JET PIONEER WHITTLE:

EXCLUSIVE! HIS SON’S MEMORIES

June 2021
Issue No 578,
Vol 49, No 6

HISTORY IN THE AIR SINCE 1911

ALLISON
MUSTANG
Uncovering the truth
about the original P-51s
WIN!
NEW MUSTANG
BOOKS
S Closing date:
19 August 2021

www.

HEATHROW HEAVIES MITCHELL MASTER JUNE 2021 £5.49

Avro Lancastrian in depth, We interview warbird 06

BOAC 747s remembered legend Carl Scholl 9 770143 724156

Untitled-1 1 08/04/2021 10:22:54
 Contents
June 2021
See pages
26-27 for a g
reat
subscription
offer

62

28

WIN!
NEW
36 MUSTANG 66
BOOKS
NEWS AND See page 60
62 FOKKER F.XX
In an age when commercial aviation
COMMENT was being transformed, how did
Fokker get its latest airliner offering so
4 FROM THE EDITOR wrong?
6 NEWS FEATURES 66 AEROPLANE MEETS…
• Buchóns mass for BBC SAS drama CARL SCHOLL
• Shuttleworth ‘Brisfit’ back in the air 28 FRANK WHITTLE More than 40 years of experience have
• New BAHF C-54 flies Eighty years on from the first flight of made this former car mechanic one of
…and the month’s other top aircraft a British jet aircraft, a revealing new the warbird world’s leading experts on
preservation news interview with Sir Frank Whittle’s son the B-25 Mitchell and other big twins
Ian sheds new light on an aeronautical 78 BOAC 747 INTRODUCTION
14 WORKSHOP genius
The Northrop B 5 was once among the BOAC would have introduced the
Swedish Air Force’s most important 36 ATC GLIDING Boeing 747 a year earlier than it did,
combat aircraft. Now, a complete In the Air Training Corps’ 80th were it not for a dispute caused by the
example is being reconstructed anniversary year, we look back to the giant new airliner
great wooden gliders on which so
18 HANGAR TALK many cadets had their first taste of
Steve Slater’s comment on the historic 85 DATABASE: AVRO LANCASTRIAN
flight Very much a
aircraft world
44 VULCAN XH558 product of the
20 FLIGHT LINE After the death of Vulcan to the Sky’s austerity era,
Reflections on aviation history with guiding light, what does the future hold this Lancaster
Denis J. Calvert for this beloved bomber? derivative was
48 ALLISON MUSTANGS the first aircraft
REGULARS Look past the received wisdom and to operate from

22 SKYWRITERS
bust the myths, and the Allison-engined
North American Mustang becomes a
the new London Airport.
Bruce Hales-Dutton IN-DEPTH
15
far more significant aeroplane profiles an unlikely PAGES
24 Q&A
pioneer
Your questions asked and answered
76 PERSONAL ALBUM
A fine portfolio of images from travels 102 A DAY AT THE SHOW
in Papua New Guinea aboard a fleet of
See In May 1989, RAF Wyton staged a
Key.Aero
veteran DC-3s Your Aviation Destination for Canberra celebration to remember
100 REVIEWS details
The latest aviation books and products
COVER IMAGE: The Collings Foundation’s North
assessed SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE American A-36 42-83738, marked as 86th Fighter
106 NEXT MONTH Bomber Group aircraft Baby Carmen. DAVID LEININGER

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 3

 From the
Editor
W
e enjoy, it need hardly be
said, a very broad range of
airshows in the UK — when
things like pandemics don’t
intervene, at least. While the number
of military events may have dwindled
in comparison with the ‘glory days’,
the historic end of the spectrum has
reached heights hitherto unimaginable,
with Shuttleworth and IWM Duxford as
its most prominent trailblazers, while
free-to-attend seafront shows have
been the other significant growth area.
But look in more detail at the types of
event contained in a regular season’s
calendar, and one thing stands out: the
lack of large airfield-based shows, and
by large I mean ‘bigger than Cosford or
Duxford’. A good measure is provided
by the Red Arrows. At how many UK
venues can the audience now see the
RAF Aerobatic Team
operating from the
show site? During
I can’t be alone in
the team’s 2019 UK thinking Scampton
season, truncated
by an overseas tour,
would make a
this was the case splendid venue
only at the Royal
International Air Tattoo. In 2018, it
happened at four: Yeovilton, RIAT,
Farnborough and Biggin Hill. By
contrast, 2019 saw the Patrouille de
France operating from at least 10 of
their domestic venues alone.
In the past 10 years, aside from the
loss of Waddington and Culdrose, we
have seen three large airfield events —
Manston, Leeds East and Scampton —
be staged only once before disappearing,
plus the loss of Farnborough’s public
days and of Dunsfold. This sector of
the industry, which had already been
in significant decline since the 1990s,
has now all but gone. The situation in
France, for one, is very different, thanks
in part to funding sources from levels
of local and regional government that
simply do not exist in the UK.
Aeroplane traces its lineage back to the weekly The Aeroplane,
founded by C. G. Grey in 1911 and published until 1968. It was
relaunched as a monthly in 1973 by Richard T. Riding, editor for 25
ESTABLISHED 1911 years until 1998.
4 www.aeroplanemonthly.com
This was brought further to mind
reading a letter from a reader, Simon
Sanders, in response to a recent
Aeroplane editorial. “I was interested
in your comment that, ‘Most of our
aviation museums are running out of
space’”, Simon wrote. “I know of a site
just north of Lincoln which is to become
vacant shortly. There are three large
buildings ideal for the storage of large
objects, plus a collection of others due
to be vacant shortly. A small museum
occupies half of one and is concerned
with aviation on the site. Historically it is
a gem. Have you guessed yet? Yes, RAF
Scampton.”
Scampton is, at present, due to
close “in late 2022”, with the Red
Arrows moving to Waddington. A local
campaign seeks to preserve the site as
a museum and heritage centre, with
opportunities for
businesses to move
in and retention of
the working airfield.
This would clearly
be an expensive
undertaking,
requiring an in-depth
business plan and firm commitments.
Coming up with the vision is one thing,
making it reality quite another. But,
at the very least, I can’t be alone in
thinking Scampton (which last hosted
an airshow in 2017) would make a
splendid venue for an event along the
lines of the Paris-Villaroche Air Legend
shows staged at Melun-Villaroche,
France, since 2018 — an historic-
orientated, but not exclusively historic,
display at a large airfield venue imbued
with tremendous heritage? And where
better than a part of the country no
longer over-served with major airshows,
but where a love of aviation still looms
large? If any entrepreneurial organisers
are reading this…
Ben Dunnell
CONNECT WITH AEROPLANE…
www.facebook.com/AeroplaneMonthly
@HistoryInTheAir
CONTRIBUTORS THIS MONTH
ANDREW CRITCHELL
Introduced to airshows and
photography by his dad,
Andrew has been hooked
on all things aviation for as
long as he can remember.
Although his professional
life has taken him
elsewhere, he has
moonlighted at many an
airshow and museum. More recently, Andrew has
spent many hours researching and writing his first
book, A Tale of Ten Spitfires. A self-confessed
warbird enthusiast, he enjoys writing about
anything that flies with, or without, an engine!
BRUCE HALES-DUTTON
“When I joined the British
Airports Authority”, says
Bruce, “the public
corporation that operated
our major airports, we used
to say Heathrow was the
world’s premier
international airport. Such
a claim would have been
laughable in 1946, when it opened with tents and
duckboards for passengers about to board the
BSAA Avro Lancastrians bound for South
America. In 1970 the first Boeing 747 arrived, but
not for our long-haul flag-carrier whose
passengers had to wait for a year to enjoy its
comfort. Two fascinating stories, two decades
apart. Telling them has been great fun.”
NICHOLAS JONES
Nicholas is a film-maker
who produced the TV
documentary Whittle —
The Jet Pioneer. He has
made the study of Sir Frank
Whittle his life-long work
and feels honoured to
have known Britain’s
‘genius of the jet’ in his
later years. Nicholas also befriended Whittle’s son
Ian, with whom he works to preserve the legacy
of Sir Frank. From his many conversations with
Ian, Nicholas has discovered fascinating new
aspects to Frank and his work: it is these
revelations which inform his feature, starting on
page 28.
MATTHEW WILLIS
Matthew is more often
known for writing about
British naval aviation, the
more obscure the better, so
it may surprise some to see
him writing about the most
famous US fighter of World
War Two, if not all time, the
P-51 Mustang. This was
almost as much of a surprise to him, after what
started as a straightforward history of the early
variants turned into an all-consuming 10-year
project to document an often-misunderstood
subject. He is currently returning to the familiar
with a study of the Fairey Swordfish.
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
RECWatches_fp.indd 1 12/08/2019 14:43:14
 News
The ARC-operated Buchón, G-AWHK,
NEWS EDITOR: TONY HARMSWORTH
E-MAIL TO: tony.harmsworth@keypublishing.com
TELEPHONE: +44 (0)7791 808044
WRITE TO: Aeroplane, Key Publishing Ltd,
PO Box 100, Stamford, Lincolnshire PE9 1XQ, UK

returns to Duxford after filming at

White Waltham. It is expected to
operate in this scheme during the
2021 season. DAVID WHITWORTH

Previously unseen Battle of Britain film spares ship Buchón C.4K-111/

G-HISP, wearing JG 27 markings, with two-seater C.4K-112/G-AWHC —
already stripped of its desert paint scheme — and C.4K-152/G-AWHR in the
background, after returning to the Air Leasing hangar in late April. AIR LEASING

Buchóns mass for SAS series

W
hite Waltham
airfield in Berkshire
briefly became
a wartime North
African Luftwaffe fighter base
in early April, when a total
of four Hispano HA-1112
Buchóns and two Nord 1002s
— representing Messerschmitt
Bf 109s and Bf 108s, respectively
— were assembled before the
cameras for a new BBC drama
production about Lt Col David
Stirling, founder of the Special
Air Service (SAS). Painted in
Jagdgeschwader 27 markings,
the quartet of Battle of Britain
film veterans made up the largest
gathering of this popular warbird
for a film or TV production in the
UK since that epochal summer
of 1968, when 17 examples were
operated from Duxford airfield.
Three of the Buchóns — C.4K-
152/G-AWHR, C.4K-111/G-HISP
and two-seater C.4K-112/G-
AWHC — came from Air Leasing
at Sywell, being roaded to the
Berkshire airfield. The fourth
machine was the Duxford-based
C.4K-102/G-AWHK, operated
by the Aircraft Restoration
Company and a regular on the
show circuit. Joining them were
Nord 1002s G-ETME and ’OTME.
Based on best-selling author
Ben Macintyre’s book SAS: Rogue
Heroes, the screenplay for the
production of the same name
has been written by Steven
Knight, the man behind one of
the BBC’s most popular drama
series of the past few years,
Peaky Blinders. Piers Wenger,
director of BBC Drama, says,
“Combining a fascinating,
little-known story with all the
intelligence and swagger that
Steven Knight’s writing is known
for, SAS: Rogue Heroes will be
like nothing we’ve seen before”.
Among the cast are Dominic
West, Connor Swindells — star of
the 2018 thriller The Vanishing —
who will play Stirling, and Alfie
Allen, late of Game of Thrones
and the 2019 World War Two
feature film Jojo Rabbit, here
portraying Lt John Steel ‘Jock’
Lewes, of whom Stirling said,
“Jock could far more genuinely
claim to be founder of the SAS
than I”. A transmission date has
not yet been determined, but it is
expected to be broadcast during
early 2022.
The series will see a belated
‘celluloid’ debut for C.4K-111
as a complete aircraft. A former
Spanish Air Force instructional
airframe, C.4K-111 was roaded
from Spain to Henlow in the
spring of 1967 for use in making
the fibreglass replicas for Battle
of Britain, and the following year
was used for filming cockpit
scenes at Pinewood Studios
and as a spares source for the
flyers at Duxford. One of seven
Buchóns acquired by film pilot
Wilson ‘Connie’ Edwards after
the production wrapped, it was
stored at his ranch at Big Spring,
Texas, until becoming part of the
cache of ex-Edwards Buchóns
shipped to Air Leasing. Until
its recent repaint into JG 27
colours, the fuselage retained
its original Spanish Air Force
codes 471-15, having served with
471 Escuadrón, the last unit to
operate the HA-1112 in Spain.

6 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

 News June 2021

‘Brisfit’ flies in NCO aces’ markings

T
he Shuttleworth
Collection’s Bristol F2B
Fighter, D8096/G-AEPH,
made its first post-rebuild
flight at Old Warden on 25 March
at Old Warden, with chief pilot
Paul Stone at the controls. The
1918-built aircraft has been
painted in the colours of an A
Flight, No 22 Squadron machine,
B1162, flown by Sgt Ernest John
Elton from Villeneuve-les-Vertus,
north-eastern France during Shuttleworth chief pilot Paul Stone lifts the restored Bristol
March 1918. F2B from the Old Warden turf on 25 March. Note the highly
On 29 March 1918, Elton shot stylised code letter under the port wing. DARREN HARBAR
down three enemy two-seaters
in 10 minutes. He finished the
war as the highest-scoring RFC/ against German fighters, the aces from the ranks of both pilots with a second appearance at the
RAF non-commissioned pilot, majority being Albatros D.Vs. and observers. evening event on 15 May. All
with 16 victories, 14 of which The F2B was operated by No The refurbished ‘Brisfit’ was Shuttleworth shows are currently
were achieved with Lt Roland 22 Squadron from July 1917 due to make its public debut at drive-in events, and tickets must
Critchley as his gunner in B1162. until 1919, and by the close of the sell-out Season Premiere be booked in advance. For details
All the rest of their kills were hostilities the unit had created 27 show at Old Warden on 2 May, go to www.shuttleworth.org.

A rare sight anywhere else, SE210

Caravelle III SE-DAF is one of
three of the type to be found at
Arlanda, north of Stockholm, but it
is expected to move to Finland in
2022. JAN FORSGREN

Caravelle for Finland

An agreement between the Swedish National Maritime and Transport
Museums (SMTM) and the Aviation Museum Society of Finland
(AMSF) regarding the transfer of Sud SE210 Caravelle III SE-DAF from
the Arlanda Flygsamlingar to Finland has recently been signed, and
the historic jet airliner is due to be dismantled at its current location at
Arlanda airport north of Stockholm and transported to Finland by
August 2022. Currently, no definite decision at which aviation
museum the Caravelle will be put on display has been made.
However, the AMSF hopes the aircraft will be on public display in
time for Finnair’s centenary in 2023.
Between 1960 and 1964, Finnair operated four Caravelle IA/IIIs.
These were later returned to the manufacturer in part-exchange for
newer Caravelle 10B3s, the final examples of which were withdrawn
from use during the early 1980s.
The AMSF has been searching for a Caravelle for quite some time.
Its chairman Janne Salonen says, “From the very beginning it has
been clear to AMSF that the aircraft must be saved from scrapping.
This is also a unique opportunity to get a passenger jet into the
Finnish museum environment. The main cost items are the
transportation of the aircraft to Finland, the restoration and the
placing on display, and these can be divided over several years.”
Originally delivered to Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) in
February 1962, SE-DAF (c/n 112) was named Sven Viking. During the
early 1970s, tentative plans called for it to be transferred to the
Flygvapnet (Swedish Air Force), but this ultimately did not take place.
The final flight in SAS colours was made on 23 September 1974, the
aircraft having accumulated 27,321 flying hours. SE-DAF was then
donated to the Swedish CAA’s historical collection, and placed in
outside storage at Arlanda for a planned civil aviation museum.
Although some regular maintenance work was carried out by the
Arlanda Flygsamlingar Friendship Society, a constant lack of
resources and an abundance of other projects resulted in the
Caravelle remaining in store.
Despite SE-DAF being scheduled to leave Arlanda, two other
Caravelle IIIs can be found at the airport. One, SE-DAA, is owned by
airport operator Swedavia. The cabin has been converted to Airbus
A320 configuration for use during regular exercises. The second,
SE-DAI, is one of two used by the Flygvapnet for signals intelligence-
gathering between 1971 and 1999. Owned by the Flygvapenmuseum
(Swedish Air Force Museum), SE-DAI is maintained by the volunteer
society Le Caravelle Club, whose intention is to restore the aircraft in
SAS colours.

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 7

News June 2021

BAHF’s new Skymaster airborne

J
ust over a year after the Farmingdale,
New Jersey-based Berlin Airlift
Historical Foundation (BAHF)
Douglas C-54E Skymaster N500EJ
Spirit of Freedom was badly damaged during
a hurricane at Waterboro, South Carolina, a
replacement C-54D, N9015Q, flew following
refurbishment by a BAHF team at New
Smyrna Beach, Florida on 24 April. The
following day it was ferried up to Waterboro,
where the Airlift Museum, an important
educational resource within the fuselage of
Spirit of Freedom during its tours around
the USA and Europe for the past 25 years,
will now be removed and installed in
N9015Q.
Recent research has unearthed a strong
Berlin Airlift pedigree for 43-17228/N9015Q.
It flew on Operation ‘Vittles’ from October
1948 until September 1949, spending just a
month-and-a-half of that period out of action
while on a major overhaul. Before being
purchased by the BAHF during August 2020,
the C-54 (see Workshop, Aeroplane February ABOVE: C-54D 43-17228/N9015Q has its Pratt
2021) had last been operated by Island Air & Whitney R-2000 Twin Wasps powered up
at New Smyrna Beach prior to the first flight
Transport. It had not flown since a post- under BAHF ownership on 24 April. RALPH PETTERSEN
landing incident at New Smyrna Beach on
20 August 2014 when the nose undercarriage RIGHT: N9015Q goes nose-to-nose with
leg slowly retracted, damaging the propellers damaged C-54E N500EJ at Waterboro, South
on the number two and three engines and Carolina on 25 April, prior to relocation of the
Berlin Airlift displays from N500EJ into the new
the nose gear doors. BAHF Skymaster. KEVIN KEARNEY

TRIALS STARFIGHTER MOVES TO MONTREAL

A pre-production Canadair CF-104
Starfighter has recently been moved to the
Montreal Aviation Museum (MAM) in Quebec
from Canadian Forces Base Bagotville, 130
miles to the north, where it had been in
danger of being scrapped.
The Mach 2 fighter, serial 12704, was the
fourth example of the type built by Canadair
in Montreal, and first flew on 14 August 1961.
A new arrival at the Montreal Aviation
Museum in Quebec is the fourth CF-104
built by Canadair. MAXIMILIAN MEINDL
Canadair went on to build 200 CF-104s for
the Royal Canadian Air Force/Canadian
Forces. The RCAF had selected the
licence-built version of the Lockheed F-104
as its primary strike and reconnaissance
aircraft in the late 1950s, replacing the
ageing fleet of Canadair Sabres and adding
a nuclear strike capability to the RCAF’s
arsenal.
The aircraft spent its service career with
the Aerospace Engineering Test
Establishment and 448 (Test) Squadron at
CFB Cold Lake, Alberta. After its retirement
it became instructional airframe 820C. From
its time as a battle damage repair airframe,
the aircraft retains a large number of small
arms hits which were then patched up by
RCAF trainees. Stored in the open at
Bagotville, it was secured for the MAM in
late 2020.
The wings and tail have not yet been
transported south to Montreal due to
COVID-19 restrictions. Restoration back to its
1960s polished metal appearance will take
several years, as Robert St Pierre, a
volunteer involved in the project, explains:
“12704 is structurally complete, but we’re
missing part of the main undercarriage and
all the cockpit instrumentation, as well as
most systems. We also need a new cockpit
canopy as the original one is beyond
restoration. We would therefore like to hear
from anybody who is willing to contribute
parts or plans to the project”. Should you be
able to help, the MAM can be contacted via
its website, www.mam.quebec/en.

8 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021


Museums get post-lockdown lifeline
O
n 2 April a second tranche of grants
from the UK government’s Culture
Recovery Fund was announced,
with several aviation museums
benefiting from the £261 million awarded
by Arts Council England to help institutions
survive the financial pressures inflicted by the
COVID-19 lockdowns.
Fittingly, Britain’s oldest museum solely
dedicated to aircraft preservation, the de
Havilland Aircraft Museum at London
Colney, was one of the largest beneficiaries,
getting a grant of £90,000 to help it reopen.
Announcing the award at its site at Salisbury
Hall, museum chairman Alan Brackley said,
“Being closed for most of last year under the
pandemic regulations has had a major impact
on the finances of the museum. This award
provides the museum with much-needed
stability as we begin the process of renewal
and growth and enables us to plan more
visitor-related activities.”
The museum’s large new £3-million
display hangar was opened in February 2020,
shortly before the start of the first lockdown.
It is due to reopen to the public on 18 May.
Construction of the building was made
possible by a £1.9-million grant from the
National Lottery Heritage Fund.
The Duxford Aviation Society, which looks
after the UK’s premier collection of preserved
airliners, received £43,000. DAS chairman
ABOVE LEFT TO RIGHT: The Solway Aviation Museum is the most northerly recipient of funds in the latest tranche of awards, gaining £17,000.
Recently featured on the TV programme Bangers and Cash, its 1952 RAF Bedford crew bus will ultimately be used to ferry visitors out to the
museum’s Vulcan B2, XJ823. Meanwhile, Meteor NF14 WS832 has recently been refurbished. SOLWAY AVIATION MUSEUM
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
Part of the interior of the new hangar at the de
February 2020. On 2 April the museum was awarded
£90,000 from the Culture Recovery Fund. DHAM
Peter Archer commented, “Measures to
protect the public from COVID-19 have made
considerable demands on DAS’s finances
during a period when income has been
substantially reduced due to the pandemic.
The grant of £43,000 is very welcome: it not
only recognises the value of DAS’s work but
will also enable us to develop and implement
procedures which will allow the public to
safely board our airliners once again. Our
appreciation and thanks go to all those who
have made this grant possible.”
At East Kirkby, the Lincolnshire Aviation
Heritage Centre — home of Avro Lancaster
VII NX611 — received £93,900. The Bentley
Priory Battle of Britain Trust is being given
£57,800, the Cornwall Aviation Heritage
Centre at Newquay Airport £40,300, and the
Helicopter Museum at Weston-super-Mare
£15,900. The Old Sarum-based Boscombe
Down Aviation Collection was awarded
£14,100, the Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation
Museum at Flixton £11,546, the Stow Maries,
Essex-based World War One Aviation
Heritage Trust £8,600, and the most northerly
beneficiary, the Solway Aviation Museum at
Carlisle Airport, £17,000.
David G. Kirkpatrick, the marketing
director at Solway says, “We have continued
to work through the pandemic with a reduced
number of staff known as the ‘COVID-6’ to
maintain the museum buildings and grounds,
SP
EC
IA
LR
EP
OR
T
Havilland Aircraft Museum, which opened in
and also carried out alterations within the
buildings to create a COVID-19-secure facility
for our staff and visitors, creating a one-way
system through the internal building displays
and exiting into a fully enclosed walkway back
to the main car park and external displays.
As part of our COVID-19-secure planning we
have made extensive us of CCTV as a visitor
flow management system to ensure the safe
separation of our visitors around the building.
“We have also completed work on the
Meteor NF14 [WS832] refurbishment and
made great progress on our 1952 Bedford RAF
crew bus, which was featured recently on the
Bangers and Cash classic car programme on
the Yesterday TV channel. There is still a lot to
do on the bus internally, but we hope to start
using the Bedford to take visitors out to our
Avro Vulcan B2, XJ823, just as they did when
in service with the RAF.”
The refurbishment programme will soon
see XJ823 — the last of nine B2s converted to
the maritime radar reconnaissance (MRR)
role — repainted in the gloss finish seen on
the MRR aircraft. David continues, “Sadly this
year we will not be able to allow access into
the Vulcan or our other aircraft as they are
totally impracticable to clean after each visit”.
The museum will reopen on Friday 28 May,
with the hours for 2021 being 10.30-17.00hrs
on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Bank
Holidays until 31 October.
www.aeroplanemonthly.com 9
News June 2021
Ex-Edwards Spitfire flies at Sywell
F
or the first time since it was
operated under Spitfire Productions’
ownership during the filming
of Battle of Britain in 1968,
Supermarine Spitfire LFIX MH415/
G-AVDJ flew in British skies on 8 April
when Pete Kynsey took it up for its
first post-restoration flight at Sywell,
Northamptonshire. Part of legendary film
pilot Wilson ‘Connie’ Edwards’ collection
at Big Spring, Texas from January 1969
until 2014, the combat veteran — from
its wartime service with Nos 129 and 222
Squadrons — had last flown in the USA
during 1975. Restoration began at Scone,
Australia in 2015, before it was shipped
to Air Leasing at Sywell in March 2020 for
completion.
Bottisham museum reopens
The excellent volunteer-run museum on
the site of the former Bottisham airfield,
some five miles east of Cambridge, plans to
reopen for its summer season from 23 May —
subject to COVID-19 restrictions being lifted
— and to remain open on Sundays until the
end of October. Closed for reconstruction for
most of the past two years apart from a brief
period in the autumn of 2020, the museum
is housed on a corner of the former airfield,
in original wartime buildings which include
the office and briefing room used by the US
Army Air Forces’ 375th Fighter Squadron.
In use as a smokehouse for many years, the
buildings were taken over by the museum a
few years ago. Over the past two years they
have been completely gutted before being
re-roofed, the wiring and plumbing replaced,
the windows removed and refurbished,
the brickwork re-rendered and the walls
repainted inside and out. In conjunction
with the refurbishment, a new selection of
displays has been professionally constructed
to tell the story of Bottisham airfield and the
people and units who served there.
The immaculately rebuilt former 375th Fighter Squadron
buildings at Bottisham, complete with refurbished,
original windows and re-rendered brickwork. MIKE SHREEVE
10 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
The briefing room at Bottisham, part of a
genuinely immersive experience to be found at
the museum. MIKE SHREEVE
The airfield opened in May 1940, and
was initially used by Tiger Moths of No 22
Elementary Flying Training School from
nearby Cambridge. Later it was home to
Lysanders, Tomahawks and Allison-engined
Mustangs of RAF Army Co-operation
Command. In 1943 the station was allocated
to the AAF, being enlarged and having a steel
mat runway laid. The 361st Fighter Group,
Pete Kynsey prepares to take
Spitfire IX MH415 aloft for its
first flight since 1975 at Sywell
on 8 April. PAUL TREADAWAY
flying P-47 Thunderbolts, arrived towards
the end of that year, flying its first combat
mission on 21 January the following year.
During May 1944 the group converted
to P-51 Mustangs in time to be very active
flying in support of the Normandy landings
the following month. In September its
yellow-nosed Mustangs moved a few miles
south to Little Walden, as that airfield had
better facilities and concrete runways. After
a hiatus of several months, Bottisham was
then used again for flying when Tiger Moths
once again moved in, shortly after VE-Day.
This time they were from the RAF’s Belgian
Air Training School, formerly located at
nearby Snailwell, which departed to Belgium
in March 1946. The airfield was closed
shortly afterwards, eventually reverting to
agricultural use.
The museum tells the story of the units
that were based there in its relatively
short but eventful career, presenting the
stories with a mix of artefacts, models,
photographs and display boards, and
including reconstructions of the CO’s office
and squadron briefing room from the AAF
era. Over the winter the museum volunteers
have focused on creating a P-51 Mustang
experience room, where they display two
replica P-51 cockpits. One is now finished,
and visitors will be able to sit in it and
experience what is was like to fly a Mustang.
The other is being fitted out with original
components where possible to replicate
an early P-51D as would have been based
at Bottisham during the summer of 1944.
The volunteers are also working on a P-47
instrument panel display.
With thanks to Jason Webb.
Untitled-1 1 20/04/2021 14:21:28
 News June 2021
Norvigie back in the air
Very quirky and very French, Nord NC856A Norvigie
G-CGWR gets airborne for its final test flight at
Spanhoe, Northamptonshire on 24 April. MARTIN NEEDHAM
N
ord NC856A Norvigie
G-CGWR flew for the
first time in six years on
20 March at Spanhoe,
Northamptonshire following a
three-year-long effort to return it
to flight.
The Régnier 4L-powered three-
seater, c/n 54, was purchased
by its current owner Richard
Ellingworth in 2018 and has
since undergone a thorough
restoration, benefiting from the
NEWS IN BRIEF
PADDY GREEN
East Yorkshire-based businessman
Paddy Green, who brought D-Day
veteran Douglas C-47 Drag-em-oot
back to the UK from Arizona in
2005, died in March at the age of
72. Before it was ferried across the
Atlantic, Green tracked down the
USAAF pilot who flew the C-47 on
D-Day, 83-year-old Bill Allin, and
reunited him with the aircraft.
AUSTER ARRIVES AT WALLOP
The Historic Army Aircraft Flight’s
latest acquisition, Auster I
LB312/G-AHXE, flew from its former
base at Netheravon to Middle
Wallop on 4 April.
12 www.aeroplanemonthly.com
006-10 and 12-13 News AM Jun2021.indd 12
installation of an overhauled
propeller and new glazing. Its
wings and tailplane have been re-
covered by Rebecca Tyers.
One of 112 examples ordered
for the Aviation Légère de
l’Armée de Terre (ALAT, French
Army Light Aviation), it was built
at Méaulte, close to Albert, and
delivered to Nancy on 28 June
1955. The NC856 joined Groupe
Aérien d’Observation d’Artillerie
(GAOA) 8 (Artillery Observation
RARE METEOR FOR FLABOB
Following the arrival of airworthy
Gloster Meteor T7 WA591/N313Q at
the Planes of Fame Air Museum at
Chino Airport, California, its static
Meteor F4, VT229, will soon move
20 miles east to Flabob Airport at
Riverside.
Aviation Group 8) as the first
of 10 Norvigies attached to the
unit. While the squadron served
at Oued-Hamimin, Algeria
from April 1956, it is unlikely
that this particular NC856 saw
combat in North Africa as pilots
and mechanics from the unit
used GAOA 6 Norvigies already
deployed to the region.
The liaison aircraft made
a forced landing at Médréac,
north-west of Rennes, on 16
February 1960.
Following
repairs, it was
transferred
to Groupe
Just four other
NC856s are thought to
have flown in the past
d’Aviation
Légère de two decades
l’Armée de
Terre (GALAT)
6 (Light Aviation Group 6)
at Tarbes. Until the unit’s
disbandment on 31 January 1963, prototype G-CDWE, are
GALAT 6 operated six NC856As.
In February 1963 — the aircraft’s
final month in military service
— it was posted to GALAT 5 and
re-coded AOM, derived from its
radio callsign, F-MAOM.
Little is known of the
aeroplane’s history following
its retirement from the French
Army. It was initially allocated
to the Service de la Formation
Aéronautique, du Travail Aérien
et des Transports (SFATAT, the
French national flying school).
However, the aircraft wasn’t
pressed into service with the
Nancy-based pilot training
academy despite having been
issued the registration F-BMHS.
This wasn’t taken up and was
instead reassigned to a Stampe
SV4 which would later be written
off in 1983. After several decades
in storage, the Nord was acquired
by the Sabena Old Timers in 1997
before being
brought to the
UK in 2011 by
R. McLain.
Just four
other NC856s,
F-AZHA,
F-PGCD,
F-PNCF and
the Wickenby, Lincolnshire-
based Walter Minor 4-3-powered
understood to have been
airworthy over the course of the
past two decades.
Subject to receiving its permit
to fly, the battlefield support
and liaison aircraft is expected
to make appearances at the
Shuttleworth Collection’s Flying
for Fun evening event on 17
July and the Abingdon Air and
Country Show on 11 September.
Martin Needham
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
27/04/2021 13:50
 News June 2021

