Video. A day out with a pair of Bristols.

[John Hill]

Back and forth across Cook Strait, probably following a well worn groove each way!

[TheGreenAnger]

Look at the Bristols on this one!

viewtopic.php?p=358328#p358328

Great video John. I would have loved to have seen an Argosy in the air.

[CharlieOneSix]

Second go at writing this - the first disappeared.

Some confusion I think. The Bristol was a Bristol Type 170 Freighter - or Frightener some would say. The Armstrong Whitworth Argosy has four Darts. As a teenager I saw the Type 170 regularly as it flew over our house in Bournemouth on the Hurn-Cherbourg route. I knew one of the Captains - see the Guess the Aircraft thread.

The last airworthy Type 170 in the UK crashed in 1996 on take off at Enstone when a swing developed.

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[TheGreenAnger]

Second go at writing this - the first disappeared.

Some confusion I think. The Bristol was a Bristol Type 170 Freighter - or Frightener some would say. The Armstrong Whitworth Argosy has four Darts. As a teenager I saw the Type 170 regularly as it flew over our house in Bournemouth on the Hurn-Cherbourg route. I knew one of the Captains - see the Guess the Aircraft thread.

The last airworthy Type 170 in the UK crashed in 1996 on take off at Enstone when a swing developed.
170 enstone.jpg

Sorry about the confusion, I was referring to the Bristol Hercules engines, which the powered the Bristol Freighter and the Nord Nortatlas, which used the SNECMA-built Bristol Hercules 738/9 (different models in either aircraft but enough for the innuendo). My confusing comment about the Argosy, was a random one prompted by the Argosy Trust who made the film.

What a sad end to that Bristol Freighter. I was talking to somebody at Lydd recently who was talking about the days when the Bristol Freighter flew from there.

[TheGreenAnger]

A sad tale...

The last Bristol Freighter delivered to the New Zealand Air Force. BA staff part of the dramatis personae!

[Pontius Navigator]

Look at the Bristols on this one!

viewtopic.php?p=358328#p358328

Great video John. I would have loved to have seen an Argosy in the air.

The Whistling Wheelbarrow. The bomber version could carry 8x1 000 lb bombs.

[TheGreenAnger]

https://reports.aviation-safety.net/199 ... C-FDFC.pdf

[John Hill]

Straits Air Freight Express, SAFE had a dozen or so 'Frighteners' and 2 of the Whistling Wheelbarrows.

Using the company's own designed 'cargon' system a B170 could do a turn around in 15 minutes. They also had people pods for the B170s and the Argosys to carry passengers to and from Chatham Island which is about 870kms east of Christchurch.

Incidentally Chatham Island's airport is the furthest from Heathrow you could fly to without being on the way back.

[John Hill]

My late friend Mike demonstrates leg room in the people pod on a 'Barrow.

[TheGreenAnger]

More Kiwi Bristol Freighter stuff...



I guess this was an aircraft that one could have fallen in love with.

[G-CPTN]

I have to confess that the phrase "A pair of Bristols" still gets me amazingly excited.

I don't suppose that anything will change at my stage in life.

[Boac]

G-C - how is your heart/blood pressure? Check out 4 Bristols!

[G-CPTN]

I have never (yet) met anyone with four Bristols.

I have heard rumours of 'three' - but never encountered this.

They say (!) that the third one is mounted midway 'on the rear'.

That would seem to be a reasonable pleasure.

[John Hill]

The Bristol Frighteners were somewhat renown for their vertical take offs into a northerly wind at Wellington.

[John Hill]

The queen of them all was the Solent with her four Bristol Centaurus engines taking a very lucky few for a week long tour of the beautiful islands of the South Pacific.

[TheGreenAnger]

Even a single Bristol Hercules is interesting. Harry Ricardo and Sir Roy Feddon "done good!"



Basic design goes back to the late 30's and conintued in commercial use, up into the 1970's in aircraft like the the Bristol 170 Freighter!

The Hercules was first produced by the Bristol Engine Company in 1939. It is a 14 cylinder, two-row, supercharged, air-cooled, radial engine with a displacement of 38.7 litres. The Hercules I developed 1,375 hp. The engine was modified during the early years of the war such that the most widely built version, the Hercules XVI, was able to deliver 1,650 hp.

