra B5 and subsequent variants). Wing sweep- back was studied but abandoned as the available power was not sufficient to give the aircraft a high enough Mach number to warrant it; also the associated aerodynamic problems were still largely unsolved at that time. Eventually, in the autumn of 1945, the design crystalised into the shape similar to that which we know today and the Above, Canberra B.2s of 100 Sqn over the Wash, October 1955. Eelcw, prototype English Electric A.I, May 1949
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