Meteor ejection tests flown from

‘Lossie’ during COVID restrictions
M
artin-Baker’s venerable Gloster Meteor T7 WA638/
G-JWMA was deployed to RAF Lossiemouth, Moray for
ejection seat trials during April. Due to long-standing
restrictions on performing live ejection seat firing trials
around the aircraft’s Chalgrove base in Oxfordshire, the company
normally sends the aircraft and support personnel to Cazaux air
base in the south of France, but the COVID-19 pandemic has
forced it to find a UK option: Lossiemouth and the military danger
area D801 at Cape Wrath in Sutherland, on the north-westerly tip
of Scotland, provided the answer.
First delivered to the RAF in 1949, the aircraft is a modified
T7 retrofitted with the larger fin from an F8. This is a safeguard
for recovery should the pilot inadvertently keep the airbrakes
deployed before lowering the flaps and undercarriage, which
would leave the aircraft without any elevator authority. WA638 was
assigned to the world-leading manufacturer of ejection seats in
1952, and was finally placed in the UK civil register in September
2015 as the issue of a CAA permit to fly was easier to achieve than
remaining under the auspices of the Military Aviation Authority.
The Meteor has contributed significantly to Martin-Baker’s record
of having saved, at the time of writing, 7,646 aircrew lives so far.
WA638 has less than 1,300 hours on the clock and flies around
25 hours each year, most of those in transit to test locations. It
conducted three live trials from Lossiemouth on 13, 15 and 21
April fitted with an ejection seat for testing, although Martin-Baker
itself remained tight-lipped over exactly what mark of seat was
being tested. However, the dummy was clearly wearing a ‘smart’
helmet as worn by the likes of Typhoon, F/A-18E/F Super Hornet
and F-35 Lightning II aircrew. The Meteor left Lossiemouth during
the morning of 22 April, heading back to Chalgrove. Mike Crutch

A 72-year-old aircraft flying trials from RAF Lossiemouth

during April: Meteor T7 WA638/G-JWMA returns from an
ejection seat test sortie over Cape Wrath. MIKE CRUTCH

Mi-8P FOR PRESERVATION HAVEN IN FINNISH SHOPPING CENTRE

A former Finnish Air Force (Ilmavoimat) Mil Mi-8P ‘Hip-C’ is being
prepared at the Suomen Ilmailmuseo (Finnish Aviation Museum) in
Vantaa for transfer to the Tuulos shopping centre at Tuulonen, 79
miles north of Helsinki. The move is scheduled to take place on 5
May, with the Mi-8P joining a MiG-21bis and Saab J 35F Draken on
outdoor display. Two other important Ilmavoimat aircraft are
exhibited indoors at Tuulos, Douglas DC-2 serial DO-1 Hanssin-
Jukka and Focke-Wulf Fw 44J Stieglitz SZ-18.
Originally delivered to the Ilmavoimat on 11 January 1978, Mi-8P
HS-6 (c/n 13306) was one of 10 Mi-8s in the air arm’s service, these
comprising two Mi-8Ps and eight Mi-8Ts. One notable event in its
history occurred on 28 September 1994, when HS-6 was used Destined for display at the Tuulos shopping centre at Tuulonen, the
former Ilmavoimat Mil Mi-8P is seen being prepared at the Suomen
during the Estonia ferry disaster in the Baltic Sea. On 7 June 1997, Ilmailmuseo. JAN FORSGREN
during a VIP flight carrying President Martti Ahtisaari and his wife,
HS-6 suffered a bird-strike, resulting in a forced landing. Having
made its final flight on 11 January 2007 and been withdrawn from Finland was one of the few western nations to use the Mi-8. Apart
use, HS-6 was transferred to the Suomen Ilmailmuseo at Vantaa from the Ilmavoimat, the Finnish Border Guard also employed Mi-8s,
airport outside Helsinki. all of which were transferred to the air force in 1988.

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 13

 WORKSHOP
NORTHROP of the NORTH
For the past five years,
Swedish aviation enthusiast
Per Björkqvist has been
working on the reconstruction
of a Northrop 8A-1 light
bomber — and thus filling a
gap in his country’s aviation
history WORDS: JAN FORSGREN
14 www.aeroplanemonthly.com
The completed wing centre
section is, to date, the most
obvious evidence of the effort
to rebuild Northrop B 5B
serial 7004. PER BJÖRKQVIST
I
t might now be largely forgotten, being built under licence by Saab in
but the Northrop 8A-1 — locally 1940-41. Differences between the
designated as the B 5 — was
numerically the most important
B 5B and C were comparatively
minor, mostly with regard to the
Flygvapnet (Swedish Air Force)
combat type during the early
bombs that could be carried. There
was a wide variety of alternative
1940s. This makes the gradual re-
emergence of one such aircraft all
loads, including one 500kg or seven
50kg bombs. Armament consisted
the more welcome.
Following a 1936 visit to the
of four fixed, forward-firing 8mm
machine guns and one flexible
USA by a Flygvapnet purchasing
commission, the 8A-1 was selected
weapon of the same type mounted in
the rear cockpit.
as the service’s new light bomber.
Two pattern airframes, designated
Powered by a 980hp Nohab
Mercury XXIV radial engine — a
as the B 5A, were delivered in 1938,
with another 101 B 5B and C models
licence-built Bristol Mercury — the
B 5 equipped two wings, F 4 and F 6,
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
in the dive-bomber role. Eventually
replaced by the indigenous Saab
B 17, the B 5s were gradually
transferred to second-line duties
such as target-towing, most wings
having one or two on charge.
When modified as a target tug, the
designation was amended to
B 5D. In 1944, trials were conducted
using the B 5 as a tug for the AB
Flygindustri Lg 105 assault glider.
The remaining B 5s were The B 5 was considered very suitable for Flygvapnet
withdrawn from use in 1950, several use, being both rugged and easy to maintain. The
being used for firefighting practice. wheel spats were often removed when operating from
One lingered at Västerås as a ground unprepared airstrips. VIA SWEDISH AVIATION HISTORICAL SOCIETY
instructional airframe until the late
1950s, when it was scrapped. When
the Flygvapenmuseum (Swedish Air
Force Museum) carried out a census
of surviving examples of historically
significant aircraft in the early 1960s,
a B 5 was conspicuously absent from
the final list.

Björkqvist has
completed a centre
wing section
Apart from the Flygvapnet, the
Northrop 8A was used by the US
Army Air Corps/Army Air Forces as
the A-17 and A-17A, the latter with
a retractable undercarriage, as well
as Argentina, Iraq, the Netherlands,
Norway and Peru. In 1940, France
placed an order for 93 former AAC The wreck of 7004 prior
A-17As. With the fall of France, all to being transported to
were taken over by the RAF. It clearly Optand. VIA PER BJÖRKQVIST
did not think much of the type,
choosing to transfer them to the
Royal Canadian Air Force and South
African Air Force.
A total of 453 Northrop 8As were
completed, including Swedish
licence production. Only a few
survive today, including one A-17
on display in the National Museum
of the US Air Force, two in Peru and
a wreck recovered from a Canadian
lake in 2014.
Per Björkqvist, who since 2012
has been a technician with the
Flygvapenmuseum at Linköping,
is determined to change the B 5’s
‘extinct’ status for good. Working in
his spare time, and with a limited
budget, Björkqvist intends to make
the finished aircraft as externally
similar to a B 5B as he can. Although
original components will be
incorporated into the reconstruction
as far as possible, most parts will The late Hans Björkqvist
have to be built from scratch. As of in front of a Saab Draken
now, Björkqvist has spent slightly at the Jämtlands Flyg- och
more than 1,000 hours on the Lottamuseum. VIA PER BJÖRKQVIST
project.

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 15

WORKSHOP Northrop B 5
TOP: “My interest in aviation really
In an amazing comes from my father, Hans”, Per
coincidence, the says. “He was involved in many
starboard wing of
aspects of flying, from RC modelling
7004, which had
been damaged in a to restoring or even building his
17 August 1942 crash own aeroplanes, some of which
at Bromma, has he also piloted himself. In 1973,
survived. I accompanied my father to Lake
VIA PER BJÖRKQVIST Hoklingen in Norway, where I
saw a Halifax — now in the RAF
ABOVE:
Part of the wing Museum — being recovered.
centre section — Although I was only nine years old
note the dive flaps. at the time, I remember this event as
VIA PER BJÖRKQVIST if it was yesterday. One might say I
became firmly rooted in the world of
ABOVE RIGHT:
aviation.”
The centre wing flap
has already been Björkqvist has some original B 5
rebuilt. PER BJÖRKQVIST components for inclusion in this
massive undertaking. Most of them
come from B 5B serial 7004 (c/n
138), which was lost in a fatal crash
on 14 February 1944. This was the
second production B 5B, delivered to
F 4 at Frösön on 15 April 1940. It was
one of a select few fitted with dual
controls to assist pilot conversion.
Formally taken on charge four days
16 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
later, the aeroplane initially carried
the code 4-4. It is thought that 7004,
along with other B 5Bs from F 4,
starred in the winter scenes of the
1941 movie Första Divisionen (First
Squadron).
On 11 July 1941, 7004 — now
coded red N — was damaged when
it was struck by B 5B 7006 taxiing out
for take-off at Bromma airport north
of Stockholm, B 5B 7039 also coming
to harm. Damage to 7004 took in
the trailing edge of the starboard
wing, the centre wing section, the
tail section and the outer fuselage
skin on the starboard side, which
was torn open. Repaired by the ABA
(Swedish Airlines) workshops at
Bromma, 7004 was returned to F 4
on 15 April 1942.
A second mishap occurred only
four months later, on 17 August 1942,
during a night landing at Bromma.
By this time, the code letter had
changed to red M. A ground-loop
resulted in the undercarriage and
wing centre section being damaged
beyond repair, the starboard wing
also being badly affected. Both crew
members, NCO Tord Berlin and
Sgt Sven Höglund, were uninjured.
Once again, 7004 was nursed back to
health by ABA. Repairs lasted almost
nine months, 7004 arriving back at
F 4 on 4 May 1943.
The next incident involving 7004
proved fatal. While on a navigational
training flight from Abisko via
Gällivare and Morjärv en route to
F 21 Luleå, 7004 disappeared without
trace. Despite an extensive search
effort, no trace of the crew or their
aircraft was found. The pilot, Cadet
Erik Agerberg, and radio operator Sgt
Bengt Erik Aspgren were both listed
as missing. Weather conditions had
been poor, and it was thought the
B 5 had struck the ground or stalled
when flying in cloud. 7004 was
officially struck off charge on 27 April
1944, having logged 367 flying hours.
A hunter located the wreck by
accident on 11 December 1948. The
B 5B had come down some 7km west
of Kälsjärv, 15km north of Morjärv.
The aircraft had been destroyed,
with evidence of a fire having broken
out around the engine and forward
fuselage.
❖
During the 1980s, it was rumoured
that the wreck was largely intact.
Hans Björkqvist, Per’s father, decided
to investigate the crash site. He
found that, as the aeroplane had
smashed into the ground near-
vertically, the B 5B now consisted
of small pieces of severely mangled
metal. Nevertheless, Hans and
Bo Lindé recovered the remains
in 1990. At the time, Hans was
busy establishing the Jämtlands
Flyg- och Lottamuseum at Optand
airfield, about 9km from Östersund.
Per, who was now working at F 4,
duly transported the pieces by
lorry to Optand. The museum was
inaugurated in 1994, opening to the
public the following year. Today, it
houses about 30 historic aeroplanes,
both of civilian and military origin.
The common denominator is that
the military aircraft were operated
by the nearby F 4 wing, which
disbanded in 2005, while the civilian
ones were used by companies and
individuals within the borders of the
province of Jämtland.
In his spare time, Per worked as a
volunteer at the museum, building
the exhibition area, but most of
all transporting airframes and
equipment that had been acquired.
“I also spent much time and effort
in visiting wreck sites around the
province of Jämtland”, he says,
“recovering various J 26 Mustang
parts. I managed to restore two
almost complete Packard Merlin
engines, as well as other recovered
components which are now on
display at the museum.”
With the B 5B being of special
importance, as the nearby F 4
operated the type in the early 1940s,
the ultimate goal was to put such
an aeroplane on public display
sometime in the future. Although the
two main undercarriage legs were
restored, the rest of 7004 was kept
in store. Sadly, Hans Björkqvist died
in 2002. The project was inherited
by Per. While working on various
Flygvapenmuseum restoration
projects since the 1980s, Per has
acquired the skills — including sheet
metal work and riveting — necessary
for such a complex effort.
Since deciding to start the B 5B
project in 2016, Björkqvist has
completed a centre wing section,
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 17
which is on display at the Jämtlands
Flyg- och Lottamuseum. At the
moment, he is working on the
fin, stabiliser and rudder. These
components are among the largest
he can accommodate in his garage
in Linköping. According to Per, his
intention is, as far as possible, to
reconstruct an externally complete
B 5B. He told Aeroplane, “To attempt
to reconstruct the whole aeroplane
with all internal systems, etc, would
take far too long, as well as being
prohibitively expensive”. Although
Per has accumulated the necessary
technical manuals, only a few
original drawings are available.
“With my garage space being
severely limited”, he continues,
“I am grateful to my employer,
the Flygvapenmuseum, in being
permitted to use their workshop.
Otherwise, things would be more
difficult”. The fuselage will be
constructed at the Jämtlands Flyg-
och Lottamuseum, which has a fully
equipped workshop.
Some parts — including wing TOP LEFT:
fillet plates, ribs and details from Current work is
the wheel braking system — were centred around
building the
located in storage at the museum in horizontal stabiliser.
Optand. One remarkable find was a PATRIK JOHANSSON
damaged, but largely intact B 5 wing.
It was discovered at a test range TOP RIGHT:
at Södertörn, south of Stockholm, A close-up of the
in the early 1990s. Amazingly, centre wing section,
with bomb racks
this particular wing had originally fitted. PER BJÖRKQVIST
been fitted to 7004. It seems it was
damaged in the 17 August 1942 ABOVE LEFT:
ground-loop at Bromma. How, why Other original
and when the wing found its way to components include
the range is unknown. ribs from the wings
and many more small
Although no date for completion items. PER BJÖRKQVIST
has been set, a B 5B will eventually
emerge from Per’s workshop. “My ABOVE:
driving force and motivation behind Per Björkqvist
this huge project”, he says, “is to one in front of the
day be able to perform a roll-out completed centre
wing section.
ceremony of a full-scale replica of VIA PER BJÖRKQVIST
B 5B 7004 at the Jämtlands
Flyg- och Lottamuseum.”
Thanks to Per Björkqvist and Patrik
Johansson.

STEVE SLATER
HangarTalk
Comment on historic aviation by the chief executive of the UK’s Light Aircraft Association
I
t is, I suppose, the norm for
any regulator to face criticism,
not least the Civil Aviation
Authority. In recent years it
has been criticised, often rightly,
for a lack of coherence in areas
such as flight crew licensing,
airspace policy and over-zealous
regulation of the air display
industry, not least the restrictions
placed on some ex-military
aircraft operations in the post-
Shoreham era.
However, there is one area
for which the CAA should be
congratulated. Its work with the
warbird industry in enabling
passenger-carrying in ex-military
historic aeroplanes has been
a triumph of proportionate
regulation, and as well as
ensuring the viability of many
aircraft which would never have
otherwise flown, it has allowed
many thousands of individuals to
enjoy the flight of their dreams.
The regulations have recently
been updated, and now enshrine
an even wider variety of air
experiences.
It was in March 2015 that
the CAA announced the
issue of its policy document
CAP 1395, Safety Standards
Acknowledgement and Consent
(SSAC). It followed several
years of discussion with CAA
operations and airworthiness
specialists and those warbird
operators that saw a way to a
more financially robust future
than a continuing dependence
on the already saturated air
display market.
The likes of the Boultbee Flight
Academy, the Grace family’s
18 www.aeroplanemonthly.com
Air Leasing at Sywell has built on its long-term operation of two-seat
Spitfire ML407 by adding the HA-1112-M4L Buchón, shown here, and
TF-51 Mustang to its Ultimate Warbird Flights line-up. DAVID WHITWORTH
Air Leasing concern and the
Aircraft Restoration Company at
Duxford had long been operators
of two-seat fighters. They,
along with others, combined
their knowledge to develop
safety procedures, operating
and maintenance practices to
ensure such
operations are
demonstrably
SSAC ensures
carried out in as the viability of
safe a manner
as possible. aircraft which
The major
stumbling-
might not
block, of otherwise fly
course, is risk.
No matter how well-maintained
and well-flown, a 1940s military
aircraft will always present
different risks to a modern
airliner. While that element can
immediately be accepted when
both participants are pilots, from
a legal standpoint the CAA has
to be satisfied that anyone sitting
in the back seat must be fully
aware of the risk and give their
acknowledged consent.
In addition, any of the
operations gaining CAA approval
must have training programmes
and operational models which
reinforce this. From the moment
a client arrives, they are briefed
on what they
are doing,
safety and risk
management
protocols.
While it may
not be obvious
to the customer,
everyone
involved in the
flight — pilot, groundcrew and
not least the ‘strapper-inner’ —
plays an equally important part
in ensuring a safe, as well as a
truly memorable, sortie.
One hesitates to tempt fate
by quoting statistics, but to
date, while there have been one
or two minor incidents, there
has not been a single serious
Comment
injury to any of the thousands
of participants over the past
five years since the start of
SSAC activities. Even so, we
should remember the tragedy
in October 2019 to the Collings
Foundation’s B-17 Flying Fortress
Nine-O-Nine in Connecticut,
when the bomber crashed
while attempting an emergency
landing.
The accident claimed the lives
of two crew and five passengers,
as well as injuring seven others.
It naturally made worldwide
headlines and potentially
brought into question the wider
safety case regarding experience
flights in vintage aircraft. It is a
sign of the strength of the SSAC
programme that, here in the UK,
such enterprises were allowed to
continue.
In fact, the number and variety
of such operations continues
to grow. As well as the ever-
popular Spitfires, enthusiasts
now have the opportunity to
sample riding shotgun in a
two-seat Hispano Buchón and
P-51/TF-51 Mustangs. The
Biggin Hill Heritage Hangar
has diversified with its unique
two-seat Hurricane and, soon,
a TP-40, while Aero Legends is
adding a Yak-3. Recent revisions
to the regulations now allow
the SSAC rules to be applied
more widely, including vintage
biplane flying experiences,
wingwalking and historic
helicopters, as well as future
experience sorties in ex-military
multi-engined aeroplanes. What
price a resumption of DC-3/C-47
passenger operations?
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
Untitled-1 1 17/02/2021 16:22:17

DENIS J. CALVERT
Flight
FlightLine
Recollections and reflections — a seasoned reporter’s view of aviation history
O
ver the years I’ve
been privileged
to go on a goodly
number of facilities —
otherwise known as press visits
or, unfairly, as jollies — with the
RAF. These typically involved
a small number of journos,
accompanied by a PR man/
woman/minder, visiting an event
deemed likely to be of interest to
their readership/audience and to
result in suitable coverage in the
press or on TV.
One of the more unusual
was a visit in October 2003 to
Romania to Mihail Kogalniceanu
air base, known to its friends
as ‘MK’. Under an initiative
aimed at easing the accession of
former Eastern Bloc nations to
NATO, Exercise ‘Lone Kite 03’
at MK brought together eight
MiG-21 LanceR C fighters of
the Romanian Air Force’s 861st
Fighter Squadron and eight
Harrier GR7/T10s from No
1(F) Squadron, home-based at
RAF Cottesmore. The LanceR
C was a rework of the MiG-21
undertaken at Bacau by Aerostar
and Elbit, involving changes
to the cockpit and updated
avionics. Its state-of-the-art
radar was said to outperform
that in the F/A-18 Hornet, but
the airframe was still very much
MiG-21, with long take-off
distances, high approach speeds
and poor manoeuvrability. As
one pilot put it, “the LanceR
turns well, given time.”
Over eight days of flying, the
two types and the two air forces
20 www.aeroplanemonthly.com
West meets east: Harrier GR7 ZD463 of No 1 Squadron taxiing for a
mission at Mihail Kogălniceanu AB, Romania, in October 2003, locally
based MiG-21 LanceRs in the background. DENIS J. CALVERT
flew together and mounted a detachment and our small press
series of increasingly complex party. There was a programme
combined air operations to fly RAF pilots in a two-seat
involving a formation of Harriers LanceR B, while Romanian
flying close air support protected pilots got the chance to sample
by a LanceR sweep against a the Harrier in one of the two
LanceR combat air patrol. The T10s deployed. Press day for the
RoAF had been brought up Romanian equivalent of Fleet
on the old WarPac doctrine of Street was on 13 October, when
heavily centralised direction MK came under attack from
and control. 40 Romanian
By 2003, this journalists
attitude was Declining a flying in from
changing to
more flexible
MiG-21 flight is Bucharest in
two An-24s.
thinking and my second biggest Later that
the Romanians morning
were keen to regret defence
learn from minister Ioan
other NATO air forces. ‘Lone Pascu arrived in the back seat of
Kite 03’ represented a further a LanceR B, this surely intended
step in this progression, No as a show of confidence in
1(F) Squadron displaying a the type following the well-
benchmark in professionalism publicised crash of a LanceR C
that could not fail to impress. less than three weeks earlier.
The RoAF courteously hosted Towards the end of the
both the 140-person RAF exercise, I was offered a back-
Comment
seat flight in a LanceR B, only to
be strongly advised not to accept
the offer by the RAF doctor in
the party. The LanceR’s cockpit
is sized for short pilots. At 6ft,
he told me, I’d have to sit in a
crouched position; had I needed
to leave the aircraft in a hurry,
my chances of a successful
ejection without damage to the
spine were none too good. I
thus declined the offer and had
to watch a succession of RAF
pilots strapping in, taxiing out,
taking off and returning with
huge smiles on their faces. I soon
realised the mistake I’d made
and, to this day, the decision
ranks as the second biggest
regret of my life.
MK air base was very much
a mix of old and new. One of
its problems was the existence
on the airfield of packs of feral
dogs that emerged from the
long grass to approach any
sympathetic-looking human
in the hope of food. Sadly,
they neither recognised nor
respected taxiing aircraft, and
were seen crossing in front of
both Harriers and LanceRs. I
discussed this problem — the
Fido FOD risk, you might say
— with a Romanian pilot, who
saw them as no more of a safety
issue than smoking on the
flightline, which was seemingly
accepted. He shrugged his
shoulders as in ‘that’s life’ and
posed the question, “Well, what
do you do with the feral dogs at
Cottesmore?” To which there was
no answer.
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
021_AM_JUNE_21_ad.indd 1 16/04/2021 10:40:33
 Skywriters
In every issue, the writer of our Letter of the Month wins a £25 book voucher to spend with leading military and transport publisher Crécy.
Rapide progress
I enjoyed the article regarding the DH
Dragon Rapide (Aeroplane March 2021),
as it holds a special place in my heart. As a
12-year-old boy in 1954 with a fascination
with flying, I boarded such a machine
while on a school trip to London Airport. I
think it cost me 10 shillings, which was all I
possessed that day, and it took me goggle-
eyed over Staines reservoirs. Even though it
lasted for less than 15 minutes, the noises,
the vibrations and the sensations of flight
have stayed in my memory.
Fast-forward to 1971, when I boarded
a Rapide at Halfpenny Green to make my
very first parachute jump with the South
Staffs Skydiving Club. The thrill of climbing
out onto the wing and hanging onto a strut
with the engine and propeller just in front of
me, gazing down on the world, was simply
amazing. Upon getting the signal to go I
hopped off the wing and got the reassuring
sharp tug of the static line, but after the
requisite few seconds I looked up to see
that the canopy was closed and spinning.
As a novice, I thought it would all sort itself
out in a moment or two, but eventually it
dawned on me that all was not going to
plan, so I deployed the emergency ’chute as
The Sandys of time
The mythology surrounding the cancellation
of the TSR2 by the Labour government,
shared by your March issue, fails to address
the economic situation of the period. The
country was facing a balance of payments
crisis, the pound had been devalued.
Compare that to the impact of the 1957
Defence White Paper. Duncan Sandys’
understanding of the defence needs of the
UK was woeful. The impact was across the
board, with all three services impacted,
but especially the aircraft industry. The
economic and political situation was a
period when, to misquote the then Prime
Minister, Harold Macmillan, ‘we’d never had
it so good’. You could argue Labour’s decision
was economically necessary, but what drove
that of the Conservatives?
Chris Wildridge
White elephant?
My late father, Brian, was apprenticed to
Vickers in the early fifties, and subsequently
worked on the TSR2 at Weybridge and
Boscombe Down. Cancellation brought
redundancy, and thereafter the ‘political
22 www.aeroplanemonthly.com
WRITE TO: Aeroplane, Key Publishing Ltd,
PO Box 100, Stamford, Lincolnshire PE9 1XQ, UK
E-MAIL TO: aeroplane@keypublishing.com,
putting ‘Skywriters’ in the header
per my training. With the emergency ’chute
attached to the hips and the spinning main
’chute crossing the risers in front of my chin,
I hit the ground fast with heels first, followed
by my helmet and the back of my head. I
regained consciousness after a few minutes
and was given a look over by a medic, but
apart from a broken nose and some minor
aches and pains I was given the all-clear and
driven home by my wife, who had witnessed
the whole sorry affair. She vowed that if I
ever did it again she would leave me, so that
was my one and only static-line jump — and
my only freefall one, too.
My desire to fly was later met by joining
the local gliding club, becoming a junior
vandalism’ narrative was bitterly upheld.
It has been interesting to later uncover the
rather more nuanced realities involved.
While articles such as those in your March
issue obviously benefit from hindsight,
surely the sheer impracticality of rough-field
forward-deployment of such an aircraft must
have been obvious at the time? A further
obstacle to those mentioned would have
been the need to align the inertial navigation
system accurately. Dropping that aspect
of the requirement would perhaps have
enabled a less complex and less troublesome
undercarriage. It had already been
established that the extending nosewheel
was not needed for short-field work.
While, in all probability, the aircraft would
simply have been ‘made to work’ as required
if it had not been cancelled, the prospect of
lumbering the RAF and the taxpayer with a
hugely expensive and over-engineered white
elephant must have seemed very real.
Clive Lawrence, Redhill, Surrey
The perils of Blue Steel
Your April edition’s coverage of Blue Steel
and its accuracy brought to mind a lesson I
In association with…
Island Air Services’ joyriding Rapides
at Heathrow in 1955. VIA MARK MILLER
LETTER
of the
MONTH
instructor and eventually getting
a motorglider PPL, but I will never
lose my memories and my love for the
Dragon Rapide.
Tony Jackson, Stourbridge
The co-owner/pilot of Rapide G-AGJG, Mark
Miller, writes, “the Rapide at each end of his
story could be one and the same aircraft!
At Halfpenny Green the jump aircraft was,
with 99 per cent probability, G-AGJG, and
at Heathrow in 1954 the odds were about
one in three. The probability increases
slightly if Tony was not flown by a lady pilot,
as Monique Agazarian tended to stick to
G-AGUF.”
learned as a young, green engineer in 1973.
I was talking to a chap in the drawing office
at what had morphed from Elliott Bros into
Marconi-Elliott Avionic Systems at Rochester.
As an inexperienced engineer at Elliott Bros
in Borehamwood during the early years of
the programme he was asked to pressure-
test the inertial navigation system enclosure.
Thinking it an easy task, he took it into the
car park and coupled up a pressure gauge
with air-line attached. He couldn’t remember
the over-pressure that it withstood, only the
enormous bang as it ruptured, took to the air
and landed in Engel & Gibbs’ car park next
door, fortunately without causing injury to
persons or property. He learned a valuable
lesson and, like most instructors, was happy
to share his misfortune as an example to the
next generation.
Alan Briggs,
Honeybourne, Worcestershire
The editor reserves the right to edit all letters.
Please include your full name and address in
correspondence.
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
023_AM_JUNE_21_ad.indd 1 23/04/2021 16:08:28
 Q&A COMPILER: BARRY WHEELER
WRITE TO: Aeroplane, Key Publishing Ltd,
PO Box 100, Stamford, Lincolnshire PE9 1XQ, UK
E-MAIL TO: aeroplane@keypublishing.com,
putting ‘Q&A’ in the header

Are you seeking the answer to a thorny aviation question, or trying to trace an old aviation friend? Our ‘questions and answers’ page might help

THIS MONTH’S QUESTIONS

A Spitfire used for
Another possibility is a School of
“agility training”, but
at which location? Technical Training; any help
would be welcome.
Sale of surplus dinghies
available post-war involving the
sale of surplus single-seat
dinghies for pilots. Geoff
remembers seeing
advertisements in government

Q Along similar lines to the

acquisition of Air Ministry
recognition models highlighted
in past issues, Geoff Dobson
recalls another collectable item
surplus publications, but his
attempt to locate one for use on
local ponds and rivers failed!
Were other readers more
successful?