The engine’s design employed sleeve valves in which a machined sleeve fits between the piston and the cylinder wall where it rotates from side-to-side and slides up and down within the cylinder. As it does so, ports in the side of the sleeve align with the cylinder’s inlet and exhaust ports at the appropriate stages in the engine’s cycle.

Bomber Command aircraft powered by Bristol Hercules engines included all of the Short Stirlings, most of the Wellingtons, the Lancaster Mk. II’s, and most later model Halifaxes.

The Hercules XVI was the engine primarily used on the Halifax bomber Mk III and VII. This Hercules had a carburetor. When fitted to the Halifax (instead of the Merlins on earlier marks of Halifax) the aircraft became a formidable bomber.

The most powerful Hercules engine in wartime was the fuel injected Hercules 100 that was fitted to the Halifax Mk VI. Only a few hundred Hercules 100’s were built because of mass production demands. They produced 150 more hp per engine at high altitude due to the “new” fuel injection system that replaced the carburetor.

The engine was also used on the Bristol Beaufighter, a highly successful night-fighter, fighter-bomber, and torpedo bomber and the Armstrong Whitworth Albemarle.

A total of over 57,400 Hercules engines were built. It was one of the most reliable aircraft engines of the era and was well liked by both pilots and mechanics.

The Hercules powered a number of aircraft including Bristol's own Beaufighter heavy fighter design although it was more commonly used on bombers. The Hercules also saw use in civilian designs. The design was also licensed for production in France by SNECMA. It was considered to be one of the most reliable aircraft engines of the era, and was well liked by both pilots and mechanics.

A total of over 57,400 Hercules engines were built.

https://www.bombercommandmuseum.ca/coll ... -hercules/

[TheGreenAnger]

owner was a Silver City Bristol 170 pilot, John Pothecary, and in the same hangar he also owned a Comper Swift, G-ABUU.

I bought Douglas Whybrow's book "Air Ferry: Story of Silver City and Channel Air Bridge" about Silver City's founder Air Commodore Griffith "Taffy" Powell and the history of the company some months back. It is a fascinating story.

Like me, the author of the following piece was apt to ruminate about Silver City in the cafe, over a cup of tea, at Lydd.

You don’t have to travel too far back in time to reach an age when the Channel Tunnel was nothing more than an idea in the head of a boring engineer. It was only in 1987 that work commenced on tunneling from the British side, with France following in 1990. And it took until the late ’50s before the concept of the drive-on, drive-off car ferry was cracked, ending the sense of dread that drivers felt as they watched their car being hoisted aboard a boat and dropped into an open cargo hold.

Before either of these developments, the bright spark of the day was one Air Commodore Griffith Powell. “Taffy” to his friends and colleagues, Powell worked with the Air Service Department of the Canadian Pacific Railway and would be called to Montreal as Operations Controller of the Atlantic Ferry Organization (ATFERO) when the ferry consortiums had been taken over by the British Ministry of Aircraft Production.

When RAF Ferry Command took over from ATFERO, Taffy Powell was appointed Senior Air Officer to Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick Bowhill—a position he held until the end of World War II.

With the war effort over, in 1945 shareholders in the British Aviation Insurance Company established British Aviation Services with a view to taking care of all the technical needs of the aviation industry. Powell was appointed managing director, and soon they were masterminding projects for clients who had spotted the opportunity for private air services in remote parts of the world, or fixing general charter and goods transport for mining firms.

Against this backdrop, Powell found it frustrating that whenever he wanted to take a break from work and indulge in one of his favorite pastimes—a touring holiday in France—having his Armstrong Siddeley Lancaster loaded aboard a boat for the cross-Channel journey was a time-consuming and, frankly, risk-ridden affair.

Not only that, crossing the Channel by boat was a three-hour trip, and if your sea legs didn’t get the better of you, the tedium of taking two hours to crawl through customs and immigration would.