Spitfire identity end of the book under the

Q Spitfire historian Peter

Arnold would like to know
the identity of the Spitfire IX or
XVI in the adjacent photograph
which appears in the 1961
reprinted edition of Bruce
Robertson’s Spitfire — The Story
of a Famous Fighter. The picture
is one of a number added at the
heading ‘Spitfire Postscript’. The
radio mast indicates a high-back Bawdsey Rapide?
variant and under the nose is the
individual letter ‘U’. The caption
‘Agility testing for a selection
Q Can anyone shed light on where and when this photograph
of DH Rapide G-AJHP was taken? Ian McBean believes his
father-in-law might have taken the photo at Bawdsey, Suffolk,
board’ indicates the location where he worked as farm manager for Sir Cuthbert Quilter in the
could be RAF Hornchurch, but 1950s. The UK registration was cancelled in March 1960 when
its Spitfire was MkXIV RM694 the Rapide moved to France as F-OBOI two months later.
with a five-blade propeller.

THIS MONTH’S ANSWERS

Ju 390 fates adding the codes of the V-2, for an article in a myth until photographic evidence

Q The fate of the Junkers Ju 390 six-

engine transports formed part of a
question in the April issue regarding a
a post-war German magazine. Surviving
Junkers documents showed it was to be
delivered in December 1944, followed by
emerges to give proof of the flight.

Power on the water

flight to Uruguay in the closing stages of
World War Two.
five more examples ordered under an RLM
contract, but Allied raids on the Junkers Q Back in the January 2019 issue, John
Benson queried the engine thrust

A Rudolf Koenen e-mailed to say the

second prototype Ju 390 appears not to
have been completed on the instructions of
the German Air Ministry (RLM). According
to an individual who supplied documents
and photographs to Rudolf and to a
German forum for information, the call for
a halt on building further transport aircraft,
including the Ju 390V-2, was due to the
urgency of increased fighter production.
The long-held assumption that the second
machine, coded RC+DA, had actually
flown was given credence by the late writer
Gert W. Heumann, who ‘doctored’ an
airborne picture of the first example,
factories caused considerable damage to
the V-2 with the result that all Ju 290/390
production was cancelled. Documents
dated 2 February 1945 mention that Ju 390
V-1 Werknummer 3900001/GH+UK was
“parked at Junkers Dessau (without
engines)”. Post-war, former Junkers test
pilot Hans-Joachim Pancherz, who
initiated the type’s flight trials programme,
stated that only one 390 had ever been
completed. On the subject of a sighting of
the type in Uruguay near the end of the
war, purportedly carrying the secret Project
Lichtträger/Glocke (plasmaphysics with
mercury) for Argentina, the report remains
lines of various flying boats and sought an
authoritative explanation for why they were
inclined in such ways.
A Ian Miller in Australia says that
inclining the engines vertically
decreases the fulcrum arm length to the
centre of gravity, thus slightly decreasing
the thrust/drag couple, which in itself is a
difficulty with floats or a floating-hull
aeroplane. Additionally, the propeller
slipstream is now directed downwards on
to the tailplane, helping correct a nose-
down tendency. In the event of a loss of
engine power, the tailplane self-corrects to
give a beneficial nose-down attitude.

24 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

Untitled-1 1 23/04/2021 09:28:40
 E IFT AY
TH CT G 'S D
RFE HER
PE FAT
R
FO

Print, digital and bundle subscriptions: Quoted rates are for UK subscriptions paying by Direct Debit. Quoted savings based on those rates
versus purchasing individual products. Standard one-year print subscription prices: UK - £50.99, EU - £59.99, USA - £62.99, ROW - £65.99

key.aero/aeropl a
USA CUSTOMER?
Visit imsnews.com/aeroplane
Your customer code: AM0621
OR CALL: +44(0) 1
175 Aeroplane Subs DPS.indd 26 26/04/2021 15:33:43
 SAVE
E 4
45%
Choose your 12-month subscription offer:
UP
TO
PRINT DIGITAL PRINT + DIGITAL
From £44.99 £34.99 From £54.99
Direct Debit (saving 40%) (saving 45%)
(saving 30%)

FREE GI FREE GI
AVAILABFTS AVAILABFTS
LE LE
EXCLUSIVE SUBSCRIBER ONLY COVERS

WHY SUBSCRIBE?
•FREE delivery to your door
•SAVE on the cover price
FREE
FOR SUB
SCRIBERS
•NEVER miss an issue Premium
access to

•Exclusive DISCOUNT
offers for subscribers Now inclu
ding EAR
LY DIGITA

l ane-monthly
to every n L ACCESS
ew issue
of Aeropla . Rea d your copy
ne before
it arrives!

) 1780 480404
Lines open
Monday-Friday;
9am-5.30pm
GMT 175/21

Offer closes 31 July 2021

175 Aeroplane Subs DPS.indd 27 26/04/2021 15:35:23

PROFILE Frank Whittle

“FATHER HAD A
EXCEPTIONAL I
That remark by
Ian Whittle cannot
be denied. His
father, Sir Frank, is
one of those rare
individuals to whom
the epithet ‘genius’
deserves application.
In a revealing new
interview to mark the
80th anniversary of
a British jet-powered
aircraft taking to the
air for the first time, Ian
recalls the character
of a man whose
invention changed the
world forever
WORDS: NICHOLAS JONES

28 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

 H
D AN
“ e could pick up my
violin and play it yet
he had never had a
lesson. He loved to look
at Stonehenge, or read me Old
Testament stories in funny voices.”

L IDEA”
Ian Whittle’s childhood memories
of his father always surprise me,
even after years of studying Britain’s
aero-engineering genius. Yet they
instantly convey a sense of Frank
Whittle’s enquiring mind and his
wide interests, which ranged far
beyond aviation.
Britain remembers Sir Frank as
the inventor of the jet engine. In
fact, Ian says, “My father wasn’t at
all interested in being called the
inventor of the turbojet, for to him
it was just a mutation of the gas
turbine”. In other words, Whittle saw
it as an endless work in progress.
The momentous day on which he
fired up the world’s first turbojet in
1937 was, for him, merely a step on
this long road.
This year, however, sees the 80th
anniversary of the key milestone
in Whittle’s journey, for it was on LEFT:
15 May 1941 that his jet engine first A wartime Ministry
powered an aircraft, the Gloster of Information
E28/39. Mindful of this jubilee, I photographer
recently recorded Ian Whittle at captured this
length, to learn more about his beautiful period
colour portrait of
amazing father. Frank Whittle at
I filmed Frank Whittle extensively his desk — suitably
before he died in 1996. My interview adorned with E28/39
with him forms the core of my and Meteor models.
feature-length documentary Whittle GETTY

— The Jet Pioneer, through which

I hope Sir Frank’s amazing story BELOW:
will live for posterity. Making this A rare photograph
film, I met people who worked with of Moses Whittle,
him and began to get a picture of father of Sir Frank.
this fascinating man. But it was to He was “a self-
Ian I returned, to hear what exactly trained engineer”,
in the words of his
motivated his father and enabled grandson Ian.
him to pull off the seemingly ALL VIA NICHOLAS JONES
impossible in the shape of jet UNLESS OTHERWISE CREDITED
propulsion.
I had Sir Frank’s
story in his own words.
Now, I could film Ian’s
insights and memories
to paint a picture of
Whittle through the
eyes of a son — and
discover what life
is like living with a
genius. In the process,
I hoped to find what
regrets Whittle may
have had, given the
frustrations of his
career and, crucially,
to learn what he really
thought of the claim
he was merely a

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 29

 PROFILE Frank Whittle
ABOVE: ‘joint inventor’ of the jet engine,
Frank Whittle (left) with the German Hans von Ohain.
became the leading Unlike the noble Ohain, Whittle
light in the Boys’
Wing Model Aircraft
was born working-class. It was the
Society as a Cranwell first thing he told me on camera. His
apprentice, and his Lancastrian father Moses Whittle
superior officers had been a foreman in a Coventry
noted his skill at toolmaker when he was born in
building working June 1907. The Christian name
replicas. This image
is dated 1926.
hints at the Wesleyan community
from where Moses came. His
ABOVE RIGHT: non-conformist religion provided
Fg Off Frank both solace and the self-discipline
Whittle, in a formal needed to survive the insecurity
photograph taken of Victorian industrial life. Ian’s
in May 1930 — the
month he married
account of Moses’ childhood
Dorothy Lee. astounded me.
“My grandfather
left school aged
11 in 1893 and
He was so
became a ‘grease-
monkey’ in the
driven because of
cotton mills where his mathematical
little boys were
used to lubricate abilities
the machinery
whilst it was running. He’d be
crawling about in the heat, noise
and danger. There, he learnt the
rudiments of engineering and later
on became a mechanic and, really,
a self-trained engineer. And he was
very inventive in his own way”. Yet
grandfather Whittle had lacked the
education to realise his potential,
although he was “terribly keen on
engineering and ready to learn”.
As Ian spoke, I sensed the roots
of Britain’s jet engine were laid,
unconsciously, in the mills of
Lancashire. Yet Moses’ quest for
improvement had taken him south.
His Coventry home backed onto the
London and North Western Railway,
30 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
028-35 Whittle AM Jun2021.indd 30
but its locomotives hardly appealed
to young Frank. A photograph
shows he was mad about aeroplanes
by the age of four. He told me, “My
heroes were Capt Albert Ball and
Maj McCudden, the VCs of the First
World War, and I just wanted to fly.”
Moses used his hard-earned
savings to buy a micro-business
called the Leamington Valve and
Piston Ring Company in 1916 and
the family moved to the spa town.
Ian recalls, “When father was a boy,
he helped his father in his workshop
while grandpa was making valves
and piston rings. They were
handling high-temperature alloys
for the exhaust
valves and Moses
would chat to
his son about
alloys, so Frank
Whittle learnt
the rudiments of
engineering from
his father.”
He won a scholarship to
Leamington College, but the post-
war peace afflicted Moses. “The
business lost out and grandpa
became very poor. At one time they
had nowhere to sleep except the
workshop floor and times were very
tough”. I suspect this experience
affected young Frank. An erratic
pupil, he said in my film, “I was very
lazy with homework and got a series
of raspberries, but at the end of term
I’d still come top at maths.”
He created his own world away
from the anxieties of home at the
local library. There, says Ian, “he
learnt about turbines. He found a
book by a chap called Stodola, a
Swiss engineer, and he learnt about
their dynamics”. By chance, both
Leamington Library and family
workshop came together to provide
young Frank with extra-curricular
courses that would eventually bear
fruit after he entered the Royal Air
Force in 1923.
Joining the service presented a
huge hurdle for Whittle. He passed
the academic tests but failed the
medical. He was rejected because
he was too small for his age. He
said, “I was sunk for the time being
but before I left camp a very kind
physical training sergeant, if you can
imagine such a thing, took pity on
me and gave me a diet to follow and
a series of Maxalding exercises.”
His recall of this long-forgotten
exercise system intrigues me
because it holds a crucial key to
why Whittle would build the world’s
first turbojet. Maxalding exercises
were popular in an era when many
working-class boys were undersized,
for they aimed to make teenagers
grow. Whittle said, “I did all that for
six months. I put on 3in in height
and 3in on my chest, and thought,
I’ll have another shot. I wrote to the
ministry but they said, ‘no, once
you’ve been turned down, you’ve
been turned down for ever’. I then
decided I’ll go through the whole
process again as though it had
never happened, in the hope the
bureaucracy wouldn’t pick it up.”
It didn’t. Nine months after his
first try, Whittle began life as an RAF
apprentice at Cranwell’s No 4 Wing.
This story shows what extraordinary
determination he already possessed.
Try to imagine him exercising on
27/04/2021 09:41

his floor in a busy home, to achieve
a goal most would deem hopeless,
in pursuit of an almost unattainable
dream. He just wanted to fly.
Alas, at the apprentice school
he got a shock. Only officers flew.
Dismayed by the harsh service
training, he found a haven in the
Model Aircraft Society, where
his craftsmanship intrigued his
superiors. Ian Whittle says they
made a crucial discovery. “As
a boy entrant, he did well and
his mathematical abilities came
through.”
When his training ended, he came
sixth out of 600. The top five would
become officer cadets. One failed
the eyesight test, making Whittle
eligible. “Lord Trenchard nearly
stopped it, because I had made no
name in sport”, Whittle told me. His
CO urged the father of the RAF to
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 31
take him, because “he thought he’d
got a mathematical genius”. Whittle
duly become a cadet.
❖ Cadet Whittle laid out his
Ian says, “That’s where he started
to rise up the social scale. As a
cadet, in addition to the academic
instruction, he learned to fly. And,
being a natural pilot, he excelled at
the [RAF] College and was awarded
his wings”. All those exercises on
Leamington floors had finally paid
off. There was only one problem:
Whittle’s Avro 504K trainer shook
him to bits. He soon felt an
“aesthetic dislike” for its piston
engine.
The course was academically
tough. Ian notes, “As a cadet he
made a study of the atmosphere
and became very familiar with its
constitution. In his final term, he
LEFT:
A rare colour shot
of the first E28/39,
W4041/G — the G
denoting the need
for a permanent
guard on the
airframe — making
a fast pass over
Farnborough in 1943
or ’44. KEY COLLECTION
became interested in what might
follow on from the piston engine.
What would become the aero-
engine of the future?”
thoughts in a 1928 thesis, ‘Future
Developments in Aircraft Design’.
This expertly theorised the
mathematics, as he argued that, “to BELOW LEFT:
go very fast and far you would have A later, posed image
to go very high, heights of 50,000ft, of Whittle and
where the piston engine obviously some of his Power
wouldn’t work and at speeds where Jets colleagues at
Brownsover Hall in
the propeller wouldn’t work. So Rugby, the firm’s HQ.
I started to look for a new kind of KEY COLLECTION
powerplant.”
Ian described to me how, BELOW:
“remarkably for someone so The Whittle Unit, the
young, Whittle’s paper showed world’s first turbojet,
at Lutterworth in
by calculation the turbine was 1938. By now the
potentially a prime mover for aero unit was in its final
propulsion”. But how could it do so shape after two
in practice? “After Cranwell, my rebuilds.
PROFILE Frank Whittle
ABOVE: father began to seek an alternative
The fourth prototype to the piston engine”. In the autumn
Meteor, DG205/G, of 1929, he was posted to the
was the first example
of the Gloster fighter
Central Flying School at Wittering.
to use Whittle “There, he tried to see from his own
engines, a pair of mathematical knowledge whether
Rover-built W2B/23s. you could harness the gas turbine
Frank is second to drive the propeller, but found
from right in this this would demand impossibly high
group photo, taken
at Barford St John,
efficiencies in the compressor and
accompanied by a turbine. He concluded such a gas
number of Gloster turbine would need to be very large,
personnel. heavy and fuel-greedy to produce
KEY COLLECTION adequate shaft horsepower. He then
chanced upon the idea that, instead
of trying to use all the turbine’s
energy to drive the compressor
and propeller, you just take enough
to drive a compressor and let the
remaining energy vent as a high
mass-flow exhaust down a jet pipe,
to create a kind of rocket.”
Sir Frank himself summed it up
on camera. “I thought, ‘Why not
throw the piston engine away, up
the compression ratio of the fan
and substitute a turbine for the
piston engine?’ And there was the
turbojet”. Ian adds, “Father used
to say, ‘the penny dropped’. The
turbojet idea effectively dismissed
both the altitude limit of the piston
engine and the speed limitation of
its propeller.”
Frank Whittle had seen the future
of flight as a pilot officer aged
22. He was envisaging speeds of
500mph at 50,000ft at a time when
32 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
his Armstrong Whitworth Siskin III
peaked at 143mph at 10,000ft. He
eagerly proposed his vision to the
Air Ministry, only to meet disdain.
Its boffins dismissed his turbojet
as “impractical”. Yet his Wittering
instructor Pat Johnson was a convert
and helped him patent the idea in
January 1930.
That year he married Dorothy
Lee, an artistic young lady from
Warwickshire. In 1931 she gave
birth to their first son David. Ian was
born during 1934.
He recalls, “Dad
married when he I didn’t become
was too young
as far as the RAF
aware father was
were concerned anybody out of
and they denied
him a marriage the ordinary until
allowance. David
was a sickly that day
baby, so they had
medical bills. Mother was poorly
too after his birth. Father was soon
impecunious.”
Whittle was an outstanding test
pilot during the early 1930s, with a
promising career ahead. I suspect
Dorothy was surprised to find she
had married a workaholic, and
what made him so. “If you are an
ideas person, you will become
driven”, Ian tells me. “Father had an
exceptional idea”. Sadly, his country
was indifferent. Johnson and Whittle
flew round Britain pitching the
turbojet to industrialists. Some were
keen but none had the money it
needed, as the economy slumped.
In 1934 Whittle’s patent was due
for renewal. Unable to find the fiver
needed to extend it, he could only
let it lapse.
Whitehall had stupidly refused
to make his patent secret. Several
embassies in London snapped
up copies, including Weimar
Germany’s. Ian has researched
this closely. “The turbojet patent
arrived in Berlin
on 14 August
1931 and was
then circulated
throughout
Germany’s
aeronautical
industries via
technical journal”.
The country’s
aero-engineers
were soon poring over it.
Despite endless rebuffs, Whittle
was already thinking beyond his
basic turbojet. He knew it would
have a low propulsive efficiency
and sought a solution, via a more
powerful and economical engine.
It was one that would create our
modern world. “Some time between
1930 and 1933, he came up with the
idea of the turbofan”, says Ian.
Years later, Dorothy would tell
journalists what enabled Frank to
persist with the turbojet through
 a decade of rejection from all
quarters. “He had this conviction he
could do what he wanted to do with
aeroplanes. I have never seen him
lose heart”. I asked Ian for his view.
“Father had great determination and
self-belief. He was so driven because
of his mathematical abilities. You
prove things with mathematics. If he
calculated something that way and
got a result, he knew it was possible.
When he first conceived the turbojet
he was certain that he was onto
something really important”. Hence
he knew his Farnborough critics
were wrong.
Einstein once said, “I am only
passionately curious”. Frank Whittle
clearly shared this trait. “He tended
to be intense and enthusiastic in
anything he put his hand to, such as
geology or archaeology”, Ian adds.
“He’d go for walks with a hammer
and a little bag and tap rocks and
study them”. Stonehenge, by all
accounts, fascinated him.

❖
In 1934 the RAF sent Whittle
to Peterhouse College to study
mechanical sciences. His
Cambridge years become the
watershed for the turbojet. In
May 1935 he received a surprise
letter from a Cranwell friend, Rolf
Williams. Now an entrepreneur, he
wanted to hawk Whittle’s concept
round the City. Williams feared
German rearmament and hoped
to give Britain the fastest aircraft in
case Hitler went to war.
Williams raised £2,000 from O. T.
Falk, a merchant bank that invested
where others feared to tread, and
in 1936 a company named Power
Jets was created to build a prototype
engine. The Air Ministry said Whittle
could only work six hours a week on
it, but he threw himself into the job
just as his finals were approaching.
He wanted a first: for six weeks he
swotted intensely and got one.
After much persuasion, the
mighty British Thomson-Houston
(BTH) concern of Rugby agreed to
build his turbojet for just £2,000. In
1986 Whittle told me he had really
needed £30,000. This financial
shortfall soon started causing him
terrible anxiety. The Whittles moved
to Rugby’s Grand Hotel, from where
Frank left each morning for work
at BTH. In its cavernous workshop
he supervised BTH staff as they
turned his blueprints into an actual,
functioning engine.
Whittle told me his biggest worry ABOVE:
was the engine’s combustion, In January 1944,
“because we were aiming at 24 Whittle’s work on
jet propulsion was
times the kind of combustion made public. Press
intensity that was obtainable in photographers took
those days”. Despite that, it was charming pictures of
ready for running on 12 April 1937. him and his family
“Many people said it wouldn’t even at home in Rugby.
turn itself over. Quite the opposite Here, sons David
(left) and Ian play
happened”. The engine ran out of draughts as Frank
control and Whittle couldn’t stop and his wife Dorothy
it. He later found “a pool of fuel had look on. Until that
accumulated in the combustion day, she had not
chamber, and that was keeping it known what he was
running after I’d switched off the doing in the war.
control”. In 1949 the Central Office
of Information filmed an amusing
reconstruction of this event with
Whittle, in which his workers run for
safety. Whittle himself “just couldn’t
move. I was petrified with fright.”
Ian says, “Father rarely showed
excitement, but I know he got pretty
excited about the run. I must have
been in my cot in bed when he came
back for dinner with mother in the
hotel dining room. He was thinking
about everyone fleeing as the
engine ran out of control, reaching
8,000rpm, and he was trying to eat
when he burst out laughing. And
he laughed so much he had to run
up to their bedroom to try and LEFT:
calm down. I think it was a kind Dorothy and Frank
Whittle on holiday
of hysterical reaction to what had
near Le Lavandou on
happened.” the Côte d’Azur in
The jet age had begun. Dorothy the south of France
Whittle later described it as, “a after World War Two.

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 33

028-35 Whittle AM Jun2021.indd 33 27/04/2021 09:41

PROFILE Frank Whittle

RIGHT: wonderful day. I thought it would

‘The Second be the end of his experimenting”.
Generation’ is how a Instead, it would be the start of four
magazine captioned
this photo of Plt
anxiety-ridden years in which Frank
Off Ian Whittle on strove to get his turbojet flying.
a Harvard of No Although it clearly now worked,
2 Flying Training officialdom remained hostile. Only
School, during his on 30 June 1939 did Whitehall
flight training at RAF deem his engine a war-winner.
Cluntoe, County
Tyrone, in 1954.
That day, its director of scientific
research, David Pye, visited Power
Jets and saw the turbojet run for 20
minutes. His scepticism vanished.
To Whittle’s amazement, he ordered
a flight engine and airframe. This
aircraft would be the Gloster E28/39.
In mid-1937 the Whittles had
taken a house outside Rugby. Ian
fondly recalls life there. “In the early
forties I remember him toddling off
to work every day in his uniform.
I’d clean his shoes or brass buttons
and that’s the last we’d see of him.
I’d be in bed when he came back.
He used to go with an automatic
pistol tucked in his jacket, and one
day he left it on the windowsill
by the front door. When he went
upstairs I grabbed it and was playing
with it when he came down, and of
course it was loaded. It gave him a
terrible fright”. Another memory Ian
has, “was of just somebody always
working. If he took any time off, say
BELOW: Sunday, Dad would sit in his chair Brownsover was a country house documentary, Eric Brown — A
In October 1991, Sir by the fire with his slide rule and above Rugby which had become Pilot’s Story, I realised what respect
Frank and Dr Hans papers all over the place, working Power Jets’ HQ. Betty Loughton he had for Whittle as an aviator.
von Ohain were
and with a little time for myself and occupied the office next to Whittle. The E28/39 trials were so
jointly awarded the
Charles Stark Draper my brother but not much.” “He just worked and worked. It successful that the aviation giants
Prize as inventors of By 1940 Power Jets had an certainly affected his health”. Aged which had rejected Whittle for years
the jet engine by the expanding staff with exceptional 77, she told me, “I found him very now demanded the right to develop
National Academy engineers. One was Bob Feilden, sexy in his uniform.” turbojets. Equally worrying for
of Engineering — who told me, “I remember driving Ian said, “All that very hard work Whittle, he had hoped by this point
the USA’s highest
through the blackout at 3am with did take him away from us, so we to be watching a Gloster Meteor take
engineering
accolade. The author some engine test results to give as a family lost out quite badly”. It off with his engines. This aircraft
thinks only Whittle Frank at Brownsover, and found was especially difficult for Dorothy. had been ordered in 1940 but Rover,
deserved the prize. him still up waiting for them”. “She couldn’t understand why she contracted to make its jets, was
wasn’t allowed to talk to father ruining the job.
about what he was doing. He used
to steer her away from the subject ❖
and she thought, ‘I’m his wife, I Dorothy did not know what was
ought to know’. He was constrained making her husband increasingly
by the Official Secrets Act but she unwell. In 1941 Whittle had the first
felt annoyed and left out.” of three nervous breakdowns. Ian
She did not even know her remembers him “as poorly quite a
husband’s jet flew for the first time lot of the time. Whenever mother
at Cranwell on 15 May 1941. As it was in charge of the nursing at home
took off, his old friend Pat Johnson she would look after him, while also
exclaimed, “Frank, it flies!” A tense looking after my brother and me.
Whittle retorted, “That was bloody She dedicated her life to us, to the
well what it was designed to do”. family.”
When making Whittle — The Jet The Allies publicly announced the
Pioneer I interviewed Eric ‘Winkle’ jet in January 1944. Ian remembers
Brown, who by chance witnessed the shock. “I didn’t become aware
the E28/39’s maiden flight. He said, father was anybody out of the
“I was astonished to know what it ordinary until that day. We’re sitting
was because it had no propeller”. at home, the doorbell is ringing
Filming him for this and another and there are reporters outside and

34 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

photographers, which was very
unsettling”. Dorothy told the Daily
Herald, “I knew Frank had a secret”.
We can only imagine her shock. “He
never talked about the jet once war
started but for 24 hours a day he has
had time for nothing but work.”
Despite the recognition, 1944
went badly for Whittle. Power Jets
was nationalised on poor terms and
he suffered a second breakdown.
He was hospitalised at RAF Halton,
where Ian recalls seeing him, “rather
sedated. He was just very calm
but pleasant. So I didn’t get the
impression of serious illness. That
was hidden from me as a child”.
Amidst the wartime gloom, Halton
offered rare treats. “Dad had a lovely
tea in the afternoon. I managed to
consume all his cake with icing on
top.”
Whittle was by then building a
pioneer turbofan, and a supersonic
engine for the Miles M52, but Rolls-
Royce would not countenance the
state-run Power Jets competing
with it. Hence Whitehall cancelled
these trailblazing engines, despite
the spectacular lead they promised
Britain. Whittle quit Power Jets in
despair in 1946.
He emerged from war a national
hero, yet he harboured regrets. In
my film he states, “We could have was dead-end technology. Whittle What was it like, I asked Ian, to ABOVE:
had a much bigger influence in learned about it in 1945, but even in follow his father into the service? “I Sir Frank and his
the war than happened”. Ian knew the post-war years when his crown did feel I was rather in his shadow. son Ian stand by
a preserved ‘gate
what he meant. “Father often said as the ‘father of jet propulsion’ And, of course, it worried me guardian’ Meteor
we would have had an operational was undisputed, he feared people because I felt that I had to excel at at RAF Odiham. Ian
jet fighter by 1942, had Rover not were waiting to diminish his what I was doing and keep up the flew Meteors as an
altered the Meteor’s engines.” achievements. show a little bit, as people knew who RAF pilot from the
Ian reveals his sadness ran In the USA, Ohain was proclaimed I was and who he was”. After the same station in the
deeper. “He felt disappointed we ‘joint inventor of the turbojet’ in RAF, Ian became an airline captain 1950s.
hadn’t got in there with jet fighters the 1980s. Whittle said nothing in and, in 1986, flew his Cathay Pacific
before the war began”. Frank knew public, but Ian has now told me Boeing 747 into Hong Kong’s Kai Tak
we could have done so, had Britain what Sir Frank really thought. “He airport with Frank in the jump seat.
recognised the liked Hans, so he One can imagine the father’s pride.
promise of the
turbojet in 1929
He was like a never denigrated
him. But father did
People who worked with Frank
Whittle told me over the years how
when he proposed it bulldog. He knew say to me, ‘It’s really
rather ridiculous
they think he realised his dream of
to the Air Ministry. jet propulsion. Ian now gives me
Ian believes if he was right because Ohain was the best answer. “He pulled off this
development had a schoolboy when I achievement because he was like
occurred then, the RAF would have conceived the turbojet’”. Personally, a bulldog. He knew he was right
had jet aircraft flying by September I feel Frank Whittle was somewhat because his mathematics were
1939. I canvassed Eric Brown’s view. indulgent towards Ohain. right. He knew it could be done
He thought the Battle of Britain Today, at 86, Ian still flies his Piper and he always believed he
would have ended in August 1940 if Archer III. “I was always influenced could do it.”
Fighter Command had entered the by the fact my father had been a
war with a 400mph twin-jet fighter. pilot. He loved talking about flying,
In 1933-34 Germany’s scientists so when I was a schoolboy I used Whittle — The Jet Pioneer and Eric
had begun to research how a gas to hope I would fly aeroplanes one Brown — A Pilot’s Story are both
turbine might produce a propelling day”. Ian entered the RAF himself. available on DVD from Quanta Films.
jet. One of them, Hans von Ohain, “When I became a Meteor pilot, Please visit www.quantafilms.co.uk to
secured Ernst Heinkel’s backing. father was very pleased. I would buy online or call 07435 973397.
His lavish funds enabled Ohain’s look at the aeroplane and think, Each costs £15.99 plus £1.99 P&P (in
design to power a jet aeroplane, the those engines really are his idea. I the UK).
He 178, in August 1939. Its engine felt proud of that.”

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 35

RETROSPECTIVE ATC gliding

ON SILENT
WINGS
Over nearly four decades, the wooden glider fleet of the Air Training
Corps — which celebrates its 80th anniversary this year — gave
thousands of young cadets their first taste of flight WORDS: ANDREW CRITCHELL

F
or anyone with an interest
in aviation, there are several
common experiences
that can spark what often
becomes a lifelong passion. Among
many teenagers from the 1950s to
the 1980s, a natural and accessible
progression was gliding with the Air
Training Corps. At the tender age of
16, you could find yourself airborne
and in sole charge of Her Majesty’s
property as you soloed in a Slingsby
Cadet or gained air experience in a
Sedbergh. Indeed, a generation of
pilots can trace their first taste of the
air, and their subsequent careers, to
their ATC gliding exploits.
By the end of the Second World
War the ATC was an impressively
large organisation, hundreds of
gliders being used at Elementary
Gliding Schools across the country
under the direction of the newly
re-formed Reserve Command.
Within five years, the first of the
new fleet of two-seat gliders had
arrived, benefiting all involved as
instruction could now be given —
and acted upon — while cadets
were in the air.
A reorganisation in March 1959
saw Flying Training Command
taking over responsibility for all air
cadet training, with No 1 Gliding
Centre at Hawkinge looking after
the south of the country and No 2
Gliding Centre at Newton serving
the north. Through amalgamations,
the number of Gliding Schools
was reduced to 27, operating 69
Sedbergh TX1s, 171 Cadet TX3s
and a few single-seat Prefect TX1s,
all of Slingsby manufacture. While
the Gliding Centres were full-time,
the Gliding Schools operated at
weekends. They were staffed by
unpaid volunteers who had regular
civilian jobs during the week and
made up a valuable and highly
experienced workforce. The ATC’s
gliding heyday was now in full
swing. It lasted for another quarter-
century before the wooden glider
fleet was retired.
As a ‘typical’ cadet, Paul Pattison’s
aeronautical enthusiasm was
kindled by Airfix kits and then Keil

A Cadet Mk1 glider, tow-rope still

attached, is winched into the air at
an ATC unit in early 1943. AEROPLANE

36 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

Kraft balsa-wood flying models. “I
lived in Darlington and joined No
405 Squadron of the Air Training
Corps in 1966 when I was 14”, he
recalls, “the squadron being within
cycling distance of our house. There
were about 30 cadets and I stayed
for four years. There was an indoor
rifle range where we shot .22s. We
also did outdoor combat exercises
on the land behind and maybe
the occasional cross-country run,
while occasional trips to an outdoor
rifle range at Whitburn, near
Sunderland, allowed us to shoot
.303s. I got a lot out of it, including
two lots of air experience flights on
the Chipmunk and in 1969 a camp
at RAF Laarbruch in Germany,
where Canberras were based.”
❖
But the highlight for many cadets
was, of course, the gliding. For
Paul this was with No 645 Gliding
School at Catterick, North Yorkshire.
“I would go for the weekend,
getting a lift with another cadet
and hitch-hiking back. The school
had two Sedberghs and three
Cadet Mk3s. The initial instruction
was on the Sedbergh, possibly
for ease of communication and
better supervision of us young’uns,
before moving to the Cadet Mk3.
I do remember that, as a back-
seat passenger in the Mk3 on an
air experience flight, it was quite
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 37
difficult to hear what the person in
the front seat was saying; no such
problem if you were the pupil in the
front seat with the instructor behind
telling you what to do. The flying
training included circuit planning,
recovering from stalls, stalls in a
turn, spinning and, additionally for
a glider pilot, cable breaks which
taught you what to do if the winch
cable snapped during launch.”
The goal was to obtain the
internationally recognised A and
B gliding certificates. Paul did so
over three weekends in August 1968
with four different
instructors,
culminating The confidence
in three solo
flights. “The it gave them was
ATC advanced
course required
fantastic
a minimum of 15
solo flights to include crosswind and
spot landings. I managed to wangle
17 flights, by which time I was
starting to feel quite confident about
my skills. According to my 3822
‘record of service’, this was achieved
over a period of four weekends in
April and May 1969, before I was 17
and could get a driving licence! This
was a series of solos, interspersed
with check flights with an instructor.
“I still remember the mnemonic
CISTRS for pre-take-off checks:
controls, instruments, spoilers,
trim, release, straps. It was a winch
launch, so you usually got to around
1,000ft — sometimes 1,200ft if
you were lucky — and you would
get about five minutes’ flight time
where you would be able to do a few
handling turns under instruction
before landing. You would usually
get in three to four flights a day.”
Being aviation-mad for as long
as he can remember, Andy Davey
joined the ATC at the first possible
opportunity. “Since I was a kid I
wanted to fly, to be in the air force
or in aviation somehow. We had a
very good local air cadet squadron
in Clevedon, west
of Bristol on the
coast, and I joined
that.”
The cadets
normally
completed their
BELOW:
gliding certificates With a Slingsby
on weekend courses held locally Dagling glider, air
with No 621 Volunteer Gliding cadets learn the
School — as the Gliding Schools basics of flight at
were designated from 1978 — at RNAS St Merryn,
Weston-super-Mare. However, Andy Cornwall, in February
1944. Immediately to
took advantage of a weekday course the left of the seated
that came up at Syerston, soloing pupil is the school’s
in August 1981 at the age of 16. chief instructor, Flt Lt
Returning to No 621 VGS, Andy was Prince Birabongse,
taken on as a staff cadet in January otherwise known as
1982. “I then worked my way up Prince Bira of Siam
and renowned for
from a staff cadet to what they called his very considerable
G1, a qualification which meant motor racing exploits
you could fly the cadets and do the before and after the
air experience — the best job on war. CROWN COPYRIGHT
RETROSPECTIVE ATC gliding
ABOVE: the field. You basically flew all day,
Several different giving the cadets as many flights as
glider types were you could. When they arrived on the
used by the wartime
airfield in the morning, they were
ATC, this being a
Slingsby T4 Falcon briefed on everything from how to
III. AEROPLANE hold a wing to how to wave a bat.
Then the staff cadets were either
flying the cadets, driving the winch,
driving the Land Rovers, pulling the
cables out or retrieving the gliders
when they were landing down the
field.”
Comparing the Sedbergh —
otherwise known as the ‘barge’,
or as the T21, its manufacturer’s
designation — to the Mk3,
nicknamed the ‘brick’, Andy
commented, “The ‘barge’ was
RIGHT:
Cadet TX3 XE808
about to be launched
by No 645 VGS at
Catterick, north
Yorkshire. PAUL PATTISON
38 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
better for air experience. If you had
a nervous cadet you could see and
you could talk to them and it just
flew nicely. If you got all the speeds
right, it wafted around the sky, and
you could also soar with it. I only
ever saw anyone soar a Mk3 once,
and that was on a very odd day
when we had some wave lift on the
airfield, but the ‘barge’ was regularly
soaring. If there was the slightest
zephyr of lift it went up in one go. It
flew very slowly, and you’d be in a
thermal with the other gliders from
the civilian club from across the
airfield and going up the middle of
them, and you’d be banking steeply
and […] out-turning them because
you were lighter and climbing better
than them. Then, as soon as you got
to the top of the thermal and set off,
you’d just drop like a stone in the
‘barge’. They’d be whipping off into
the distance to the next thermal
and we’d be floundering back to the
ground again.
“The Mk3 was purely a training
glider. It went up, it went down, and
if you got more than four minutes in
one you were doing well. For doing
what it did it was very good. It was
simple, it performed like a glider
should. When you moved the stick,
it did something. The Mk3s weren’t
aerobatic, though, whereas in the
‘barge’ you could legally loop, carry
out chandelles and stuff like that,
and you could spin as well. You were
forbidden to spin or loop the Mk3.”
One disadvantage of the T21
was its dislike of gusty conditions.
“The Sedbergh was always a bit of
a handful if it was windy. It was the
first one to be put away if it started
to get a bit gusty as it didn’t like to be
flown in turbulent conditions. Things
just didn’t happen very quickly —
you whacked the stick over and
five minutes later it would start to
turn — whereas the Mk3 would
bore through everything; it was just
desperate to come down. It was also
more stable to fly, which is why it
was such a great training glider for
cadets with limited experience.”
❖
It wasn’t all intense flying, though.
“The time when it was really good
fun was in the evenings when the
cadets had gone home and things
were a bit more relaxed. We had an
hour or two for staff continuation
training, bringing the staff on
through to be instructors. That’s
when you did the formation flying
and aerobatics and loops and beat-
ups and all the fun flying, really,
rather than the bread and butter.”
Asked about his most memorable
flights, Andy recalled, “Those last
evening flights with the sun setting,
it’s the perfect summer’s evening,
and you’re wafting along with the
breeze in your hair in just shorts and
a T-shirt. The last flight of the day,
landing it next to the hangar rather
than out on the airfield. Or the
aerobatics, when before the flight
you’d be planning with your mates
to do some formation flying: ‘after
launch we’ll do this, we’ll do that,
we’ll formate and then we’ll beat
up the hangar or the launch point’.
It was also just seeing the smiles on
the faces of the kids when they’d had
their first taste of aviation, or you
had a soaring flight and they’d come
down frozen after half an hour, but
with a big grin on their faces… That
was what it was all about, really.”
For Andy, aviation has stayed
with him all his life, his main career
revolving around ballooning. Having
notched up 2,500 launches with the
ATC, including time as an instructor
on its more modern fleet of glass-
reinforced plastic (GRP) sailplanes,
gliding has continued to play a
prominent role as well. Andy is now
an active member of the No 621
VGS Historic Flight, which preserves
in airworthy condition a variety of
vintage ATC gliders.
Summing up his time with the
ATC, Andy said, “It gave you a pride
in yourself. You were polishing
your own boots, ironing your own
clothes, ironing your own uniform,
and you were doing the usual air
cadet stuff at the time which was
lots of flying, lots of air experience
gliding, shooting and swimming
and camps. I did several camps at
Lyneham and St Athan, and then
I went to Gütersloh and I had a
great time with it. I got up to flight
sergeant, which was almost as high
as you could get as an NCO in the
air cadets. It takes over your life! I’m
in aviation now partly because I was
mad on aviation, and also because
of 621 and the air cadets in general.”
Giving the perspective from the
instructor’s seat is Michael Tinkler.
His gliding career with the ATC
spanned 30 years and in excess of
7,500 flights, 4,000 of them in the
Cadet Mk3 and 3,000 the Sedbergh,
along with the satisfaction of
sending more than 100 cadets
solo. Wearing glasses from an early
age meant Michael’s dream of
becoming a pilot with the RAF was
out of reach, so he turned to gliding
through his school’s ATC squadron
in south London, completing his
BGA A and B gliding certificates
in two days and 20 launches at
the Hawkinge-based No 1 Gliding
Centre in 1959. Completely hooked,
Michael then joined No 615 Gliding
School at Kenley in 1960 as a staff
cadet, this being a viable route to
becoming an ATC A2 instructor, a
goal he achieved in November 1966
at just 23 years of age.
Of his time at Kenley, Michael
noted, “We primarily used the Mk3
because it was a smaller airfield.
The T21 was a little bit more
cumbersome on the ground and, if
the conditions were right, we would
prefer to use the T21 for the initial
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 39
The early days of ATC air experience flying:
at Biggin Hill in January 1942, a cadet
is prepared for a trip in the local Station
Flight’s Tiger Moth T6463. CROWN COPYRIGHT
BIRTH OF THE ATC
T
he ATC was born out experience through visits to to fill the gap, and this became
of the Air Defence RAF and Fleet Air Arm stations, the backbone of the corps’ air
Cadet Corps (ADCC), although flights in service experience provision. The
set up in 1938 by Air aircraft were rare. Even forming principal glider used during
Cdre J. A. Chamier, a veteran a dedicated ATC flight of 10 wartime was the single-seat
of the Royal Flying Corps and Airspeed Oxfords and DH Slingsby Type 7 Kadet, known
Royal Air Force. During World Dominies in 1943 could not in service as the Cadet TX1,
War One, he had witnessed meet demand. It fell to gliding though there were others.
young, hastily trained men
being rushed into action only
to be killed by more
experienced adversaries. With
war clouds once again on the
horizon, his idea was to attract
and train young men with an
interest in aviation, to give
them vital training and
experience prior to joining up.
The ADCC was so
successful that the government
stepped in, taking control and
formalising the organisation.
Many changes were made,
including its renaming as the
Air Training Corps (ATC), which
was officially established on 5 Aircraft recognition is the order of the day, as a young ATC
February 1941. Part of the ATC’s sergeant instructor shows cadets from Tiffin School in Kingston-
remit was to provide air upon-Thames a variety of models. AEROPLANE
three to four launches because it to sit on the left-hand side of the
put the cadet at ease. They could see aircraft and fly with his left hand,
the instructor and they’re relaxing and they’re obviously on the right-
as they can see what you’re doing. If hand side and couldn’t see clearly in
the conditions weren’t right for the left turns as they had to peer round,
Sedbergh, then we’d get them in the as it were. It was also a heavier
Mk3 straight away. The advantage of aircraft, but many of them could
the Mk3 was that it was the aircraft have flown it quite successfully.
they would then solo in. Rarely did “The Mk3 was an ideal aircraft [in
we send the cadets solo in the T21, which] to send cadets solo. When
the reason being the instructor used you did send them solo, they
RETROSPECTIVE ATC gliding

RIGHT:
Two No 621
VGS Cadet TX3s
undertake a spot of
evening formation
practice. ANDY DAVEY

almost forgot that there was an
instructor missing from the back. I
remember when I first went solo I
did, in fact, look back at the top of
the launch and see if the guy was
there, because what the checking
instructor does is two or three
flights with the cadet to make sure
he’s capable of flying safely. Then
he’ll simply get out and say, “OK,
lad, go and fly another one and do
it exactly as you did before, and I’ll
watch from the ground”. Before the
cadet knows it, he’s in the air, and
suddenly it hits him that he’s all by
himself and coping extremely well.”
❖ brief the cadet to carry out a normal
One of the more exciting
moments for the instructors was
simulating a cable break to see
how cadets coped with a launch
failure, the theoretical procedure
for which they would have already
learnt. As Michael describes, “I
would earlier have checked that
the cadet understood the various
cable break procedures and would
circuit, knowing that I would test
his reactions to the surprise of the
simulated cable break during the
launch. Initially, I would pull the

SLINGSBY AND HIS SAILPLANES

Fred Slingsby kneeling by
the cockpit of a Slingsby
Kite while Amy Johnson,
then president of the
Scarborough Gliding Club,
looks on. VIA GLYN BRADBURY
G
liding in the UK took off in the early 1930s, stimulating a fledgling
manufacturing business. One of the most successful early
companies was Slingsby Sailplanes, founded by Frederick
Nicholas Slingsby. Born in Cambridge on 6 November 1894,
Slingsby served in the Royal Flying Corps and then the RAF from March
1914 to February 1920. During World War One he earned the Military Medal
for bravery after taking control of, and landing, the BE2g he was flying in as
observer when his pilot was mortally wounded by a German scout aircraft.
After the war, Slingsby bought into a woodworking and furniture
manufacturing business in Scarborough. He joined the local gliding club and
quickly found himself appointed as ground engineer, largely due to his skills
at repairing the club’s wooden Dagling primary glider.
Slingsby went on to build his own version of the German RRG Falke,
which he named the British Falcon. Receiving orders for more, he devoted
himself full-time to glider production and repair. However, as World War Two
broke out, civilian gliding was banned and the future of the company looked
bleak. It was the use of the Type 7 Kadet by the ATC that guaranteed
Slingsby’s future, and the company went on to account for nearly 82 per
cent of all wooden gliders built in Britain, with the exception of wartime types
such as the Hotspur and Horsa.

40 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021


A ‘barge’ makes its sedate way
towards terra firma, in the shape
of Sedbergh TX1 WB929 at
Weston-super-Mare in May 1970.
ADRIAN M. BALCH COLLECTION
cable release on the launch at a
safe height, say 400ft, and check for
correct reactions from the front seat.
Of course, the important thing was
for the cadet not to sit there frozen
on the controls. You’re looking for
how quickly the cadet reacts to
the surprise and are watching how
swiftly the cadet moves the stick
forward to regain a normal gliding
attitude and for the air speed to
increase to normal gliding speed,
and then decide what they are going
to do with the available height.
“If they coped with that one
successfully, then again you’d brief
them on a normal launch and say,
‘Right, we’re going to launch to
600ft. Sorry about the launch failure
procedure, let’s do a normal circuit’.
Then you’d pull the release on them,
probably at 250-300ft, and see how
they cope with that one as it gives
them less time to think as they need
approach attitude and approach
speed. Most cadets managed to
cope with launch failure procedures
very well. A few may have needed
a bit of prompting, but the majority
just took it in their stride as part of
being checked-out to fly solo.
“Lots of people gained their first
experiences of flying through the
Air Cadets and [as instructors] we
loved what we were doing. We were
thrilled with the results because
there’s nothing better than seeing
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 41
little Johnny come back after his
third solo. He may be 4ft 6 when he
goes but he’s 6ft tall when he comes
back! The confidence it gave them
was fantastic.”
❖ submitted a new design, the Type 24 Falcon IV.
By the 1980s the writing was on
the wall for the ATC’s venerable
wooden glider fleet, and in
1982 approval was given to seek
replacements. Those chosen were
the tandem-seat Schleicher ASK-21,
known as the Vanguard TX1, and
the single-seat ASW-19, or Valiant
TX1. During 1984, the tandem
Grob G103 was introduced as the
Viking TX1. On the motorised self-
launching glider (SLG) front, the
canvas-covered Slingsby Venture
T2, which came into service in 1977,
was superseded from 1990 by the
Grob G109B, designated Vigilant T1.
Girls had also been allowed to join
the ATC, an opportunity many have
since embraced with relish.
With the new GRP gliders, the
ATC continued to flourish. At the
turn of the millennium it had 15
winch-launch and 13 self-launch
schools. Unfortunately, its recent
history has been less than positive.
In 2014 the entire fleet of Vikings
and Vigilants was grounded when
an investigation into the civilian-
contracted maintenance operations
uncovered serious deficiencies
CORE OF
THE CORPS:
MAIN ATC
WOODEN GLIDERS
Cadet TX1
The single-seat Slingsby Type 7 Kadet was designed
with a wing mounted above the fuselage, its span 38ft
6in. It first flew in early 1936, proving cheap to build and
repair, and relatively easy to fly and soar. Slingsby itself
built 254 Type 7s, with many more being constructed
from sold plans or under licence. By May 1946, the ATC
had 362 Cadet Mk1s on the books with 50 waiting to be
delivered and another 115 on order, along with a small
selection of other types. These were spread across 87
Elementary Gliding Schools located at RAF stations
throughout the country.
Sedbergh TX1
Slingsby and the Ministry of Aircraft Production having
recognised the shortcomings of single-seat gliding
tuition, Slingsby produced two designs as a private
venture in 1944: the 54ft 6in-span, tandem-cockpit Type
20 and the 50ft-span, side-by-side Type 21. The ministry,
meanwhile, had issued specification TX8/45 in April 1945
calling for a tandem two-seat training glider that would
handle very much like the Cadet TX1. For this Slingsby
However, no order was forthcoming for either venture.
It took a major change in training policy by the ATC in
1948, formalising the use of two-seat gliders, alongside
the chance use of the stored prototype T21 by the
London Gliding Club to break the deadlock. Liking the
T21 so much, the LGC bought the glider. This prompted
Slingsby to produce a second version, the increased-
span Type 21A, which was used in the summer of 1947
for trials. Further modifications resulted in the Type 21B,
which first flew in December 1947 and became the
standard production model. The ATC promptly selected
the revised design, 92 being ordered with service entry
in 1950. The glider was officially named the Sedbergh
TX1 after a public school in Yorkshire, but was more
commonly referred to as the ‘barge’.
Cadet TX3
Slingsby continued to pursue new designs and the Type
31, a development of the unsuccessful motorised Type
29 Motor Tutor, was also ordered for use by the ATC.
Costing 60 per cent less than the Sedbergh, the
tandem-cockpit, 43ft 3in-span T31 went into service in
1951 as the Cadet TX3. Despite having poorer soaring
performance than the T21, being nicknamed the ‘brick’, it
served in greater numbers, becoming the ATC’s principal
workhorse up to 1986 when both the T21s and T31s were
phased out and replaced with more modern machines
constructed from glass-reinforced plastic.
RETROSPECTIVE ATC gliding

in the gliders’ airworthiness

records. Further inspection found
unrecorded and unauthorised
maintenance and poor-quality
repairs. With the fleet still grounded,
a 2016 restructuring saw the number
of VGSs reduced from 26 to 14.
Since then, a proportion of the
fleet has been returned to service
allowing some gliding to resume,
since halted by the coronavirus
pandemic, although the large cadre
of volunteer civilian instructors that
formed the backbone of the ATC
operation has been let go. For them,
and the thousands of cadets who
experienced first-hand the ‘barge’
and the ‘brick’, it was truly a
gliding heyday.

The author thanks Andrew Jarvis,

Michael Tinkler and Glyn Bradney of
the Vintage Glider Club
In line with the powered RAF training fleet, the ATC’s
gliders received a red-and-white scheme from the (vintagegliderclub.org), Paul Pattison,
early 1970s, as shown by Sedbergh TX1 WB991 of the and Andy Davey of the No 621 VGS
Weston-super-Mare-based No 621 VGS. ANDY DAVEY Historic Flight (www.621vgs.co.uk/
historic flight)

INTO THE AIR… JUST!

S
ome ATC units had procedures and ‘including on basic ground slides and hops. in charge would release the
been formed in air-mindedness’.” “Two teams of six cadets, each glider, no doubt with his fingers
schools, but in 1948 Those schools with a suitably with a length of rubber bungee crossed”. It generally worked
these were merged into large field at their disposal — would, on the word of command, very well, but in 1986 the
the new Combined Cadet Force, most CCF units at this time were walk forward, each team moving discovery of structural problems
alongside the school elements attached to independent schools left and right respectively from grounded the remaining
of the Sea Cadets and the — were able to launch a the line of flight until the rubber Grasshoppers, and dedicated
army’s Junior Training Corps. It Grasshopper or its cousin, the was about twice its unstretched CCF glider activities came to an
was thus with the CCF, rather Elliotts of Newbury (EoN) Eton, length. All being well, the officer end. Ben Dunnell
than the ATC, that still more
young people enjoyed their first
— limited — taste of flight.
In 1952-53, the organisation
received its own gliders in the
form of 115 Slingsby
Grasshopper TX1s, these
combining the reworked wings
and tail surfaces of ex-ATC
Cadet TX1s with a new,
completely open fuselage based
on the pre-war German-built
Schneider SG 38 Schulgleiter.
The fact of its being designated
the Type 38 by Slingsby was, in
fact, a pure coincidence. In the
words of one official account,
“the purpose of the Grasshopper
was not to teach cadets to
glide”, that being the job of the
Air Cadets’ gliding schools, “but WZ772 about to be launched by bungee at Emanuel
rather to develop a cadet’s School in Dulwich, south London. Each school had a
teacher who was an RAF Volunteer Reserve officer
self-discipline and leadership trained to rig and fly the glider. EMANUEL SCHOOL
while introducing him to RAF

42 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

 A new home for Avro Vulcan XH558 –
THE VULCAN EXPERIENCE
HONOURING PE R I E N C E
THE PAS T - COLD E D U C AT I O N E X
WAR & T H E V- F O RC E •V U L C A N X H 5 5 8 H IS T O R Y • H A N D S -O N

Ph oto © John Dibbs

Vulcan XH558

GI N E E R I N G S O L U T IO N S T O C LI M AT E C H A N G E & G R E E N E R
HE FUTURE - EN AV IA
AT I O N T E C H N
I N S PI R I N G T O LO G Y

The Vulcan Experience will offer: urgencies, are inspired to become

• Full access to XH558 and her story
• A national centre that tells the story of the Cold War
and commemorates the men and women who kept
us safe
• A V-Force Memorial to honour those who served
in the Royal Air Force keeping us safe during the
Cold War
• Events venue in a truly unique setting
• The Green Technology Hub initiative where
youngsters, already energised by climate changes
engineers and technicians, essential
to create the technical innovations we need.
The Cold War demanded urgent investment in
innovation and technology to create a credible
deterrent. The threat of global warming demands
the same.
The Hub will educate the public on the causes of
climate change, especially aviation’s contribution, and
explain the many ways in which this contribution is
being reduced through innovative engineering solutions.