The answer was staring Powell in the face: Why not load his car aboard one of the freighter versions of the Bristol 170 Freighter? It sported clamshell nose doors that would open like a blue whale’s mouth and swallow all manner of cargo. Two large cars could fit without a problem, with room for other goods as well as space for passenger seating.

On June 15, 1948, up, up, and away went the Bristol 170 Freighter with two cars aboard, its maiden test flight proving a success, hopping the 47 miles from Lympne in Kent to Le Touquet on the north French coast in around 20 minutes.

That July, the first paying passengers booked their place on the new air ferry, albeit on a charter basis. A mere 200 cars were flown back and forth over the season. When business resumed the next spring, it was as a scheduled service. The two Bristol 170s found themselves making eight return trips a day—moving 2700 cars and their passengers by the end of the season.

The two cars would be carried in the forward compartment of the Bristol 170 Freighters, loaded into the nose of the aircraft by being driven up a portable ramp. A separate compartment was set aside for passengers, and the cost was according to the size of the car—small, medium or large, at about £18, £22, and £27 respectively (adjusting for inflation, that’s about £659, £805, and £988 today—or approximately $861, $1052, and $1292).

By 1950, business was, er, flying. Silver City Airways shifted 4000 cars, 1000 motorcycles, and about 15,000 passengers without a single mishap. Soon, larger versions of the Bristol 170—the Superfreighter—would be pressed into duty, capable of comfortably carrying three cars at a time.

Grass airfields at Lympne gave way to venues like Lydd (its HQ) and at its peak, in 1960, the air ferry carried 90,000 vehicles and 220,000 passengers across the Channel, including celebrities of the day like actor David Niven, racing champion Stirling Moss, countless motor racing teams, and even the Queen’s Rolls-Royce. (Silver City’s PR man was John Webb, the motor racing and aviation enthusiast who went on to handle PR for Brands Hatch before becoming its Chief Executive. Which explains how there came to be a Silver City Airway Trophy handed out during Brands’ first ever Boxing Day race meeting.)

However, by 1962, Silver City Airlines touched down for the final time. Substantial losses meant its parent company, British Aviation Services, decided to bail out, selling Silver City to P&O, which restructured and rebranded its new acquisition.

Drinking a cup of tea in the café at Lydd Airport just last week, as I took in the surroundings and history, the appeal of the air ferry was easy to see. The crossing time was just 20 minutes, the environment was relatively exclusive—with no crowds and the right crowd, there were no curbs waiting to do damage to your prized motor car—or other cars packed in like sardines so that doors open against neighboring cars. Plus, I’d gladly take my chances with a light spot of turbulence than I would with a rising swell.

So what went wrong and why can’t we catch the air ferry today? Apparently the short-haul flights meant high running costs for the planes. There was competition, too, in the form of Channel Air Bridge, founded by Freddie Laker, which kept prices down. And then the ferry companies got their act together, designing ships and docks around the practical problem of loading of cars and goods vehicles.

Today you can wander into Lydd Airport, catch sight of a Coastguard helicopter and a pair of old Douglas DC-3 props as you drive past the hangars, and visit the flying club’s café, where the history of aviation line the walls. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably look at pictures of the planes of Silver City Airways being loaded with cars and think to yourself, “Now there’s an idea that could catch on in this day and age.”

https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotiv ... y-airways/

[CharlieOneSix]

.....Grass airfields at Lympne gave way to venues like Lydd.....

Ah, Lympne airfield - good memories of doing detachments there in '70 and/or'71. A friendly place, some superb parties with the Skyways staff!

[1DC]

Worked with a guy who whose Dad was stationed in Hong Kong and the family came back to the UK in a Sunderland, he said it was a trip to remember.They only flew by day and more or less followed the coast all the way home, it took about a week. Imagine being able to do that today.

[TheGreenAnger]

G-C - how is your heart/blood pressure? Check out 4 Bristols!

I had a listen to those Bristols and they sound like Pratt and Whitney's to me!

Yes, I know the Sunderland also used the Bristol Hercules but the mellifluous sound of the Sunderland in that video is made by the beating cylinders of the Pratt and Whitney engine.



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_% ... _Twin_Wasp

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