Find out much more and donate to Operation Safeguard,

the fundraising campaign with donor benefits to build
the Vulcan Experience at Doncaster Sheffield Airport,
visit www.vulcantothesky.org
Vulcan to the Sky Trust is the charity that restored and
operated the awesome Vulcan XH558, on behalf of an
enthusiastic and supportive public. Registered Charity No. 1101948.

Vulcan.indd 1 Appeal-Flypast Advert-v1.indd 1

VTS Safeguard 18/02/2021 11:12:17
16/02/2021 10:10
 WARBIRDS Vulcan XH558
SECURING
A LEGACY
Giving a worthwhile, undercover future to Avro Vulcan B2 XH558
has been a process faced with many ups and downs — and,
recently, a tragedy. But the Vulcan to the Sky Trust hopes it might
have turned a corner WORDS: BEN DUNNELL
A
s a digger set to work
at Doncaster Sheffield
Airport on 16 April,
engaged in pre-
commencement works on the new
hangar for Vulcan XH558, it did so
with little ceremony. This, after all,
is but the very first step. But, even
so, it was obvious that one man
was missing. The death just over
two months earlier of Dr Robert
Pleming, chief executive of the
Vulcan to the Sky Trust, robbed the
whole project of its guiding light and
driving force.
“As you can imagine”, says VTST
business development director
MAIN PICTURE: Michael Trotter, “it was a hammer
Vulcan B2 XH558
being tended to at
blow to the trust, Robert’s passing
Doncaster Sheffield very suddenly and unexpectedly —
Airport in mid-March. more so for his family. Robert was,
IAIN CAMPBELL essentially, the project. As I said to
44 www.aeroplanemonthly.com
044-47 VTTS AM Jun2021.indd 44
colleagues when I’d recovered my
equilibrium, you can’t fill a Robert-
shaped hole, so we just have to push
on and do what we can.”
Still, Pleming surely would have
been delighted to see this tangible
progress towards building the
Vulcan Experience, very much
his brainchild. Ever since XH558
was grounded at the end of the
2015 display season, securing the
aircraft’s future has been key. VTST
is still, after all, under a contract
with what is now the National
Lottery Heritage Fund whereby the
trust is committed to look after ’558
for 80 years. Now there is light at the
end of that tunnel.
But what of the impact of
Pleming’s death on VTST itself?
“There was a restructure plan
anyway”, says Trotter, “in that once
we’ve got the hangar build away
and the funding in place Robert
would have stepped down as chief
executive and become a trustee
of the trust. We would then have
recruited a new chief executive who
would ‘own’ the project and the new
hangar. There’s no point recruiting
that chief executive until we’ve got
the funding in place, so the team
has just consolidated and focused,
and we’re motivated now to try and
deliver Robert’s legacy, which is a
permanent home for the aircraft.”
❖
And that’s an expensive business,
especially given VTST’s stated
ambitions. “£4 million is what is
needed to build the hangar for the
aircraft, and allow safe and secure
public access. At the moment,
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
27/04/2021 14:29
 raising £4 million from the public
for a capital project would be
a challenge for any charity —
something beyond what we’ve done
before, to be honest, in one appeal.
We’ve been talking to a bank about
the possibility of a commercial
mortgage for 60 per cent of that £4
million — that’s £2.4 million — and
that would allow us to raise £1.6
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
044-47 VTTS AM Jun2021.indd 45
million from our activities. To date
we have got about £650,000 towards
that £1.6 million. That’s half a
million ring-fenced from our funds,
some of which came from last year’s
‘Names under the Wing’ campaign,
and the rest is from money
we’ve raised for the hangar build
campaign, which is called Operation
‘Safeguard’.
“The difference between ABOVE:
Operation ‘Safeguard’ and the How the Vulcan
Experience at DSA
‘Names under the Wing’ campaign
is intended to look,
last year is that this is aimed not just incorporating a
at the public, our core supporters national memorial to
who’ve been very generous, but also the ‘V-Force’ in the
at philanthropists, corporate donors front wall. VIA VTST
and high-net worth individuals,
www.aeroplanemonthly.com 45
27/04/2021 14:29
WARBIRDS Vulcan XH558

of 12 months, it began to become

apparent that perhaps the funding
wasn’t there at all. In the end, we
decided to walk away. That delayed
the whole process, and obviously
our supporters, I can understand,
began to lose confidence that it
would ever happen. We had to
start again. We developed the
business plan with the potential for
the mortgage, we launched in the
autumn of last year, and that’s where
we are currently.”
So, what gives the trust such
confidence to proceed, given all
the current difficulties? In part, it’s
born of necessity, of having to build
XH558’s promised home. But also,
says Michael Trotter, “Last year’s
‘Names under the Wing’ campaign
was the most successful stand-alone
campaign we’ve done for many
years, so there is still a fantastic
residue of affection and love for ’558
out there in the marketplace. Also,
it’s down to Robert’s grasp of issues
and ideas that we find ourselves in
this position of having confidence.
There are massive questions
facing us: how we come out of the
pandemic, but also the climate
change issue that’s not going to go
away, and particularly the climate
change issue vis-à-vis aerospace and
aviation.

ABOVE: to build a consortium of funding to
A digital rendering secure the jet for the future. We’re
of the new hangar’s in a world where, what with the
interior, with XH558
as its centrepiece,
COVID issues, the Brexit issues and
but featuring many everything else, charity fundraising
other attractions. is difficult. But we’re determined to
HADFIELD CAWKELL press on.”
DAVIDSON VIA VTST
Talking to the author at Doncaster
Sheffield in 2018, Pleming
expected imminently to make an
announcement saying funds had
been secured. It never happened,
and now Trotter confirms why.
“When we announced that we
were going to build a home on land
that DSA had purchased for the
project, we were contacted by an
investor who we had every reason
and confidence to believe was able
to fund the build. Over a period
❖
“We’ve done some work with ADS,
the company that represents the
aerospace and defence industries,
to get the message out there that
we believe we can be a platform
to say that the aerospace world is
working very hard to keep the world
connected, but in a carbon-neutral
way. Getting that message out to
the corporates as well as the public,
and educating the public, is very

WHAT OF THE CANBERRA?

I
n 2016, the Vulcan to the Sky Trust bought former world altitude
record-setting Canberra B2/6 WK163, which had then been
grounded for nine years. It hoped to restore this very significant
aeroplane to airworthiness in time for 2018’s RAF centenary
celebrations, but this was not to be, and WK163 now sits in external
storage. What does its future hold?
“At the moment, the Canberra project is on the back-burner”, says
Michael Trotter. “Our entire fundraising and spending focus at the
moment has to be on building a permanent home for ’558. Once
we’ve got that secured, we’ve got a new chief executive in place
and the business up and running, then we’ll have a look at restoring
the Canberra. I think Robert is on record as saying that when the
Canberra is restored, it will be at a different site. There won’t be
enough room to deliver the ’558 story, the ‘V-Force’ memorial, the
Green Technology Hub and restore the Canberra. We’ll restore it
off-site and then it will become a sister aircraft that comes back to
the hangar when it’s flying to be an asset for the trust.”
Late last year it was announced that VTST had purchased
Canberra B6 WT327 at auction in California, this because it sports
the original nose and cockpit from WK163, as worn when it set the
altitude record in August 1957. It was thought that only that part of
the airframe would return to the UK, but, says Michael Trotter, “One
of our trustees pointed out that, seeing as we’d bought it, we may as
well bring it all back. Then we’ll have a full set of spares from that
aircraft too. As soon as COVID restrictions permit trips to the US,
we’ll set that plan in motion.”

46 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

important. That element, in terms
of inspiring the next generation,
has always been within our core
objectives of ‘honouring the past,
inspiring the future’. Robert linked
the two things together. Innovation,
if anything, is the link.”
Cold War innovation versus
modern innovation is the
comparison the Vulcan Experience
seeks to make. But is that enough
of a connection to make the facility
viable, or too much of a leap? Its
educational value at different
levels will be important, and to that
end schools are being canvassed,
while one of the trustees is on
the staff of the AMRC (Advanced
Manufacturing Research Centre),
the University of Sheffield’s
high-end joint
venture with
many industrial
There is still a
partners
including the
fantastic residue of
likes of Boeing. affection and love
Central
to what the for XH558
development will
offer in terms of education is the
Green Technology Hub, which
Trotter calls, “the genuine, forward-
looking legacy of this project”.
The relationship between a Cold
War bomber and environmental-
friendliness may not immediately
be obvious, but the idea is to use
XH558 as the common denominator
between aerospace engineering
then and now, as well as a draw in its
own right. Bringing all these strands
together, how certain is VTST that
this vision can now be turned into
something tangible?
“Part of the dividend we got
from the successful campaign last
year was that Robert committed to
invest in third-party consultants
in terms of a business plan for the
venture, given what we were trying
to achieve”, Trotter tells Aeroplane.
“We have a very detailed business
plan now, based partly on revenue
we were able to generate in Hangar
3 when it was simply a heritage
aircraft […] extrapolated to a much
broader and wider audience. Also,
don’t forget, Hangar 3 was an airfield
hangar, so technically when you
were in there it was airside. We had
to pre-book people for timed tours
and we had limited access for the
public even then. This building will
be on the other side of the fence,
albeit with access to the airfield for
the jet. We’ve done the numbers, and
the business plan, independently
assessed, makes sense.
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 47
“We’ve also gone to a great deal
of trouble and stress-tested that
business plan against forecasts for
potential numbers in a post-COVID
world. We put some pretty serious
tests on it — if the numbers drop by
X per cent, does it still wash its face?
We’ve every reason to believe that
the business plan is conservative,
actually, but we don’t know how
COVID’s going to affect that.”
There is a practical need to
act quickly. “We need to get the
funding in place to show Doncaster
Sheffield Airport that the project has
a future on this site — remember,
they purchased this land several
years ago. Equally, and probably
more importantly, we have to show
our loyal supporters that this isn’t
something that’s
going to drag
on forever. If we
don’t make a
meaningful start
on the building,
then we lose
the planning
permission and
we’d have to start all over again. The
airport has been very supportive
and helpful with that. It’s good for
everybody that we’ve got a clear
target.”
The initial work that took place in
April ensured planning permission
didn’t lapse at the end of the
month. It was also, in a small way,
a statement of intent. XH558 has
sat outside since February 2017,
albeit tended to regularly so as to
stave off any potential deterioration.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic,
visitors were able to take part in
airside tours and to watch engine
ground runs, and VTST is looking
forward to reintroducing these as
soon as it is safe to do so. The aim, of
course, is still to taxi the aircraft on
certain occasions once the Vulcan
Experience is open. But it needs to
be brought back indoors as soon
as possible if its future is truly to be
guaranteed, whether financially or
physically.
❖
The result will be a very different
type of attraction. How would
Michael Trotter convince a sceptic
as to its merits? “Robert’s mantra
when we met as a team was, ‘The
‘museum’ word is banned’. There
are two elements to this, which are
diverse but support each other.
They make it a hybrid project which
is very exciting for the region and, I
believe, for the country with remote
access. You’ve got this iconic
aircraft which people love… there’s
massive affection for the aircraft,
and we need to tell the story about
the ‘V-Force’. The Green Technology
Hub is a genuine attempt to
tell the story of the problems
about climate change from an
aerospace perspective, to inspire
youngsters and show them they
can get involved in engineering,
get well-paid, meaningful jobs
and make meaningful change in
the world. Those two things sit
together, because the aircraft is
very dramatic, and with the scoping
work on what’s going to be in the
hangar we’re planning to make it
something exciting to everybody,
with really state-of-the-art
exhibitions.”
There remains money to raise BELOW:
and much work to do. But one thing XH558 in the
is still for certain: the XH558 parking place it
has occupied since
story is not over yet. 2017, when DSA’s
Hangar 3 became
To find out more, or donate, visit unavailable.
www.vulcantothesky.org IAIN CAMPBELL
WW2 HISTORY Allison Mustangs

MUSTANG
MYTHOLOGY
The truth behind the development of the Allison-engined North American
Mustang may surprise — as might its effectiveness in service. In fact, it
deserves to emerge from the shadow of its Merlin-powered successor.
Featuring the latest research, we tell the story WORDS: MATTHEW WILLIS

48 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

T
he North American Mustang
is one of the most studied
and written-about aircraft in
history, and yet despite this
— or perhaps because of it — much
of the story we are told turns out to
be open to question. In the 10 years
since I started working on a book
about the Allison V-1710-engined
variants, it became clear to me that
what we think we know about the
Mustang, and particularly the early
part of its existence, did not reflect
the full truth.
Much of the study of the Mustang
has focused on its later, strategic
role as the escort fighter that finally
gave Allied day bombers protection
all the way to targets deep into
Germany. This appears to have
unconsciously shaped the way
the aircraft has been portrayed. I
believe this perspective has framed
decisions that were made in good
faith, with sound reasoning, as
blunders, bureaucratic inertia, or
even trickery.
It was by looking chiefly at the
Allison-engined versions that these
stories could be seen for what they
were: a mythology, a narrative. The
story has been built up to support
the idea of the Mustang as an
aircraft almost denied its true glory
by bureaucratic villains, but set free
by a few visionary champions and a
dollop of good old-fashioned British
engineering.
All of the information that led
to these conclusions was freely
available, some in archives but
a great deal published. In most
cases, it was a process of putting
the pieces together, or examining
them in a wider context, with the
application of critical thinking and
an open mind. In this, I am indebted
to Bob Sikkel, who kindly — and
perhaps foolishly — offered to cast
an eye over my initial drafts back in
2012. Bob arrived with a vast fund
of Mustang knowledge but, more
importantly, a razor-sharp mind that
constantly questioned assumptions
and orthodoxies and repeatedly
drove me back to first principles.
The work initially proceeded as
filling in some gaps, and honing
some of the material. It quickly
evolved into returning to sources,
primary and secondary, looking at
things afresh, and setting seemingly
well-known matters back into
their wider context. Far from
involving bureaucratic villains and
individualistic heroes, the Mustang
story appears as one of companies,
agencies and individuals working
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
together in the way that made most
sense at the time. In doing so they
created not only the best long-range
escort fighter of the war, but also
one of the best fighter-bombers and
tactical reconnaissance machines —
all of which contributed materially
to Allied victory. Yet the reality has
so often been clouded by factors
such as propaganda and personal
agendas.
The AAF’s ‘bastard
stepchild’
One popular part of both US and UK
discourse about the Mustang is that
the US Army Air Forces’ misguided
bureaucracy refused to see the
home-grown aircraft’s potential
until it was almost too late. One or
two far-sighted individuals, so the
tale goes, realising the Mustang’s
worth as a long-range escort fighter,
fought for its inclusion in the AAF’s
fighter strength where it should have
been all along.
This view gained heavyweight
support through none other than
Gen Henry ‘Hap’ Arnold, who wrote
in his memoir Global Mission, “It
may be said that we could have had
the long-range P-51 in Europe rather
sooner that we did. That we did not
have it sooner was the Air Force’s
own fault”. He added, “Our Materiel
Division was not particularly
interested [in the Mustang], but
they did say that if North American
built these for the British, we were to
get two P-51s for nothing… When I OPPOSITE:
went overseas in the Spring of 1941, One of the 57
[Lt Col] Tommy Hitchcock and Mr aircraft from a batch
of 148 cannon-
Winant [the US ambassador to the armed Mustang Ias
UK] talked to me about the P-51, acquired by the US
although they didn’t know much Army Air Forces on
about it at the time. Spaatz [then- the entry of the US
Maj Gen Carl Spaatz, commander of to the Second World
Air Force Combat Command] and War. The serial has
been obscured with
I went out to the North American temporary distemper
plant in January or February — but is known to be
anyway, early in 1942 — and it was 41-37416, the 96th
then that we saw and inspected it machine of this
and decided that we must have the order. When America
P-51 for our own Air Force, in spite entered the war,
the AAF promptly
of the Materiel Division’s turning it appropriated these
down.” RAF Mustangs and
Often considered as evidence for set about ordering
this view is the low priority afforded more to its own
to testing the two XP-51s that the specifications.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
AAF received as a condition for the
government releasing the type for
export, and that an October 1941
report on the ‘Future Development
of Pursuit Aircraft’ failed to
mention the Mustang at all. As a
final perceived insult to the type BELOW:
from its parent country’s air force, The initial prototype
when the Mustang was acquired for Mustang, dubbed
US service, it was as a specialised the NA-73X by North
American Aviation
ground attack variant, not as an (for NAA Model
escort fighter. 73 experimental).
The truth, despite Arnold’s later This aircraft was
pronouncements, is that the AAF effectively ordered
had its eye on the Mustang from by the British, but
the outset, in the knowledge that was tested by AAF
test pilots before
it was designed with advanced their own test
features that had the potential to articles, the XP-51s,
shift the state of the art — chiefly the were available.
revolutionary laminar-flow wing. VIA MATTHEW WILLIS
www.aeroplanemonthly.com 49
WW2 HISTORY Allison Mustangs

RIGHT: before our own aircraft are thus

Edgar Schmued, equipped.”
chief design Far from snubbing the Mustang, it
engineer at North
was in fact the AAF that persuaded
American Aviation
and creator of the the government to release it for
Mustang, standing export, so as to reap the rewards of
(rather awkwardly) development and combat testing
on the wing of an at Britain’s expense. Lt Col Ira C.
early Mustang in a Eaker, replying to Mead on behalf of
photograph dated
the chief of the US Army Air Corps,
July 1942.
VIA MATTHEW WILLIS
one Gen ‘Hap’ Arnold, insisted that
release was to the USA’s benefit.
Examples of the NAA aircraft
would be passed to the Air Corps
— which became the AAF in June
1941 — for testing, and “The Air
Corps […] will receive full benefit of
the engineering work being done
without additional expense. It is
believed to be in the best interest
of the Air Corps to encourage the
continuation of the research and
development work being done by
North American in connection with
high-speed wing sections for the
NA-73-type aeroplane”. NA-73 was
NAA’s in-house designation for what
would become the Mustang.
Clearly the NA-73 represented a
‘win-win’ for the US government.
It helped to stimulate the domestic
aircraft industry and advance the
military aircraft state of the art, from
which the US authorities could
reap considerable benefits, while
incurring minimal cost.
At the same time, NAA was The US government, on the other
an unproven provider of fighter hand, was conscious of the potential ❖
aircraft, and the laminar-flow importance of the new technology The AAF, and its Materiel Division
aerofoil was revolutionary — too and the aircraft it was attached in particular, is often accused of
BELOW:
The first actual
revolutionary, in the minds of to. In August 1940, George Mead being slow to test the two XP-51s.
XP-51, 41-038, some aerodynamicists who feared of the National Defense Council Bob Chilton, the test pilot who
which was tested that stalling characteristics would wrote to the Aeronautical Board first flew the Mustang prototype,
extensively by NAA be unacceptable. NACA (the demanding to know why aircraft recalled seeing the initial XP-51 at
before it went to National Advisory Committee with the laminar-flow wing were Wright Field in September 1941
the AAF, being for Aeronautics) was keen to see to be permitted to leave the US. with just an hour’s flying time in
used to help the
manufacturer resolve
the Mustang tested to validate its He suggested, “It does not seem its logbook since it had arrived the
an issue with the calculations, but it would have been desirable in the interests of national previous month. His concerns were
carburettor intake. foolish at this stage to bet the farm defense that this development heightened by the project officer for
VIA MATTHEW WILLIS on the type. be permitted to leave the country the type’s testing programme being
a mere second lieutenant.
This is usually attributed to the
AAF’s indifference to the Mustang
and preference for other types. In
truth, Wright Field had its hands full
with types that had arisen through
formal procurement processes, but
the P-51 was far from neglected.
Months before the first XP-51
arrived, US Army pilots tested the
first prototype, the NA-73X, at NAA’s
facilities. In order to expedite the
programme, the first machine was
permitted to be delivered without
certain non-essential equipment.
The chief reasons for delays are
prosaic: bad weather, malfunctions
on the aircraft that had to be

50 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

remedied, and a somewhat chaotic
situation at Wright Field. Ernest
Hives of Rolls-Royce undertook a
tour of US aircraft industry sites in
1943, and found a dismaying lack
of organisation and resources in
the testing and evaluation of new
aircraft. He reported, “A lamentable
lack of understanding and clear
thinking”, adding that engineers
at Wright Field “frankly admit that
they have not got the people, either
in numbers or
in quality to
anything like The NA-73
carry out all
the work which
represented a ‘win-
was expected win’ for the US
of them”. This
was constantly government
exacerbated
by men being called up for active
duty. In this light, it’s surprising that
testing of the XP-51 was achieved as
quickly as it was. The October 1941
report left the Mustang out because,
for understandable reasons, the first
XP-51 had not completed its testing,
and the second was months away
from being delivered. It was still an
unknown quantity, therefore — a
situation that would not last long.
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 51
The Bf 109’s cousin
One of the earliest and longest-lived
myths associated with the Mustang
is that its design was influenced by
that of the Messerschmitt Bf 109
because its designer had worked for
the company and on the type. This
has no truth to it, and the first efforts
to refute it date from relatively early
in the aircraft’s career.
One of the most prominent men
in the Mustang
story, Rolls-
Royce test pilot
Ronald Harker,
unwittingly
repeated the
myth in the
same note that
recommended
a Mustang be tried with a Merlin
61. He said, “It closely resembles
an Me109F, probably due to
being designed by one of the
Messerschmitt designers, who
is now with the North American
Aircraft Co.”
The Mustang’s designer, Edgar
Schmued, was born in Germany but
emigrated to Brazil in 1925, before
he began working in aviation. He
joined General Motors while in ABOVE:
South America, and in 1930 applied A Mustang from
for a visa to work in the US. It was the third RAF order
under construction
only here that he was finally able to at North American
turn his engineering talent toward Aviation’s Inglewood
aviation. He joined Fokker’s US factory in 1942. The
subsidiary and, after a brief stint first two orders were
at Bellanca, went back to his old armed with a mix of
company, which became North 0.30in and 0.50in
machine guns, but
American Aviation in 1934. In the third set were
addition to the Mustang, Schmued finally armed with
designed the instantly recognisable the RAF’s preferred
NAA corporate logo, of a pair of 20mm cannon.
wings on a triangle.
Where the story that Schmued
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
worked for Messerschmitt came
from is unclear, though perhaps
his German origin and the fact-
finding tour NAA president ‘Dutch’
Kindelberger took around the
German aircraft industry just before
the outbreak of war lit the fuse. The
oft-referenced visual similarity of
the Mustang to the Bf 109 helped
reinforce the myth, though the
likeness was not particularly strong,
and their aerodynamic philosophies
were wildly different. On 9
September 1942, Robert Ruark of the
Newspaper Enterprise Association
Service attempted to put the matter
to bed with a dispatch declaring
WW2 HISTORY Allison Mustangs
The AAF is said to have been
both uninterested in the type as a
fighter and so interested it bent the
rules to acquire it
ABOVE: in no uncertain terms that Schmued
A ‘mixed bag’ of was an American citizen and had
P-51s for the AAF never worked for Messerschmitt —
and Mustang Ias for
the RAF — FD553
and neither, for that matter, had any
being visible at left other NAA employees. Sadly, the
— having their final false rumour somehow persists to
preparations before this day.
delivery. This batch
of 148 aircraft was Cooking the books — the
originally ordered by
the RAF, the first to
A-36 as budgetary ruse
be completed under
Lend-Lease, but after One intriguing twist of the early
the attack on Pearl Mustang mythology is that the AAF
Harbor, the AAF is said to have been simultaneously
retained 57 of them. uninterested in the type as a fighter,
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
yet so interested it bent the rules
to acquire it. The story goes that
there was no money for aircraft in
the pursuit class for 1942, but there
was for attack machines. The AAF
wanted Mustangs, and NAA needed
orders to keep the production line
running, so, to quote the Planes of
Fame museum, “NAA executives
and their USAAF counterparts
conspired to fund the aircraft under
the attack budget. Accordingly,
bomb racks and dive brakes were
added, and the Mustang became the
A-36, thus keeping the production
line open.”
52 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
In fact, it’s unclear that AAF
appropriations worked in this way,
and considerable adjustments in
types and numbers were often made
after the initial orders had been
placed. Indeed, the cancellation of
contracts from the 1942 fiscal year
meant some later fighter orders —
including P-51As and even some
Merlin-engined Mustangs — would
be ‘back-filled’ and allocated blocks
of ‘42-’ serials.
While there is little or no direct
evidence of such a trick to order
Mustangs dressed up as attack
aircraft, an examination of the
context at the time the A-36 was
conceived is what really makes the
‘budget’ myth disappear.
After its entry into the war in late
1941, the US quickly concluded that
it was preferable to bring the conflict
in Europe to a conclusion before
turning the Allies’ full attention to
the Pacific. As such, plans for an
early-1943 invasion were drawn
up during the spring of 1942.
These would need considerable
numbers of aircraft, of a type and
performance that could support an
attacking army.
The AAF was, however, rapidly
losing confidence in conventional
single-engined dive-bombers,
of which it had large numbers
on order. Experience from the
European and North African
theatres increasingly confirmed
that dive-bombers in the mould
of the Junkers Ju 87 could not
survive unless in conditions of
total air superiority. A committee
was formed to assess the likely
effectiveness of the aircraft in
production and to examine possible
alternatives, including fast fighter-
bombers of the kind that were then
beginning to find favour, particularly
in the Western Desert.
❖
In March 1943, this committee
recommended the cancellation of
three dive-bomber types and that
the production capacity allocated
to them be switched to fighter-
bombers — specifically naming
the A-36 and P-51 — and light
bombers. In reality, this switch had
largely already been made. It is no
straightforward matter to change
horses in mid-stream when it comes
 We are opening
Saturday May 22nd
Bookings online through
our website
AVRO
HERITAGE
MUSEUM
Woodford Aerodrome, SEE OUR WEBSITE FOR FURTHER DETAILS
www.avroheritagemuseum.com
Chester Road,
Woodford, Cheshire
SK7 1QS Follow us on Facebook

053_AM_JUNE_21_ad.indd 1 22/04/2021 11:18:48

For several decades after it was restored to flying condition, the
Planes of Fame Air Museum’s P-51A Mustang, 42-6351, flew in
RAF colours and markings. In this 1984 image, it is accompanied
by Spam Can, the museum’s P-51D. FRANK B. MORMILLO
 Your Aviation Destination
Join us online
Become a founder
member of Aeroplane’s
online community

Start Your
R
R IBE E FREE ACCESS
C V
BS LUSI
U
S XC
E
Today!

Here’s what you need to do

Visit
www.Key.Aero

Sign in using your

Your all-access pass to our unique
customer ID and ACCESS ALL AREAS

historical aviation archive

email address
Global aviation news, photography
Sign up to the Key. and features at your fingertips
Aero updates
Enjoy exclusive videos
Need Help? and podcasts
Our friendly customer service team
are happy to help. Call us today on Connect through our forum
+44 (0)1780 480 404 or email subs@
and global events calendar
keypublishing.com

P.S. Don’t forget to tell us what you

think - feedback@Key.Aero Not a subscriber? Want to be part of our exciting
new aviation community?

TIP: Your customer ID can be found on • Check out our latest subscription offer on pages 26-27
your magazine carrier sheet, and any
Aeroplane correspondence • Visit key.aero/aeroplane-monthly and start your

Image: Richard Paver

journey with us today!

Aeroplane Key Aero fp.indd 46 19/04/2021 11:30:09

 WW2 HISTORY Allison Mustangs

to aircraft production, especially useful. Materiel Division offered that the desire for a specific attack
in wartime. The lead-in times to the possibility of restarting Mustang version of the Mustang was so great
assemble raw materials, forgings and production once the company’s that it suspended the established
extrusions, components, engines Dallas, Texas factory was up and protocols to get them more quickly.
and manpower are significant. running as a consolation. This was apparent as Fairchild
NAA’s ‘Dutch’ Kindelberger, crucially suggested that to expedite
characteristically, was ahead of the ❖ the order, the first Mustangs could
curve and in early 1942 proposed Indeed, even given NAA’s be “produced without dive brakes
Mustangs in attack specification for considerable efforts to develop [and] used as fighters, fighter-
the AAF. An array of possibilities was a range of solutions for a ground bombers, observation airplanes
offered, including dive brakes for attack Mustang, and other or in operational training units”,
steep attack, bomb shackles and two preparatory work such as mountings indicating that the aircraft delivered
or even four 37mm cannon. for long-range fuel tanks that did not have to be dive-bombers.
Meanwhile, the testing of RAF could also accommodate bombs, Nevertheless, all 500 aircraft were
Mustangs and the two XP-51s, its gestation would take time — delivered in full dive-bombing
together with the early experience of time that was precious and short, specification, with airbrakes and
RAF Army Co-operation Command given the huge hole in the AAF’s bomb shackles. They were issued
with the type, indicated that the inventory about to be caused by exclusively to fighter-bomber
Mustang had huge potential in the cancellation of dive-bombers. groups, although a handful would
the ground attack role due to its As it turned out, the AAF’s need for be transferred in the field to tactical
performance and controllability at close support aircraft was such that reconnaissance squadrons, and
lower altitudes. In these contexts, it overrode the usual processes. On overwhelmingly used in the attack
the AAF’s decision to make its first 19 April 1942, the director of military role, where they were extremely
purchase of Mustangs an order for requirements, Muir S. Fairchild, successful. This was no surprise. BELOW:
500 A-36s makes perfect sense — wrote to Gen Oliver Echols, head The AAF Proving Ground Command Brand-new Mustang
even more sense given the timing, of Materiel Division, with a formal report had, after all, remarked I AL958 from
the second RAF
taking advantage of the fact that requirement to procure 500 attack that the A-36A was “an excellent order, with slight
the RAF’s order for Mustang Ias Mustangs, noting, “It is desired that minimum altitude bombing and improvements made
was ending, so the production line the P-51 airplane be converted to attack aircraft”, as well as “an over the earliest
would soon have capacity to start an interim dive bomber, without excellent fighter.” aircraft. Although
turning out fighter-bombers. waiting for completion of the And, at this time, it was an attack destined for British
There are two more pieces of dive-bomber conversion project…” aircraft that was most sorely needed. service, Mustangs
wore American
evidence that scupper the assertion (author’s emphasis). Had the early invasion of northern national markings
that the A-36 only existed to get So not only did the AAF not Europe gone ahead, the need for while under test in
around budgetary constraints. One order A-36s as a back-door means a strategic bomber force (and its the US.
relates to available engines, which of securing more fighters, it is clear attendant escort fighters) would LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
I will come to later; the second is a
suggestion that fiscal restrictions
were no bar to ordering Mustangs At this time, it was an attack aircraft that was most
for use in the reconnaissance or
fighter roles. sorely needed
Materiel Division, often framed
as the villain in the Mustang
story, raised objections to the
A-36 purchase, but these were
understandable in the context
of that organisation’s remit. This
included procurement and supply
for the AAF, and therefore ensuring
not just that the AAF had the aircraft
it needed in the numbers required,
but that there were engines and
equipment to complete them. A
planned increase in the production
of Bell P-39 Airacobras meant
there would be insufficient Allison
engines for the A-36.
Furthermore, Materiel Division
was concerned that further Mustang
production would have a negative
effect on B-25 Mitchell output at a
time when medium bombers were
also needed in volume. Finally, and
by no means of least importance,
the development project required
to turn the P-51 into a dive-bomber
might conceivably delay the aircraft
beyond the point it would be

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 57

 WW2 HISTORY Allison Mustangs
No II(AC) Squadron was typical of the RAF Army Co-operation Command units that
re-equipped with the Mustang Ia. It was stationed at Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire,
and carried on flying the Allison-engined machine until after D-Day, by which time it
had been assigned to the Second Tactical Air Force. AEROPLANE
have been subordinate to the need
for tactical aircraft. As it was, the
A-36 was in the thick of the action in
the invasion of Sicily and Italy, and
proved itself an effective, flexible
and tough aeroplane. Ironically, it
also proved capable of switching
roles to act as a long-range escort to
medium bombers on the run from
BELOW: Sicily to Italy.
The groundcrew
of 527th Fighter- Overlooked as a fighter?
Bomber Squadron,
86th Fighter-Bomber
Group A-36A
As noted above, the AAF had
42-84067 pose justifiable reasons in the context
with their mount of the anticipated early invasion
— complete with of Europe and the capabilities of
150 bomb mission the Mustang for ordering it as an
symbols — in the attack aircraft in mid-1942. The
Italian theatre.
perception of this as a fundamental
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND
RECORDS ADMINISTRATION misunderstanding of the Mustang’s
58 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
048-52 and 57-60 Allison Mustangs AM Jun2021.indd 58
true value can therefore be regarded
as simplistic at best.
However, the type’s strengths
as a pure fighter were far from
overlooked. Testing reports from
Eglin and Wright Field were effusive
about its performance and handling
qualities in that role, and rather than
being ignored, they kept hopes for a
fighter Mustang alive when it might
have been pigeonholed as a low-
altitude specialist.
Indeed, in some respects the
initial order being for the ground
attack version was a coincidence,
based on which engines were
available. In February 1942, when
‘Dutch’ Kindelberger offered
the AAF the aircraft that would
become the A-36, he also described
developments that would enhance
the Mustang’s qualities as a pure
fighter. By now — still some two
months before Ronald Harker
suggested fitting a Merlin 61 — it
was plain that what was needed to
realise the aircraft’s potential in that
role was an engine that delivered
more power at higher altitudes than
the V-1710-F3R fitted to the Mustang
I and Ia. Kindelberger informed
Materiel Division that a Mustang
had been “tested with a new blower
raising the engine rating from
1,150hp at 12,000 feet to 1,125hp
at 15,000 feet”, and indicated that
Allison was working on a two-speed
blower that would increase speed to
“substantially more than 400mph” at
21,000ft or higher.
❖
Allison did not pursue the
two-speed blower, despite NAA’s
enthusiasm. The developed engine
with higher rated altitude would
come to fruition, however, as the
-F20R, which would be specified
for the P-51A. Allison had by then
developed a higher supercharger
drive ratio, which would raise the
engine’s critical altitude. Testing
and service trials revealed problems
with excessive wear, so this engine
went back to the drawing board for
improvement. The lack of a good
‘fighter’ engine meant the only
realistic path for the Mustang in
early 1942 was in a low-altitude
role, as a ground attack or tactical
reconnaissance aircraft. By the
27/04/2021 10:05
middle of the year, plans for a fighter
variant to AAF specifications were
well under way.
There was even the possibility
that it would be powered by
a Merlin. The practicalities of
engine development and airframe
modifications, however, meant the
only way a Merlin Mustang could
have arrived any sooner would
have been with a single-stage
supercharged variant of the Merlin
20-series or Packard V-1650-1
equivalent — not the engine that
would allow Mustangs to escort
heavy bombers flying at high
altitudes. Orders for 1,200 aircraft
were placed, and many of the
improvements and simplifications
made for the AAF’s P-51A helped
render the later Merlin Mustang
such an effective machine.
In truth, development work on
the fighter Mustang was under way
even as the A-36 order was placed,
it was introduced as quickly as
possible given the considerable
practical difficulties of managing a
vast production programme during
wartime, and it is hard to see how
a two-stage Merlin variant could
have been introduced much sooner.
A study of the timeline of Mustang
procurement and service indicates
that rather than a series of individual
actions and ‘revelations’, the aircraft’s
development was a process of steady
evolution involving NAA and the
British and American customers.
A dark horse
Perhaps the biggest myth about the
Allison-engined Mustang was that it
was not a particularly good, useful
or significant aeroplane. The service
record of Allison Mustangs in both
British and US service gives the lie to
that, and reveals they were some of
the most successful aircraft of their
classes in the war.
In part this dismissal has
stemmed from poor understanding
of commands that Allison Mustangs
were assigned to, such as Army Co-
operation Command (ACC). Post-
The Allison Mustangs were
some of the most successful
aircraft of their classes
war PR has attributed the tactics and
success of the Second Tactical Air
Force after the Normandy invasion
almost entirely to figures such as
Coningham and Tedder drawing on
experience from the Western Desert,
when the reality is that ACC, which
was absorbed into the 2nd TAF,

WINGS OF THE ‘APACHE’

O
ne — or perhaps two — of the
most persistent myths about the
Mustang family relate to the
name ‘Apache’. There is
contemporary evidence for an association
between the type and the name, but the
record is mired in confusion, which only
increased after the war. It is irrefutable that
the name was associated with the Mustang
family – but establishing when, and to which
model, took some untangling.
On 9 December 1940, NAA was informed
that the name Mustang had been allocated
to the NA-73. At some point in late 1940 or
early 1941, however, it began using the name
‘Apache’ for the domestic audience. It is not
clear whether or not the company
suggested this name to the British, but it
seems unlikely as there is no mention of it in
the known correspondence between
Kindelberger and the British Purchasing
Commission, either before or after the
British opted to call it the Mustang.
In April 1941, NAA’s magazine Flight Line
included a retouched image of the NA-73X
in AAC markings with the caption ‘XP-51
Apache Pursuit’. Images of the ‘Apache’
began to appear on media such as cigarette
cards, and in advertising for both NAA and
other companies like Allison.
But was it just an in-house name, or did
the AAF adopt it? The official designation
P-51 had been allocated for the two test
aircraft and did not indicate any wider
adoption of the type, but public references
to the ‘P-51 Apache’ began to appear during
1941. The October issue of Popular Science
suggested various types that might be taken
on by the “Newly formed Air Corps
Interceptor Command”, including the “North
American P-51 ‘Apache.’”
When the US was pulled into the war in
December 1941, the AAF hastily
appropriated batches of aircraft under
production for export markets, including 55
Mustang Ias destined for the RAF. The
January 1942 issue of Flying Aces’ cover
proclaimed the “North American P-51
Apache Latest Air Forces Pursuit”. Other
references to the ‘P-51 Apache’ can be
found, ranging from model kits to aircraft
recognition guides, including one published
by The Aeroplane (the second edition of
part four of its ‘Aircraft Identification’ guide
covering US monoplanes in British service).
But, by the time the first aircraft were
arriving, the AAF had settled on Mustang.
On 13 July 1942, Kindelberger sent a wire to
Col Arthur Ennis, in charge of the AAF’s
public relations branch, saying, “Understand
from Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce
that Air Forces contemplating officially
naming all Army aircraft in near future.
Accordingly we submit the following as our
preference for North American aircraft: for
all fighters of P-51 type we suggest name
‘Mustang,’ which has long been used by the
British and widely publicised through news
and advertising.”
Soon after this, references in press
releases and press photographs were
unanimous in referencing the P-51 Mustang.
If there had ever been a time when the type
had been referred to as the ‘P-51 Apache’ it
had surely been fleeting, and had passed
before the AAF developed a convention for
assigning names. Mustang was therefore
the only name the P-51 was ‘assigned’ by
the AAF. Crucially, this also applied to the
A-36.
And yet, after the war, erroneous accounts
began to appear suggesting that the name
‘Apache’ had been applied to the A-36, to
differentiate it from its fighter brethren. This
version of the ‘Apache’ story is a bizarre
case of a myth becoming so prevalent that it
gained enough critical mass that even
institutions and historians who knew it to be
untrue found it almost impossible to
challenge.
The late Michael Vorrasi established
beyond reasonable doubt that the
application of ‘Apache’ to the A-36
originated in publications no earlier than the
1970s. Model kits and books still refer to the
‘A-36 Apache’ and until 2019, the National
Museum of the US Air Force placed signage
by its A-36 referring to it by that name.
To add to the confusion, the A-36 gained
an informal moniker in the Mediterranean,
‘Invader’, which became so widespread that
at one point it could arguably be regarded
as semi-official. In fact, official US Army
sources including The Official Guide to the
Army Air Forces, the A-36A preliminary
illustrated parts catalogue (dated 15 March
1943) and Standard List of Aircraft Names
Approved by the Joint Aircraft Committee
(dated 1944) indicate that the A-36A was
always ‘officially’ named Mustang, even
though the name was rarely used.

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 59

WW2 HISTORY Allison Mustangs

RIGHT:
P-51A 43-6246 was
assigned to the Army
Air Forces Tactical
Center in Orlando.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND
RECORDS ADMINISTRATION

had done a huge amount in western
Europe to perfect the tactics of
interdiction, tactical reconnaissance
and artillery support that were
put to devastating use in 1944.
Moreover, the Allison Mustang
had proved the ideal platform for
developing this work, and the ACC
squadrons were able to range across
occupied France, the Low Countries
and even into Germany with
impunity, harrying communication
networks and bringing back
detailed, real-time information.
In the case of the RAF’s fighter-
reconnaissance Mustangs and
the AAF’s fighter-bomber groups,
Allison Mustangs were only
replaced because the airframes ran
out, not because a better alternative
had come along. The replacement
of 1942-vintage Mustang Is with new
Typhoons in 1944 was described
by the 2nd TAF as a “retrograde
it is felt that we have a plane
excellently fitted for long-range, low
altitude daylight intrusion and for
a medium altitude escort fighter to
accompany our medium bombers.
Actual combat has proved that the
aircraft can run away from anything
the Germans have.
“It is suggested that the Allison-
engined P-51A may lend itself
better to a combination of low-
altitude fighter-intruder and a
medium bombardment escorter

WIN! NEW
step”, necessary because “there was than will the Merlin powered P-51B
nothing better available at the time”. due to the inherent difficulty of

MUSTANG BOOK
Spitfire XIVs followed, and were operating the Merlin engine at the
only “reasonably suitable.” low RPMs necessary for a low fuel
consumption. The British […] have

T
❖ had exceptionally good service out
he writer of this Meanwhile, the replacement of
feature, Matthew A-36s in the Mediterranean with
Willis, is the author of Curtiss P-40s and Republic P-47
Key Publishing’s new Thunderbolts was seen as similarly
book Mustang: The Untold retrograde by the 86th and 27th
Story, detailing with much Fighter-Bomber Groups. In the Far
new research how the North East, P-51As were equally effective
American warplane’s fighter-bombers, not least with
gestation really came about. the 1st Air Commando Group in
We have five copies to give Burma, but they were also capable
away in our exclusive of carrying out the same long-range
competition. To be in with a bomber escort mission that made
chance of winning, answer their Merlin-engined siblings so
the following question: celebrated.
And it is important to recognise
What was the name of that, in those roles the Allison
the Mustang’s designer? Mustang carved out for itself, it
To enter visit key.aero/aeroplane/competitions was more suitable than the Merlin-
powered aircraft. In 1943 an AAF
Closing date 19 August 2021. colonel interviewed Wg Cdr Peter
Winners notified by 26 August 2021. Dudgeon, former CO of No 268
The winner will be drawn at random from all correct entries Squadron, who was then on the staff
received by the competition closing date. helping to found the Second Tactical
For full terms and conditions, visit the website. Air Force. The resulting report stated,
“In view of the British experience,
of these [Allison] engines and due
to its smoothness at low RPMs, they
are able to operate it so as to obtain
a remarkably low fuel consumption
giving them an operational range
greater than any single engine
fighter they possess (the fact that the
Merlin engine will not run below
1600 [rpm] prevents them from
obtaining an equivalent low fuel
consumption and therefore limits its
usefulness for similar operations).”
The view that the Mustang was
only effective and important as an
escort to the 8th Air Force’s ‘heavies’
is to disregard every aspect of the
war but the strategic bombing of
Germany. During the assault on
Italy in 1943, the liberation of France
in 1944, and driving the Japanese
out of Burma in 1945, Allison
Mustangs proved their worth, and
the faith of those who made it a
success in multiple roles and
theatres.

60 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

 BOTSWANA
NATIONAL AIRWAYS
THE
HE JOURNEY TO BOTSWANA’S FIRST NATIONAL AIRLINE
Botswana celebrated one hundred years of powered flight in 2020.
Laverick and Morgan cover in detail at the first 50 of these. From the
first flight to Palapye Road in 1920 to the collapse of the first national
airline in 1969, regional politics were never far away.

Whether it was traversing inhospitable terrain in fragile biplanes, avoiding

inter-war German influence, spiriting Liberation Movement leaders out of the
country, or the mysterious circumstances around the demise of Botswana
National Airways, aviation in Southern Africa was never dull.

The book looks at the first flight from London to Cape Town, Inter-War
Aviation, the impact of the Second World War, Wenela - Africa's largest airline,
Bechuanaland Safaris - a British Intelligence operation, the formation and
collapse of Botswana National Airways itself, and the men and women behind
the stories.
This account includes interviews from
aircrew and many previously unpublished
photos from a vintage era of flying.

‘...an impressive, extremely

well-researched work
documenting some very
interesting history,
whether socially or
aeronautically.’
Aeroplane

Available as a paperback, ebook, and deluxe colour paperback.

061_AM_JUNE_21_ad.indd 1 23/04/2021 15:57:37

AIRLINER HISTORY Fokker F.XX

OUT OF TIME
A high-wing, wood-and-steel tube design in an age of low-wing, all-metal
machines — no wonder just one Fokker F.XX was ever built. How did
Anthony Fokker, once such a great aeronautical innovator, get his new
airliner so badly wrong? WORDS: JOOP WENSTEDT

T
he economic problems of
the 1930s inevitably reduced
the number of people who
travelled by air. Equally,
though, the airlines were forced
to enhance their services. They
needed aircraft with longer range,
more capacity for passengers,
for instance, came up with all-metal
monoplane transport aircraft.
Regrettably, one of the leading
names in aviation for decades,
Anthony Fokker, still believed there
was a future for
building aeroplanes
from steel tubes
Fokker
aircraft, and just one example was
ever built.
Of course it was difficult for
Anthony Fokker to part ways with
the construction method which had
helped him build his
company. But there
was another factor,

ABOVE:
baggage and freight, greater levels and wood when his clung on to his more of a Dutch
of luxury and, very importantly, designers started domestic matter. In
An early flight by
the sole Fokker
higher speeds. The biplanes that work on the F.XX. old and trusted the early 1930s, the
F.XX, PH-AIZ, over
a typical Dutch
had reigned supreme, with their
inherently high-drag configurations,
It was intended to
replace the F.VII/3m,
construction recession forced the
Dutch government
landscape. The
aircraft still has the
would no longer hack it. but superseding an method to pump less money
Many new designs were on old design with one into aviation than it
short nacelles, but the drawing-boards — designs based on very similar technologies had before, while national carrier
the undercarriage is
completely different from those and principles was clearly not KLM was no longer helping Fokker
retracted, so this was
definitely not the first developed only a few years before. going to work. Fokker’s view would financially with the development of
time the type flew. Boeing, Douglas, Lockheed, change, but by then it was too late. new aircraft despite being involved
KEY COLLECTION Northrop, Avro, Bristol and Junkers, The F.XX became a controversial with many of them. The F.XX, for

62 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021


instance, was built to meet a KLM
requirement for a faster aircraft for
the route linking the Netherlands
with Batavia in the Dutch East
Indies (today the Indonesian capital
Jakarta). A speedy aerial connection
was needed for the delivery of
mail — mostly governmental — to
and from the homeland. However,
the airline only paid 15,000 florins
towards the project, which cost
some 80,000 florins in total.
❖
Unknown to Fokker, KLM’s
director Jan Plesman was very
interested in the Douglas DC-1 and
DC-2. In the second half of 1933 a
KLM engineer and pilot was given
a close look at DC-2 development.
Plesman was unaware at that time
that Anthony Fokker — no longer
acting director of his firm, but its
public relations director — had also
visited the USA in mid-1933 and
likewise contacted Douglas. The
manufacturer clearly did well to
keep the KLM representative and
Fokker out of each other’s sight!
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
Fokker himself was very impressed
by the DC-2, realising it would be
the trailblazer for air transport over
the coming years. Many things
can be said about Fokker, but his
instincts for the future of aviation
mostly turned out to be right, and
so they were with the DC-2. He even
had the chance to fly the DC-1 and
came away with a most favourable
impression. Only many months later
did Fokker tell Plesman over dinner
how much he admired the DC-2.
Although Fokker clung on to LEFT:
his old and trusted construction PH-AIZ on climb-
method, he knew it brought out, with the
undercarriage doors
penalties in terms of airframe drag,
very prominent.
and thus wasted a lot of engine VIA JOOP WENSTEDT
power. His chief design engineer
in the pre-war years was Marius BELOW LEFT:
Beeling, who tasked his team with The F.XX being
designing a three-engined aircraft. built in the Fokker
plant at Amsterdam-
At that time, tri-motors were
Noord. Its fuselage
considered safer than twins in case was made of steel
of an engine failure. While the F.XX tubing, and would
may have been outdated in many be covered in fabric,
respects, some cues were taken from while the wings
more modern, all-metal aeroplanes. were wooden with a
plywood covering.
It was a lot less ‘draggy’ than its
VIA JOOP WENSTEDT
predecessor, the F.XVIII, making it
no less than 50km/h (30mph) faster.
The F.XVIII was quite a boxy
aircraft, with a fabric-covered
fuselage. The F.XX, by contrast,
was curvier, with an elliptically
shaped fuselage, rounded
engine nacelles and a retractable
undercarriage. Although the latter
was an improvement, for the crew
it was also a burden, as it was a
time-consuming job requiring a
lot of energy. The landing gear was
manually retracted using a large
wheel in the rear of the cockpit.
The tailwheel had to be retracted
separately, but this feature was
soon deleted after one occasion
when it became stuck, requiring
the flight engineer to crawl into
the aft fuselage and push it down
by hand. The elliptical fuselage
construction boosted performance,
but offered travellers less comfort in
the cabin. Space was limited and the
number of passengers could be as
few as 12 depending on the seating
arrangement. This was not much BELOW:
more than the F.VII, which could Zilvermeeuw
carry eight to 10. parked at
The cockpit was a comfortable Soesterberg airfield,
affair for the F.XX’s pilots, with undercarriage doors
removed. As it
adjustable seats at their disposal. turned out, the F.XX
The seat backs were made of was Fokker’s final
webbing so as to afford some tri-motor design to
cooling in warm climates, not that fly. KEY COLLECTION
www.aeroplanemonthly.com 63
AIRLINER HISTORY Fokker F.XX

FOKKER F.XX AT A GLANCE the tail. When the wheel doors were
left off, the shaking disappeared. The
Engines Three Wright Cyclone R-1820-F11s, longer nacelles were retained, as
690hp each this was cheaper than building new,
shorter ones.
Span 84.3ft (25.7m) Further modifications were
Length 54.8ft (16.7m) deemed necessary by the NLL,
such as enlarging the horizontal
Height 14.9ft (4.55m) stabiliser by something like 10 per
Maximum speed 190mph (305km/h) cent and adding an extra strut from
the stabiliser to the vertical tail. New
Cruise speed 155mph (250km/h) R-1820-F11 engines, developing
Empty weight 12,125lb (5,500kg) 690hp each, were fitted, and balance
weights added to the ailerons. All
Total weight 19,842lb (9,000kg) these changes took some time,
Maximum altitude 21,653ft (6,600m) but on 11 August 1933 test-flying
recommenced. Fokker’s initial
Maximum range 1,031 miles (1,660km) goal was a top speed of 320km/h
Passengers 12 (199mph), but it had to settle for 300
(186mph).
Crew 3 KLM bought the F.XX — registered
PH-AIZ — on 23 September
the aircraft ever actually operated Heinrich Hentzen, who noted that 1933 and gave it the bird’s name
in such conditions — except maybe the tail was shaking quite a bit. The Zilvermeeuw (herring gull). It
in Spain, where it ended up. In case undercarriage was left down and a decided to use the aeroplane for
of an emergency the pilots could landing made after just 15 minutes. a publicity stunt on 18 December,
escape via the side windows, which What had caused the problem? flying the mail to Batavia in record
were large enough for a person to time. This was an effort to beat the
climb through. For the passengers ❖ rival Pander S-4 Postjager, a bespoke
there were two large escape hatches Fokker had put a lot of effort mail-plane, which had set off but
in the cabin roof, allowing egress into making the aircraft as fast been forced to land in Italy with
over the wing. as possible, and flight tests were powerplant trouble. Alas, the starter
BELOW:
The cockpit, with the
Originally the F.XX was fitted conducted in co-operation with the mechanism on the F.XX’s number
main instruments on with three Wright Cyclone R-1820-F Nationaal Luchtvaartlaboratorium two engine failed, so Zilvermeeuw
the left. In practice, it engines of 660hp each. The oleo- (NLL, National Aviation Laboratory) could not take off. F.XVIII Pelikaan
was warmed up too pneumatic landing gear was made to determine how the fuselage (pelican), which had been readied
much by the number by Messier and Dunlop provided could generate the lowest possible as a back-up, took over the cargo of
two engine in front. the wheels and tyres. The two- drag. Woollen tufts were stuck on 31,000 postal items.
VIA JOOP WENSTEDT
bladed props were of Hamilton one engine nacelle to measure the For those gathered at Schiphol
BELOW RIGHT: Standard manufacture, with a airflow over it. The engineers hoped airport, it was a pleasure to see
The cabin interior diameter of 3.05m (10ft). Four large a longer nacelle, stretching further Pelikaan taking off at 04.28hrs on
viewed from rear fuel tanks in the wing, each holding behind the engine, would also 19 December, bound for the Far
to front. The seats 650 litres, were positioned between reduce the shaking, but the research East. By flying day and night, the
were angled inwards the spars. showed it was not an improvement. F.XVIII was able to deliver the mail
so as to give more
legroom, because
The maiden flight of the F.XX Further flights revealed that the in time for Christmas, just as the
of the elliptical took place on 3 June 1933, and undercarriage doors, which came F.XX should have done, in spite
fuselage. was not without incident. The down with the main landing gear, of the older aircraft being much
VIA JOOP WENSTEDT pilots were Emil Meinecke and caused the turbulence which shook slower. It finished the trip in a flight

64 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

time of four days, four hours and 35
minutes.
Its failure gave the F.XX a bad
public reputation, and there was
to be no series production. But,
after repairs were carried out, it
flew flawlessly for the next three
years. It was used on the London-
Amsterdam-Berlin route without
mishap. A 90 per cent availability
rate was, for the era, very high. It
never plied the route to the Dutch
East Indies, which was taken on
by Fokker-supplied DC-2s. By
becoming a mainland European
sales agent for Douglas, Fokker
was competing with himself on the
civilian market, but at the same time
financing development of the D.XXI
and G.I fighters.

❖
On 26 September 1936, KLM sold
Zilvermeeuw to French company
Air Tropique, which registered it
F-APEZ. The F.XX was among four
Fokkers — the others being three
F.XIIs — purchased by this firm,
which told the Dutch authorities it
would be flying them on a service
between Dakar and Goa. This,
however, was no airline. Instead, it
acted as a cover operation for the
Société Française de Transports
Aériens, which was engaged in
buying aircraft for the Republican
side in the Spanish Civil War. It said
the Fokkers would be used to aid in
the repatriation of French citizens
from war-torn Madrid, but they did
no such thing.
Sprayed in camouflage, the
aircraft was re-registered as EC-45-E
and used by Republican airline
LAPE (Líneas Aéreas Postales
Españolas) on transport duties,
including runs between Spain
and France carrying gold bullion.
Historian Gerald Howson wrote that
the need to swap two of its Wright
engines for alternative units — first ABOVE:
a Walter-built Mercury from a In camouflage
Letov Š-231, then a Shvetsov M-25 during its use by
the Republicans
previously used on a Polikarpov
as a Spanish Civil
I-16 — rendered the Fokker’s War transport, prior
handling dicey, to say the least. It to replacement of
lasted until 15 February 1938, when, two of the Wright
perhaps inevitably, it was wrecked Cyclone engines.
KEY COLLECTION
on take-off from Barcelona’s El Prat
de Llobregat airport. Somehow,
it seems appropriate that this
troubled, one-off Fokker product
met its end in such unusual
circumstances.

On 1 March 1934, the F.XX was put into KLM service on the London-
Amsterdam-Berlin route, and performed excellently. This delightful
image dates from that October, and shows Zilvermeeuw making a low
pass over the old terminal building at Tempelhof. NATIONAAL ARCHIEF

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 65


meets
CARL
SCHOLL
FRANK B. MORMILLO
D
iscovering for the first time
the story of the Doolittle
raid, no-one could fail to
be gripped. The 18 April
1942 strike on Tokyo by 16 North
American B-25 Mitchells, launched
from the USS Hornet and led by Lt
Col James Doolittle, has rightly gone
down in the annals as an example
of extreme heroism against the
odds. For many, the book Thirty
Seconds over Tokyo provided a vivid
introduction. Written in 1943 by one
of the raid’s other pilots, Capt Ted
Lawson, it spawned an Academy
Award-winning feature film of the
same name, and fostered many an
interest in this memorable mission.
So it was for Carl Scholl. “When I
think back”, he says, “Thirty Seconds
over Tokyo was the first aviation
book I ever read”. This is wholly
appropriate, for Carl, his business
partner Tony Ritzman and their
Chino, California-based company
Aero Trader have become the
world’s great B-25 experts. Since
the late 1970s, they have performed
many Mitchell restorations, and
66 www.aeroplanemonthly.com
066-74 Aeroplane meets AM Jun2021.indd 66
Carl and Tony Ritzman fly B-25J
Pacific Princess in formation with
Mike Pupich’s aeroplane Heavenly
Body near Oahu, Hawaii during
activities commemorating the
50th anniversary of VJ-Day in
September 1995. FRANK B. MORMILLO
Becoming one
of the warbird
industry’s great
specialists on
the B-25 Mitchell
has led to many
colourful exploits
WORDS: BEN DUNNELL
greatly aided the B-25 community.
Through flying the type, Carl got to
know the remaining Doolittle Raiders
well, an association he cherishes.
Other award-winning projects have
made up a rich, colourful career in
the warbird business.
Carl’s aeronautical enthusiasm
initially ebbed and flowed. “I lived
in Dayton, Ohio, when I was in
elementary school, right across
the street from what is now Dayton
International Airport. I played over
there, I built model airplanes. My dad
had been in the navy during World
War Two in VB-145, a PV-1 Ventura
torpedo squadron serving down in
South America, so he had a little bit
of aviation time. We moved to San
Diego, California, in 1956, when I
was 12 years old. My father got a job
working at Convair — San Diego was
a pretty famous spot for aviation. I
always had an interest. I subscribed The first Mitchell to be restored by
to Royal Air Force Flying Review Aero Trader: TB-25N N3155G, parked
sans rudders at Chino in October
magazine and Aviation Week, and 1978. Today this aircraft is owned by
continued to build models. Tom Duffy of Millville, New Jersey and
“I kind of got away from it when I flies as Take-Off Time. PHILLIP DAWE
was in high school; I was focusing
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
27/04/2021 13:46
 In an early foray away from
B-25s, Aero Trader returned
F4U-5 Corsair N100CV to
airworthiness for owner
Glen Hyde. DAVE WELCH

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 67

066-74 Aeroplane meets AM Jun2021.indd 67 27/04/2021 13:58

AEROPLANE MEETS Carl Scholl
ABOVE: on school, and my parents had
Pacific Princess, then always told me I was going to go to
finished to represent college. I got involved in automotive
a USN/USMC
PBJ-1J Mitchell,
stuff at college. I couldn’t get in the
flying together navy — I couldn’t pass a medical
with WestPac to get an appointment to [the US
Restorations’ In The Naval Academy at] Annapolis,
Mood in December which was what I was trying to do. I
1988. FRANK B. MORMILLO wound up teaching at a community
college in San Diego for automotive
mechanics, and was involved with
sand buggies and off-road vehicles
during that time period.
“I read aviation books
occasionally, but I wasn’t really that
hot into it again until my brother-in-
law told me about a B-25 that was
sitting at an airport outside of San
Diego. On one of my trips coming
home from the desert in 1976 I
stopped by and saw this B-25, sitting
out in the dirt. I found out who
owned it — it was a local guy who
had an FBO [fixed-base operation]
there, Pinkerton Aviation, so I went
over and talked to him. He tried to
sell it to me, and I bought it.
“The registration was N3155G.
It had been used as a camera
platform for a company up here in
Ontario, California, but it had sat
there derelict for a number of years
because they were getting ready to
68 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
move it from Ontario to San Diego
but lost an engine on the way down.
They had to divert to Ramona
Airport, which was where I found
it, because the coast was fogged-in
and they couldn’t get any place else.
They took off the engine and were
going to get another one on it, but
it wound up just sitting there. The
FBO operator filed a lien against it,
and got title to it. I just bought it on
a lark — it seemed like a good thing
to do. I thought I’d have a B-25 in my
back yard.
❖ another friend of ours, Bill Muszala,
“A friend of mine who’d worked
at Convair said he had a buddy he
was working with who was building
a P-51 in his garage, and he knew all
about these old airplanes. I got hold
of him, and he came out and looked
at the airplane one day and said,
‘This thing’ll fly again’. He turned me
on to a guy in Los Angeles County,
Jack Hardwick, who had a bunch of
B-25 parts. We struck a deal for me
to buy all his parts, and that’s kind of
where it started.
“Another guy in the Los Angeles
area, named Joe Davis, also had a
derelict B-25 sitting in Nebraska. We
got together — I think he called me
and found out I’d bought ’3155G,
because he had apparently looked
at it once before also. We purchased
these parts, thinking they would
help us put our two airplanes
back together, which they did. I
got involved with Chino Airport,
and hired one guy locally to come
down and work on the airplanes
on weekends. Nine months or
a year later, he had my airplane
going. I didn’t know anything about
airplanes at the time, but it’s just
a mechanical device, so it’s not
that complicated. His brother and
flew it from Ramona up here to
Chino.
“Just prior to that, I was still doing
some transmission work in the San
Fernando Valley, and that’s how I
met Tony Ritzman. We were working
together on some of these projects,
and he came over to my shop one
day. The rudders off my B-25 were
there, and he said, ‘What’s a B-25?’
So, I explained. He got involved, he
ponied up some money so we could
get this airplane out of Ramona. He
later quit his job and we wound up
becoming partners.
“I’d already moved all this stuff
out of Jack Hardwick’s place and
taken it up to Reseda, California,
where I put it in my back yard and
my neighbour’s back yard. The city
of LA got onto me for having all
these airplane parts there, and I
got thrown out. I sold the house in
Reseda and bought a property in the
desert, at Ocotillo Wells. I moved
all the stuff down there, and Tony
quit his job and moved there shortly
after. We worked out of there from
1978-85.”
That was the start of Aero Trader.
“Once we got ’3155G up here to
Chino we continued to work on it.
Then I had the opportunity to buy
another airplane [TB-25K N7674]
from Bob Sturges in Troutdale,
Oregon. I made a deal for that, and
another guy who was working on the
first airplane and I drove up there
and swapped an engine on it. Jim
Maloney and Dick Wright flew it
down to Van Nuys. That was kind of
our first training airplane, and Tony
and I both got time on it. I’d been
working on getting my private pilot’s
licence in the LA area, and I had
that before we moved to the desert.
That second airplane has since been
destroyed. We sold it a couple of
years later to a guy who turned out
to be a drug-hauler. It wound up
crashing in Colombia and being
pushed off a cliff.
“I’d just got my B-25 type rating
when I had the opportunity to
fly to Tahiti and back in a B-25 in
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 69
1982. A friend of ours, Jerry Janes
from Vancouver, was contracted by
Disney Studios to go to Tahiti and
do some Circle-Vision filming with
his airplane. I knew him from here
at Chino and local airshows we’d
been going to. I invited myself along,
and he said, ‘Sure’. I went along as
a pilot and mechanic”. This trip, in
B-25J C-GCWJ, was connected with
the making of the movie Endless
Sea. In writing it up a few years ago,
Carl says, “The first sentence was, ‘It
seemed like a good idea at the time’.
The last sentence
was, ‘That box
is ticked’. I can A guy who had
summarise it by
saying we had an
an FBO tried to sell
engine problem a B-25 to me, and I
on the way down
there, but we got bought it
it there, we did
the filming and we got it back. It was
a good adventure, but I wouldn’t do
it again…
“When I got my type rating I think
I had 230-240 hours’ total time,
which wasn’t a whole lot, but then
you have to think back to the way
the training was in World War Two.
Guys would be thrown into bombers
with maybe 200-300 hours. From
that standpoint it wasn’t anything
particularly unusual to fly the B-25
with so few hours, but, just like
anything else, it requires practice
and time and care. I call it an easy
airplane to fly. Most of my flying
time is in the B-25, although I got
my licence in a Cessna 150. It’s very
reliable — I mean, we’ve been flying
the airplane we currently own,
Pacific Princess, since 1982, and
we’ve had a couple of engine failures
but nothing significant that’s put us
in great danger. I love it.
“Pacific Princess [B-25J N9856C] is
one of the airplanes that flew in the
movie Catch-22. A local Los Angeles
guy, Ted Itano, had purchased
it, and it was here at Chino. Dick
Wright and Mike
Wright, the two
guys I hired to
work on the first
B-25, maintained
and flew it for
that owner.
When we moved
the first airplane,
’55G, from Chino to the desert, we
asked Ted if we could take it there
and do some work on it for him. The
guys who had been working on it
for him, who we called the ‘Wright
brothers’, had gone to work for a guy BELOW:
up in Casper, Wyoming who wound At the controls of
up buying our first B-25. Ted said Pacific Princess, Carl
OK, and Mike Wright flew it down and Tony begin their
to the desert. I’d cut out a dirt strip take-off roll on the
adjacent to my property there. deck of the USS Carl
Vinson, sailing near
“Then after I got my type rating San Francisco during
I asked Ted if we could fly it, and Fleet Week festivities
he said, ‘Sure, as long as you take in October 1995.
care of it’. We started flying it, FRANK B. MORMILLO
AEROPLANE MEETS Carl Scholl

RIGHT: and he’d go with us to airshows. He

Carl (left), Tony wasn’t type-rated in it, but he was a
Ritzman and George pilot. Basically we took care of the
Lee preparing to fly
the B-26. Lee was a
airplane and treated it as ours until
former 386th Bomb many years later, 2005, when we
Group B-26 pilot and finally wound up buying it from the
retired lieutenant family after Ted had some medical
colonel who served issues.
as the flight engineer “In 1985 we moved the operation
for the Marauder’s
post-restoration
to Chino, because one of our
check flights. customers — the owner of a B-25
FRANK B. MORMILLO that had been a tanker up in Alaska
— wanted us to work on his airplane
at an airport, not in the dirt. Chino
was kind of a natural choice. Steve
Hinton came over one day and
asked if we wanted to put together
an F4U-5 Corsair [BuNo 124447]
that a guy wanted to trade with the
Marine Corps museum. It was a
pile of pieces that had never been
together before. It was supposed
to be a static display, and we took
the job, but then the owner of the
project decided to up the ante and
get it flying. It won an award [Best Some of the Mitchells, inevitably, was trucked out here and we started
Navy Fighter] at Oshkosh in 1987.” stand out. “The one we did for the on it.
That was the first of Aero Cavanaugh Flight Museum — the “It was a major, major overhaul.
Trader’s non-B-25 projects. A current name on it is How ’Boot We wound up putting new wings
significant number of T-28 Trojans That!? — was actually a World War on it, we had to replace all four
went through its premises, for Two veteran. It flew 80-something main spars in the centre-section
BELOW:
general maintenance and upgrade missions in Italy, and it had some because of the corrosion. None
The A-26C Invader, purposes. Diversifying briefly into battle damage. It had been sitting of those things in themselves are
44-35710/N7705C jet machinery, it worked on a couple around for a long time, and it particularly difficult, because by
Hard To Get, of Fouga Magisters, and returned was pretty badly corroded. Jim then we’d acquired a pretty good
restored by Aero to flight an ex-Red Arrows Gnat Cavanaugh bought it at the Harry inventory of parts from around the
Trader for Historic T1, which was test-flown by Skip Doan auction in Florida and then country and in Canada. We put
Invader Aviation on
the first leg of its trip
Holm. But, for the most part, the hired us to go ahead and restore the it back together pretty much as it
to the Netherlands in company’s bread and butter has airplane. It was in pieces at the time had come out of the factory, with
July 1998. remained B-25s and other potent — Harry Doan had bought it just for all the original equipment. We had
FRANK B. MORMILLO American radial twins. parts for another airplane he had. It accumulated so much of that stuff:
armament, radios, furnishings, stuff
like that. When that thing was out
of here it was — maybe still is — the
most authentic B-25 around. It had
modern avionics in it, and different
carburettors, but the original
carburettor scoops were adapted
to fit the newer-style carburettors.
Other than that, it was original.”

❖
So original, in fact, that it no
longer flies. The aircraft took to
the air again in June 1995, won the
Grand Champion World War Two
Warbird prize at Oshkosh later that
summer, and can today be seen on
display at the Cavanaugh museum
in Addison, Texas. However, a
decision was taken not to operate
How ’Boot That!? due to its unique
wartime provenance.
Another ex-Harry Doan
aeroplane, B-25J N9621C, was sold
to Don Whittington and ended up
in 1991 with French owner Franklin
Devaux. Soon after it arrived at

70 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

Dijon, an engine ran out of fuel on
a local flight, forcing an emergency
landing in a field. “Franklin called
me”, Carl recalls, “wanting me to
go over there and tell him what his
airplane needed. I flew over on an
Air France 747 to Paris and took the
TGV to Dijon. Franklin met me that
night and the next day we went out
to the field. They’d determined by
then that they’d run out of gas, and
they’d towed it to a better spot in the
farmer’s field. They had run it, and it
seemed to run OK.
“I put oil in it, because it was
really low on oil, ran it up and it
seemed fine. The
field looked like
it was going to be I admired the
long enough, but
I paced it off to Doolittle Raiders,
determine that I
could get out of and they were all
there. I taxied down
to the other end of
so humble
the field, took off,
did a left-hand 270° turn, went over
to the airfield which was only about
a mile away, entered downwind and
landed!”
Good practice, one might say,
for flying Pacific Princess off an
aircraft carrier. “In August 1995 the
Department of Defense put on a
commemorative event for the end of
World War Two. We were part of the
group that was loaded onto the USS
Carl Vinson in Alameda, which was
where the Doolittle Raiders were
loaded, too. There were 11 warbirds
on the carrier, which went over to
Hawaii. My wife and I flew over
on a 747, but a couple of my crew
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 71
members actually went over there
on the ship.”
Among the historic contingent
were three B-25s, Pacific Princess
being joined by Bill Klaers’ In The
Mood and Wally Fisk’s Buck U — the
latter being N3155G, the first B-25
Carl encountered. “We did a launch
there and flew around the islands.
I think it was the second day we
were there when all the individual
airplanes took off and flew over
the carrier. Then they loaded the
airplanes back up, brought them
back to Alameda and unloaded
them there. In October they had the
Fleet Week event
in San Francisco,
and they wanted to
do a launch again.
We were part of
that group, too.
We flew back up
to Alameda, they
loaded us on the
same carrier, the
Carl Vinson, and we sailed off San
Francisco. That time there were
seven different airplanes”. Again In
The Mood was involved alongside
Pacific Princess, together with
Ted Melsheimer’s Tootsie. They
launched after the carrier sailed
past the Golden Gate Bridge, tens of
thousands looking on.
“The third and fourth times”,
continues Carl, “were part of the
movie Pearl Harbor, filmed in 2000.
Four B-25s were involved in the
flying scenes. We flew off the USS
Lexington in Corpus Christi, Texas,
which was interesting because
the carrier was sitting still — it’s a
museum ship in dock — and the ABOVE:
USS Constellation in San Diego. Flying Kermit Weeks’
It was OK, because the B-25 has very rare B-26
Marauder, 40-1464/
really good short-field take-off N4297J, near Chino
performance, so it wasn’t a problem. in December 1997.
“None of them were a problem, The aircraft was
actually. It’s not a difficult thing delivered to Weeks’s
to do. I mean, it’s over in about 15 Fantasy of Flight
seconds! You’re sitting there with facility in Florida the
following March.
brakes on, you bring it up to take-off FRANK B. MORMILLO
power with full flaps, the flag man
gives you the ‘go’, you release the
brakes and you start to roll. The
airplane doesn’t really lift off like
you normally do. It doesn’t rotate
per se — it kind of levitates and
you’re airborne at about 60kt. Push
the nose over to get some speed up,
retract the gear and fly away. As long
as both engines work, you’re good.”
As a result of these escapades,
Carl and Tony have four B-25 carrier
take-offs to their name, but this
isn’t a record. Bill Klaers and In The
Mood were not only involved in all
four of the launches Carl took part
in, but one more: 1992’s Doolittle
Raid 50th anniversary re-creation,
a two-aircraft affair aboard the USS
Ranger. Pacific Princess was there,
however, among five other Mitchells
that joined up for a ‘missing man’
formation.
Carl treasures the connections
he made with B-25 veterans, and
especially those involved in the
Tokyo raid. “That’s one of the
highlights: having met all the
surviving Doolittle Raiders and
flown a number of them with me
in the airplane at different events.
I had the unique opportunity to
have Dick Cole, Doolittle’s co-
AEROPLANE MEETS Carl Scholl
pilot, fly with me in the right seat
of our airplane at an airshow in
Boise, Idaho. Doolittle’s co-pilot
flying my airplane, and I’m in the
seat next to him — I mean, it was
great. I consider Jimmy Doolittle
my human hero, and he and the
Raiders fall into that category of
exceptional men, who stepped up to
that challenge at the time. I admired
every one of them, and they were all
so humble. None of them were ever
outgoing and pounding their chest,
and I probably met 30 or more of
them over the years.”
Many rarities carried on passing
through the Chino hangar, the
Martin B-26 Marauder belonging
to Kermit Weeks
foremost among
them. This very I wanted to
early example had
been one of three
buy the A-20, but
from the 28th I didn’t have the
Bomb Group that
force-landed in money
British Columbia
on the same day in January 1942
after running low on fuel on a
ferry flight south from Elmendorf
BELOW: Field, Alaska. Legendary collector
B-25J 44-30456/ David Tallichet had recovered the
N747AF, here with trio and set about restoring serial
Carl and Tony 40-1464 to airworthiness. “It had
Ritzman at the helm,
was finished for
flown a couple of times in 1992
Lewis Air Legends when Tallichet still owned it”, says
in early 2010. Its Carl, “but then he had a bankruptcy
colours are those of situation and he had to sell off some
a Soviet Air Force of his airplanes, so Kermit Weeks
example, recalling bought the B-24 and the Marauder.
the supply of so
many Mitchells to
It lived just three hangars down
the USSR under from us here, so when he bought the
Lend-Lease. Marauder we went and towed it over
FRANK B. MORMILLO to our place.
72 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
“They’d been having propeller
problems and hydraulic issues and
things like that. We basically fixed all
the ‘squawks’ the airplane had — we
didn’t do any real restoration work
on it. Kermit didn’t hire us for that.
He just wanted to fly it to Florida”.
Even so, a period report says Aero
Trader spent 6,000 man-hours on
the necessary work before the B-26
got air under its wheels again on 25
March 1997.
In fact, says Carl, “The first flight
I had in it was when Tallichet still
owned it. I flew it with Roscoe Diehl
in the right seat. I thought it was a
real piece of crap, to be quite honest.
It was because there was something
missing from the
rudder — I don’t
think it had a gap
seal in it that it was
supposed to have,
because you’d put
the rudder in and
start your turn,
and the rudder
wouldn’t come back to neutral on
its own. You had to physically push
the other rudder pedal to get back to
neutral or go in the other direction.
That was kind of annoying. It flew
OK, but that was an oddball thing.
Fantastic-looking airplane, but,
to me, its flying characteristics
didn’t meet up with its good looks.
It’s got more power than a B-25,
but it doesn’t quite have the same
forgiving flying characteristics.
“One thing Tony and I noticed
was that if you had an engine failure
on take-off and the gear was down,
the airplane would not climb. If you
were at low speed, you couldn’t fly
out of it. You had to put it down. We
practised that by bringing the power
back on it. With a B-25, on the other
hand, if you’ve got a problem on
take-off it’ll continue to fly on one
engine, but a lot lower-speed than
what the book tells you. There are
a few things to avoid: you don’t
retract the gear, because when the
gear is down on a B-25 the doors
are closed, so it doesn’t have all that
drag with the airflow through the
nacelles. It’s pretty slick. With the
Marauder — and the A-26, for that
matter — the doors are open when
the gear is down, and that creates a
lot of extra drag.
“This was an early Marauder, a
short-wing, small-tail airplane. They
had more problems with those.
But I think the bigger thing was the
propeller issues. We did have a lot of
propeller problems, especially with
feathering.”
❖
There were fewer surprises with
the first Douglas A-26 Invader to be
seen in Aero Trader’s workshops,
A-26C N7705C, which had been
obtained by Dutch organisation
Historic Invader Aviation. “It had
been here at Chino for a long time. It
had been modified at one time, with
the turrets taken out of it, and it had
structural issues which were kind of
marginal. In the rear fuselage a lot
of the original structure had been
taken out when it was converted into
an [On Mark Marksman] executive
transport. We had to repair all of
that. We got the structure back in,
we put the gunner’s window back on
the top.
“Basically we went through the
airplane. It wasn’t a fine-toothed
comb restoration like we’ve done
on many of the B-25s. We got it
airworthy, but on our first flight
I think we had an engine failure.
We brought it back around and
put a new engine on it. Then we
went through the rest of the test
programme with Richard Nivo, the
man who owned it, and his crew”.
Via an appearance at Oshkosh, the
A-26 was ferried to Amsterdam in
August 1998, spending three years
in the Netherlands before returning
Stateside.
Fast-forward a bit, and Aero
Trader found itself tackling an
earlier Douglas attack twin, A-20J
Havoc 43-21709. This was the
culmination of a lengthy saga.
“Howard Hughes owned an A-20
that was up here at Lancaster
Airport/Fox Field, just north of Los
 Angeles. That and his B-25 had been
donated to a museum there that’s
now defunct. On Kermit Weeks’s
behalf, before we moved out of the
desert we had started work on a
B-25 for him, an ex-Alaskan tanker
airplane. I was dealing with the
people at Fox Field because they had
a lot of B-25 parts and spares that
Howard Hughes had donated. We
bought a load at auction.
“I was talking to the proprietor of
the museum at the time, trying to
put a deal together on the A-20 —
and the B-25 too, though that didn’t
happen until years later. Kermit was
interested in it too. A guy named
Willy Farah in El Paso, Texas also
had an A-20 that he had put together
and owned for a number of years.
Tony and I had seen that airplane
at his facility during one of our trips
around the country, so we were a
little bit familiar with the A-20.
“Well, Willy Farah’s airplane came
up for an IRS [Internal Revenue
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 73
066-74 Aeroplane meets AM Jun2021.indd 73
Service] lien sale. I told Kermit that
he ought to bid on it. At that time
we were already working on getting
the one up at Lancaster. On Kermit’s
behalf I managed to work a trade
deal with the museum there — we
traded building a hangar for the
A-20. That was in process when this
other airplane became available.
Kermit got the A-20 from Lancaster,
and when the building was
completed Bill Klaers from WestPac
and a couple of his people, and me
and a couple of our people, went to
disassemble it and brought it down
to our place in the desert. It’s mostly
been in storage since then.
❖ it apart and ship it to Australia. He’d
“A few years ago, Mark Clark
was advertising the Willy Farah
airplane that the Lone Star Flight
Museum had purchased from the
IRS. I wanted to buy it, but I didn’t
have the money it sold for. A guy
in Australia wound up buying it,
Steve Searle. He hired us to move ABOVE:
it and do the restoration on it. I One of Aero Trader’s
went to Galveston, Texas, to do an crowning glories is
Lewis Air Legends’
inspection and determined that I A-20J Havoc,
didn’t want to ferry it. Sitting for N747HS, a stunning
many years right next to the ocean, Oshkosh award-
it had some rust damage and things winner in 2017.
like that. We elected to disassemble DAVID LEININGER
it and transport it here to Chino. I
assisted in taking it apart and had
our transport company, Chapman
Transport, move it here.
“We started working on it for
Steve, and his concept was to just
get it back together, flying and
licenced. He wasn’t too concerned
about it being original or anything
like that. Once we did that, we’d take
then have us come and put it back
together again and fly it. That was
the plan. Well, Searle wound up with
some serious medical issues and
decided to sell the airplane. We had
already done a B-25 for Rod Lewis,
so we were familiar with his
27/04/2021 13:47
AEROPLANE MEETS Carl Scholl
RIGHT:
Carl is particularly
proud of his Doolittle
Raid commemorative
jacket which was
autographed by
the late Dick Cole,
the last surviving
participant in the
mission, who also
took his final B-25
flight in Pacific
Princess when aged
101. The Mitchell’s
nose art chronicles
its participation
in various
commemorations,
movie and television
projects.
FRANK B. MORMILLO
operation, and he with us. I talked
Rod into buying it from Steve, and to
let us do the restoration on it.
“That might be the most
challenging restoration we’ve done.
We didn’t have a whole lot of parts
— Dave Tallichet hauled a bunch
of stuff out of New Guinea years
and years ago, and we acquired
some of that from his backyard.
Lewis wanted to make it as original
as possible, when he realised this
would be the only flying A-20 in the
world. That was the instruction we
were given, and it went well.
“Structurally the airplane was
pretty sound, and it had been
converted into an executive
transport years before. The
challenge was to come up with
all the original parts. We put an
operating turret in it, the lower
ventral gun and all original radios.
We made all the gun nose and
replica .50-calibre machine guns.
Somebody had put a back seat in
it, behind the cockpit, which was
not original, and we removed it. We
74 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
built a bomb bay tank for it from the
factory drawings, because it didn’t
have a whole lot of fuel capacity.”
Stewart Dawson conducted the
maiden post-restoration flight of the
A-20, now registered N747HS, from
Chino in July 2015. It was delivered
to the Lewis Air Legends facility at
San Antonio, Texas a few months
afterwards. Another prestigious
Oshkosh award, a Gold Lindy in the
World War Two warbird category at
AirVenture 2017, came as suitable
recognition for years of effort.
❖ 50-50 partners since almost the
It’s entertaining to look back, but
Aero Trader remains firmly focused
on what’s to come, too — and, it
goes without saying, the B-25 is
central to that. “In the desert we’ve
got six complete airplane projects
— a B-model, a C-model and four
J-models. Here at the airport we’re
working on two right now. The
Howard Hughes airplane that used
to be up at Lancaster [N3968C]
has been purchased by the Hearst
Foundation, and we’re restoring
that on their behalf. Another one
in the hangar is on hold because of
the COVID situation, an ex-Tallichet
airplane [N9455Z] that flew in
Hanover Street. That’s owned by a
gentleman named Trent Latshaw in
Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“We’ve collected as many B-25
parts as we can over the years,
and have the largest inventory. We
have a production certificate to
manufacture B-25 parts, and we
also own the type certificate for
the airplane. Shell Aviation had it,
Shell Oil wound up with it, and they
transferred it to us a few years ago”.
Mitchell pilots the world over, like
those from the Royal Netherlands
Air Force Historic Flight and the
Flying Bulls, beat a path to Aero
Trader’s door for recurrency training
with Tony Ritzman, who has an
instructor’s certificate. Another
string to its bow is the overhaul of
R-2600 and R-1830 engines, while
a complete Plexiglas fabrication
facility can make items for many
different types.
The other big project in which the
firm is engaged involves a further
twin. “We’re just finishing up Kermit
Weeks’s A-26 now, which we’ve had
here for a long time. It’s in the paint
process as we speak, and I’m hoping
to get it to Oshkosh this year, if they
have Oshkosh”. But its capabilities
run far wider. For example, “we’ve
got all the fixtures and tooling to
build almost any Mustang part.
We’ve built three or four fuselages,
three or four centre wings, engine
mounts, induction trunks. We
were building one for ourselves a
number of years ago from parts we
had accumulated, but we wound up
selling it due to financial needs. That
airplane is now in Cincinnati, Ohio
with the Tri-State Warbird Museum.”
Countless projects have benefited
from the company’s expertise and
immense parts holdings. Above
all, Carl stresses it’s a joint effort.
“Aero Trader today is basically
Tony Ritzman and me. We’ve been
very beginning. That’s the way it’s
worked, and it’s been very successful
that way. We have different skills
and capabilities, but we work well
together, and have done so for over
40 years now.
“It all just happened. I didn’t do
anything by design — I mean, I just
bought that airplane for a lark one
day. All I can think of is that God had
some greater plan for me than
working on cars all my life…”
 Britain’s Top-Selling
Aviation Monthly

JUNE ISSUE OUT NOW!

40TH ANNIVERSARY
SPECIAL ISSUE
Featuring:
FREE!
FLYPAST ISSUE 1 REPRINT
To mark our 40th anniversary year, this issue
includes a free reprint of our very first issue,
from all the way back in 1981.

WIN!
A FLIGHT IN A SPITFIRE
Your chance to win a once-in-a-lifetime
Spitfire flight worth £3,000 in our
unmissable competition!

PLUS!
ANNIVERSARY SPECIALS
JUST
£W 6.49
75 years since the first flight of the
legendary de Havilland Chipmunk
trainer H
EN
ORDER YOU
80 years since the mighty P-47 DIRECT
Thunderbolt’s aerial inauguration.

80 years since USAF Sabre pilot James Also available for £6.99
Jabara became the world’s first jet ace.
from and other
AND MUCH MORE!
leading newsagents
FP_ISSUE_1_reprint.indd
FP_issue1_reprint.indd 1 1 01/04/2021
26/03/2021 15:11
12:59

For latest subscription deals visit: key.aero/flypast

Alternatively, give us a call on (UK) 01780 480404 or (Overseas) +44 1780 480404
Lines open 9.00am - 5.30pm • Free P&P* when you order online

176/21
*Free 2nd class P&P on all UK & BFPO orders. Overseas charges apply. Postage charges vary depending on total order value.

b
176 Flypast Latest FP.indd 56 27/04/2021 09:24:09
 PERSONAL ALBUM

In the second half of 1975, Air Niugini fitted out DC-3 P2-ANT — The ‘Tour Liner’ powers up its Pratt & Whitney R-1830s
the former P2-SBO — with seats from a Fokker F27 Friendship on departure from Gurney airstrip to Port Moresby on
and extra soundproofing as the ‘Tour Liner’, to be used on tourist Christmas Eve 1976. It was the oldest DC-3 in the fleet.
charters around PNG.

DC-3s IN PNG
In 1975-76, Stephen Thair became quite the frequent flyer on the Douglas
DC-3s of Air Niugini, the national airline of Papua New Guinea. What a way
to view this spectacular country!

Air Niugini DC-3s P2-SBB, P2-SBL

— still in its former Trans Australia
Airlines colours — and P2-MML lined
up at Port Moresby on 9 June 1975.
In the background can be seen three
revetments left over from when the
airport was known as ‘Seven-Mile’
airstrip during World War Two.

76 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

 24 July 1976, and the sun’s rays
light up the airport tarmac in the
light of a Port Moresby dawn. With hot
the prospect of a DC-3 flight thro
the amazing mountain scenery, in ugh
this case to Goroka, it’s hard to think
of a better start to the day.

Special decoration for the ‘Tour Liner’ came in the form of Papuan
artwork on the bulkhead behind the cockpit and the inside of the
passenger door. “It was a very comfortable aircraft from which
to see the country”, says Stephen Thair. “We had five flights in
it — return trips from Port Moresby to Rabaul and Goroka, and an
outward flight to Gurney airstrip in Milne Bay province.”

Ground staff tend to P2-ANT between operations. This

1942-vintage aircraft, built in Long Beach as a C-47 for the US
Army Air Forces with serial 41-19465, ended its days on the
fire dump at Sydney’s Bankstown Airport, though its nose was
preserved in Tamworth, New South Wales.

Have you got photos to contribute to

Personal Album? If so, e-mail the editor at
ben.dunnell@keypublishing.com

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 77

INSIGHTS BOAC 747 introduction

“THIS IS
YOUR SHOP
STEWARD
SPEAKING…”
Why does this year, and not last, mark half a century since BOAC
introduced the Boeing 747? The answer can be found in an industrial
dispute specific to this immense new aeroplane WORDS: BRUCE HALES-DUTTON

BOAC’s Boeing 747 era is well

under way as G-AWNG, delivered
in September 1971, rolls out at
Heathrow — but it had taken its
time to get going. RICHARD VANDERVORD
I
n the autumn of 2020, British conceal their contempt for their symbolic”, recalls Derek Ellis, “to
Airways finally retired the world’s BALPA counterparts’ negotiating show that the pilots were willing to
biggest fleet of Boeing 747s skills. Hugh Dibley remembers go on strike.”
after half a century of service. a conversation with a colleague The situation worsened during
There were lumps in many throats who said he’d been told by a BOAC the spring of 1968. Both sides met
as one of the last 747-400s to go, negotiator that dealing with BALPA on 14 June under the chairmanship
displaying the blue-and-white livery was like “taking money out of little of employment secretary Barbara
of the British Overseas Airways boys’ pockets”. Derek Ellis says that Castle, who insisted that pay deals
Corporation, made its final take-off BOAC’s chief negotiator operated had to pay for themselves. “She was
from London’s Heathrow Airport. “as though he was paying out of his very keen on that”, notes Ellis.
British Airways' CEO, Sean Doyle, own pocket.” On the 17th, Castle told the House
called it “a bittersweet moment”. Attitudes hardened, so when of Commons that the opposing
It certainly was for many former management unveiled a new pay parties had agreed to discuss the
BOAC pilots, who still feel they scheme which raised questions of principle of a new pay structure.
were unfairly blamed for the year’s redundancy for pilots aged over 50, BOAC had asked for more time to
delay in the start of the airline’s 747 BALPA insisted on consider BALPA’s
operations. The airline which had observance of the counter-proposals,
introduced the world to jet travel established trade Management but BALPA declined.
was indeed late entering the wide-
body era, but the pilots believe their
union principle of
insisted it was
‘last in, first out’. The
“I regret that BALPA
has gone ahead with
bitter dispute with management result was deadlock. just another its strike”, Castle
wasn’t the only reason. Critical of the said, diplomatically.
The roots of this go back to the slow progress, aeroplane “I very much
mid-1960s, when BOAC placed its BALPA instructed hope that it will
first orders for Boeing’s 747. It was a its members to withdraw co- reconsider its position.”
time when Harold Wilson’s Labour operation with BOAC management. The pilots’ answer to the call for
government was trying to rein in pay They also threatened an all-out increased productivity had been
deals and introduce an element of strike. Management responded to propose replacing current duty
increased productivity to help pay by threatening to shut the airline’s rostering arrangements with a
for them. BOAC pilots argued that operations down. system which enabled them to pick
with twice the capacity of a 707, “British pilots were looked upon their own trips, based on seniority. BELOW:
the 747 would bring substantially by both the public and Sir Giles “The rostering system wasn’t very Flight crew training
more productivity to the airline. [Guthrie, BOAC chairman] as satisfactory”, states Hugh Dibley. under way at the
“Management insisted it was just officers and gentlemen, and it was “What BALPA wanted was the airline’s Cranebank
another aeroplane”, recalls former a shock to both when they went on bid-line system so that crews could facility during March
1971. Hugh Dibley,
747 and Concorde captain Derek strike”, wrote BOAC historian Robin decide where they were going. They who had transferred
Ellis, then chairman of the BOAC Higham. On 8 December 1967, also wanted a productivity system from the 707 fleet, is
pilots’ local council. that’s exactly what they did. The that meant if you flew more often in the left-hand seat.
Earlier in the decade the pilots strike lasted 48 hours. “It was largely you got more money.” ALAMY
had signed up for a three-year pay
deal, which gave them an annual
rise. But as other groups of workers
with more negotiating muscle raced
ahead, they felt they were losing out.
Negotiations with management
were conducted by the British
Airline Pilots’ Association. “You had
to join”, says retired 747 captain —
and accomplished international
sportscar racer — Hugh Dibley.
“You couldn’t negotiate your own
individual deals with BOAC”. Unlike
other trade unions, BALPA didn’t
employ professional negotiators.
“Pilots as a group are not a
particularly militant lot”, Derek Ellis
adds. “The company took advantage
of that.”
Future employment secretary
Norman Tebbit was then a 707 first
officer and active BALPA member.
He was in no doubt who was to
blame for the toxic industrial
relations climate within the airline,
describing BOAC management as
“incompetent.”
Part of the problem was that
BOAC’s negotiators failed to

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 79

INSIGHTS BOAC 747 introduction
ABOVE: It was based on ‘credited hours’,
The much- in which one flying hour was
publicised arrival equivalent to one credited hour.
of BOAC’s initial
Non-flying duty hours were divided
747-136, G-AWNA,
at Heathrow on 22 into fractions of flying hours. The
April 1970. It took monthly maximum was 80. “We
nearly a year to enter encountered terrific resistance”,
commercial service, recounts Ellis. “The company didn’t
however. ALAMY want to give up its authority over
pilots. Because the negotiations
were so fractious, we asked for
someone to be brought in to cool
the temperature down.”
Barbara Castle appointed Prof
John Wood from the University of
Sheffield to act as an independent
chairman. But even though an
hourly rated system which would
relate pay directly to workload was
accepted in principle, there was
no agreement on the details. Mark
Young of the electricians’ union
and Clive Jenkins of the ASTMS, the
scientists’ and managers’ union,
worked over the Easter weekend
to find a peace formula. But there
was still no agreement. A frustrated
Wood quit and BALPA called
another strike.
80 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
The parties found themselves
back at the St James’s Square
headquarters of the Department
of Employment for last-ditch talks.
On 31 March, Castle told MPs it was
a “national tragedy” that it hadn’t
been possible to find a basis for
calling off the strike, which started
at midnight. The parties, she said,
had been unable “to agree on the
salaries which the new structure
would produce and the productivity
which could flow from it.”
❖ charter which involved the aircraft
The walk-out lasted for six days.
On 30 April Anthony Crosland,
President of the Board of Trade,
told MPs it had cost BOAC £5
million in lost revenue and £4
million in profits. He acknowledged
labour relations within BOAC had
“certainly not been satisfactory.”
Not all BOAC pilots joined the
strikes. “I think about 30 of us voted
not to”, recalls Hugh Dibley. “And
I was one of them”. It hadn’t been
an easy decision to make. When
his flight manager asked him to
sign a statement indicating that he
wouldn’t go on strike, Dibley agreed.
But next morning he had second
thoughts and his boss agreed to tear
up the paper he’d signed.
Derek Ellis believes BOAC’s
attitude towards the striking pilots
added further to their resentment.
The company told the hotels around
the world where the pilots were
staying that it would not be paying
their bills. Some were stranded in
the USA. But then someone heard
that Aer Lingus was operating a 707
flying empty from New York to
Dublin. “Aer Lingus confirmed it
and flew the pilots back to London”,
Ellis says. “I personally handed the
cheque over to Aer Lingus.”
The pilots continued to argue that
the 747’s extra capacity represented
a sizeable increase in productivity.
BOAC not only rejected this but
refused to accept that the 747, with
its bigger capacity, meant additional
responsibility for the captains. “That
was the real reason for the dispute”,
opines Ellis.
 The matter was referred to
the Prices and Incomes Board
for detailed analysis. It broadly
approved an hourly pay structure
with bidding for blocks of work
in order of seniority, so all pilots
could set their own earnings level.
And although the pilots felt the PIB
hadn’t fully understood the bid-line
system, Ellis believes, “it could
have been the basis for the 747’s
introduction.”
When the bid-line system was
eventually introduced it revealed
that the airline was grossly
overstaffed. “This was something
we’d been saying for a long time”,
says Ellis. “By then the pilots had
become more militant than they’d
ever been.”
Going into the autumn of 1969,
BOAC was forced to revise its plans
for introducing the 747 the following
summer. Hugh Dibley, then a 707
first officer, had been assigned to
the 747 fleet and by October had
his bags packed ready to leave for
training in Seattle.
❖ was never needed. The standard
“Those initial courses were run by
Boeing for instructors and I was an
instructor as a first officer”, Dibley
recalls. “We’d all been given our
dollars because in those days there
were no credit cards. But those slots
were given to management pilots
who were unaffected by the dispute.”
It was also being reported that the
BOAC pilots were demanding that
747 flight crews should comprise
three pilots and a flight engineer.
But here again, things weren’t quite
as they seemed.
The 747 introduced the inertial
navigation system (INS), which
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 81
had originally been developed by
NASA and the Delco Division of
General Motors for the Apollo moon
missions. BOAC management and
pilots both adopted a cautious
attitude towards it. Hugh Dibley
recalls, “Sextant mounts for astro-
navigation were fitted to the first
three aircraft, with LORAN long-
range navigation sets installed next
to the first officer’s positions.”
Derek Ellis says, “We wanted the
third pilot and navigator until the
INS had proved itself reliable. All
first officers within BOAC held flight
navigators’ licences as well as pilots’
licences. So, it wasn’t an extra pilot
for flying the aeroplane, it was an
extra navigator in case we had to
revert to what
you might call
pen-and-ink
There really was
navigation. no pressure to put the
We specified
six months for 747s into service
this.”
But in service the Delco Carousel
INS proved completely reliable
and easy to use, so the extra pilot
crew was two pilots and a flight
engineer, although for flights to the
Far East — which included multi-
sector operations like Tehran-
Bangkok-Hong Kong — a relief
third pilot was added to the crew.
No relief pilots were needed on
North Atlantic routes. Right from
the 747’s introduction, flight crews
on services like London-New York
never exceeded two pilots and a
flight engineer.
BOAC’s first 747-136, registered
G-AWNA, arrived at Heathrow on 22
April 1970, followed by G-AWNB on
6 May and G-AWNC on 28 May. But
it was clear to BOAC’s management
that they would remain grounded.
“Every day that these aircraft sit on
the ground not earning their keep
will cause BOAC to be worse off by
£50,000”, fumed managing director
Keith Granville. “That’s the sum they
would have contributed towards our
fixed costs if they had been flying.”
Granville, who would be
appointed the airline’s chairman
the following year, added, “At that
rate the costs to BOAC would total
over £10 million by the end of the
year. This is a serious situation. The
longer it continues the more likely it
is that we will lose our place as one
of the world’s biggest airlines.”
Half a century later, it’s clear there
was a fairly
substantial
silver lining to
this particular
cloud. “We
didn’t recognise
it at the time”,
says Derek Ellis, “but BOAC saw this
as an opportunity to make money
and keep the pilots at bay.”
The early versions of the Pratt
& Whitney JT9D turbofan that
powered the first 747-100s were
notoriously unreliable. During
the flight test programme, no
fewer than 87 engines broke down
and 55 engine changes had to be
BELOW:
made. Deliveries were delayed, Before delivery,
and completed 747 airframes G-AWNA carried the
were parked with concrete blocks US test registration
attached to their wings to stop them N17998. Alongside
losing their shape. the industrial dispute
Overheating and surging with BOAC’s crews,
problems with the
continued to be a problem with 747-100’s Pratt
the early JT9Ds. In fact, launch & Whitney JT9D
customer Pan American’s first engines had to be
commercial 747-100 flight, from resolved. KEY COLLECTION
INSIGHTS BOAC 747 introduction
New York to London in January
1970, was delayed because the
aircraft originally allocated to the
service suffered engine overheating.
The initial version, the JT9D-3,
was succeeded by the -3A. “They
were a slight improvement”, recalls
Hugh Dibley, “but we still had
problems. When starting descent
from cruise altitude a throttle bar
prevented the thrust levers being
closed completely to prevent a
surge. It was the job of the non-
flying pilot and the flight engineer
to watch the engine temperatures.
If they started
going up, you’d
shut the engine
BOAC was a bit
down and relight afraid of the 747
it. That was quite
routine. The same could happen
during reverse thrust after landing.”
Yet these problems worked in
BOAC’s favour. Faced with what
was clearly going to be a lengthy
grounding of its new 747s, the
airline was able to lease out engines
to Pan Am and other carriers who
desperately needed them as their
BELOW: spares were rapidly becoming
At last! Passengers exhausted. It was rumoured that
board G-AWNF for BOAC made as much money
BOAC’s inaugural
747 service, flight
doing this as it would have done by
501 to New York, at actually operating the aircraft.
Heathrow on 14 April The 747’s introduction into
1971. GETTY passenger service also coincided
with a downturn in demand for air
travel. Pan Am had based its original
747 requirement on predictions that
worldwide traffic would grow by 15
per cent a year, but by 1970 growth
had slumped to just 1.5 per cent.
According to Dibley, “There really
was no pressure to put the 747s into
service.”
“BOAC was a bit afraid of the 747”,
Ellis believes. “It was such a big leap
in capacity that they weren’t sure
they could fill it to the point where
it could start making money. They
were afraid that, at least for a couple
of years, it would
lose money”. He’s
convinced that,
because of these
factors, BOAC
didn’t pursue the negotiations with
its pilots as vigorously as it might
have done. “And at the same time, it
blamed the pilots for not flying the
aircraft”, he adds.
A pay deal was agreed, but the
dispute with BOAC management
brought other benefits for the pilots.
Looking back on his time with the
airline, Derek Ellis says the two
things he’s proudest of are “getting
the bid-line system introduced
and employing a professional
negotiator for BALPA”. Mark Young
was recruited and became general
secretary in 1974.
The pilots weren’t the only group
of BOAC staff seeking more pay
for flying the 747. Flight engineers
wanted their own bid-line system,
while cabin crews were looking
for improvements in their working
conditions. Although their scope for
additional productivity was limited,
they were offered commission on
in-flight sales.
The pay deals had to be green-
lit by the government before they
could be implemented. Approval
was eventually received in April
1971, clearing the way for the start
of BOAC’s 747 operations later that
month. Trainee pilots attended
ground school at the Cranebank
facility near Heathrow in early
1971, followed by base training at
Shannon with G-AWND, the only
one of the flag carrier’s 747s to be
lost when — by then on British
Airways’ charge — it was destroyed
in Kuwait during the first Gulf War.
So it was that, at 12.03hrs on
Wednesday 14 April 1971, BOAC’s
first commercial 747 service took
off from Heathrow for New York. It
was flown by G-AWNF, commanded
by 747 flight manager Capt Douglas
Redrup. Although it was a belated
start, it signalled the beginning of a
50-year love affair between BOAC,
its successor British Airways,
and the Boeing 747.
Untitled-1 1 22/04/2021 11:12:48
 Classified Call Gemma on 01780 663011 Ext. 153
E: gemma.gray@keypublishing.com

AVIATION PRINTS BOOKS

FOR SALE: Robert Taylor aviation
prints, various. Phone 01673
885009 for more information.
BOOKS
ANGUS
MANSFIELD
Rare and second hand Aviation Books for sale
Based in Cornwall with visitors by appointment

Tel: 07595 403931

Email: angus@amaviationbooks.co.uk FLIGHT SIMULATOR
www.amaviationbooks.co.uk

York Military
►

� - Books
Aviation and Military Books
for the Military, Naval, WANTED
Historian - Collector - Enthusiast Aviation & Militaria Books
bought & sold. ALL PLASTIC MODEL JULY ISSUE
Trading for over 40 years! Relevant part or whole KITS WANTED
We buy selective collections too!.
collections always sought Unmade or already built, Copy Deadline:
any quantity, especially
Contact us for a free catalogue large collections, also MONDAY
Tel: 01423 360828
Mob: 07717 155619 diecast models & books. 17TH MAY
44 (0) 1279-813791 www.yorkmilitarybooks.co.uk Will collect nationwide
sales@eastangliabooks.com
. www.sales@eastangliabooks.com and pay best cash price.
• www.facebook.com/eastangliabooks
CALL NOW to place your
Please call 01202 976974 or
07901-890461
On-Sale:
Visitors welcome by Appointment! advertisement in Aeroplane! Email: mspicer68@hotmail.com THURSDAY
Thanks.
. PO Box 12408, Stansted, 01780 663011 10th JUNE
· Essex, CM24 8UZ
Ext. 153 
AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN PAPERBACK!
THE
The Burma Air
Campaign 1941-1945 AIR FORCE
SHOP
By Michael Pearson
A detailed single-
volume history of the
bloody campaign to Officially Licensed Royal Air Force Gifts
wrest air superiority
from the formidable
Japanese Army Air
Force –
194 pp., maps,
illustrations
and detailed
appendices.

Available from the publishers:

Pen & Sword, 47 Church Street, Barnsley S70 2AS
Email: enquiries@pen-and-sword.co.uk
Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk
Also available from: bookdepository.com/
booksetc.co.uk / amazon.co.uk
And all good booksellers ISBN 1-84415-398-3 www.theairforceshop.co.uk
mikepearsonwriter.co.uk
t: 01279 833215

AM_Classified.indd 105 23/04/2021 12:12:28

DATA
DATABASE

Development
Lancastrian III G-AHBW was purchased new by Silver City Airways, and
operated the carrier’s inaugural commercial service — from London to
15
IN-DEPT
Sydney via Johannesburg — in November 1946. CHRIS SANDHAM-BAILEY PAGESH

Technical Details
AVRO

In Service
LANCASTRIAN

Insights
WORDS: BRUCE HALES-DUTTON

A beautiful image from the early days of London Airport in 1946,

with British South American Airways’ Lancastrian III G-AGWG
Star Light in the foreground. This aircraft had been the first to
operate — prematurely — from the new airport. AEROPLANE
 Avro’s stop-gap airliner was
DEVELOPMENT very much a product of its era

Delivered to Trans-Canada Airlines in July

1943, CF-CMV was the first Lancaster
XPP. Used on the Canadian Government
Trans-Atlantic Air Service from Dorval
to Prestwick, it was later sold to Flight
Refuelling as G-AKDO. KEY COLLECTION

I
t was as utilitarian as dried
egg, tinned snoek and utility
furniture — and about as
glamorous — but in the post-
war world it gave valuable service
as an austerity airliner. Yet
despite its downbeat image, the
Avro Lancastrian was more than
just a Lancaster in civvies, a stop-
gap intended to tide the airlines
over until more exciting aircraft
arrived. It was the first aeroplane
to use what was to become the
world’s premier international
airport, it pioneered long-haul
scheduled passenger operations
to South America and Australia,
and it played a key role in the
development of British turbojet
engine technology.
What the Lancastrian lacked in comfort it
made up for in reliability
For its day, the Lancastrian
was fast, had a long range and
could carry a heavy load. But
internal space was severely
limited. The Lancaster, on which
it was based, had originally
been designed for its seven
crew to be dispersed within the
fuselage and a key feature was,
of course, the 33ft (10.05m)-long
bomb bay. Consequently, the
Lancastrian wasn’t considered
suitable for transporting
large numbers of passengers,
although it was deemed
acceptable for mail and small
groups of VIPs.
But in a post-war world
starved of modern, purpose-
built airliners, what the

Not yet a Lancastrian, but getting there. Lancaster III

CF-CMS, formerly R5727 with the RAF, at Dorval in 1943
following conversion to transport guise. VIA LARRY MILBERRY

86 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

 DATABASE AVRO LANCASTRIAN
Lancastrian lacked in comfort in 1943 Victory Aircraft — later at reasonable speeds. It was to Canada to enable TCA
it made up for in availability. Its to become Avro Canada — of subsequently returned to the to inaugurate the Canadian

stablemate, the Tudor, suffered
delays and the nationalised
British Overseas Airways
Corporation — which at one
time was expecting to operate
60 examples — eventually
rejected it. At the same time, the
supply of more contemporary
equipment to compete with
American-built aircraft on
Malton, Ontario converted the
aircraft for civilian use by Trans-
Canada Airlines (TCA). The nose
and tail gun turrets were faired
over and the mid-upper turret
removed. It was stripped of its
The first Lancaster transport conversion was
undertaken in Canada
UK, where Avro completed
its demilitarisation and fitted
streamlined fairings, designed
and supplied by Victory Aircraft,
over the turrets. Unlike that
used on later Lancastrians,
Development
Government Trans-Atlantic
Air Service on 22 July 1943. The
flight, from Montreal’s Dorval
airport to Prestwick, Scotland,
took 12 hours 26 minutes.
Operations on that route
continued until 1947, by which
time about 1,900 crossings had
been completed.
Two Canadian-built

the prestigious North Atlantic
route was restricted by Britain’s
limited dollar reserves. On
other routes, modified military
aeroplanes represented the only
practical option.
The first Lancaster conversion
was actually undertaken in
Canada. Lancaster III R5727
had been flown there from the
UK to provide a pattern for the
start of local production. But
camouflage and given three
additional windows at the rear.
The aircraft was allocated
civil registration CF-CMS
and used for a series of
experimental freight runs
between Moncton and Goose
Bay, which confirmed its ability
to carry loads of up to 14,000lb
(6,300kg) over long distances
the nosecone was shorter
and featured a glazed roof to
enable the compartment to
accommodate the navigator.
Seats for 10 passengers were
installed and additional fuel
tanks increased the still-air
range to 4,000 miles (6,400km).
Displaying a fresh camouflage
scheme, CF-CMS returned
Technical Details
Lancaster Xs, KB702 and ’703,
were converted by TCA for
civilian use with their military
equipment removed and airline-
standard instrument panels and
radio equipment added. They
became CF-CMT and ’CMU,
the first being delivered during
September 1943. Victory Aircraft
modified six more Lancaster
Xs in 1944-45, but they differed
from the previous pair by

In Service
DATAFILE
Star Watch was the name BSAA gave to
Lancaster III G-AGUL, formerly PP690, which
received a Lancastrian-esque nose. AEROPLANE

Insights

CIVILIAN ‘LANCS’: A BREED APART

N
ot to be confused with the dedicated Lancastrians, some
Lancasters were prepared for civilian use with their guns
removed and turrets faired over. British South American
Airways (BSAA) acquired six Lancaster Is, four of which
had Lancastrian-style elongated nose fairings and were converted
into freighters by Avro at its Lincoln workshops. They were found to
be uneconomic and duly discarded. Two of BSAA’s unconverted
Lancasters were assigned to the BOAC Development Flight.
Four MkIIIs went to Flight Refuelling for development work on
in-flight refuelling, mounted in conjunction with BSAA. One of them,
flown by wartime RAF Pathfinder leader and BSAA boss AVM
Donald Bennett, completed a 3,355-mile (5,368km) non-stop flight
to Bermuda.
Three Lancasters, two from Flight Refuelling and one from BOAC,
were involved in the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift, during which they
completed more than 750 sorties. Seven others were transferred to
civilian ownership immediately after the war but most were broken
up for spares. One went to British European Airways as a
Lancastrian crew trainer for Italian airline Alitalia, which operated five
Lancastrians.
A further trio were used for research purposes, one of which
received Lancastrian nose and tail sections, together with a Lincoln
main undercarriage, extra fuel tanks and 1,280hp Merlin 24 engines.
This aircraft, MkI serial PD328 — christened Aries — completed a
number of spectacular long-distance flights, including the first
circumnavigation of the globe by a British service aeroplane in
December 1944. Then, in August 1946, it flew the 11,600 miles
(18,500km) to Wellington, New Zealand in just under 60 hours. Other
Lancasters were used as engine testbeds in Britain and Canada. Ten
participated in gas turbine research programmes.

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 87

DATABASE AVRO LANCASTRIAN

The first true Lancastrian was

originally serial PD140, then
VB873. It was civil-registered
G-AGLF with the coming of
peace in May 1945. KEY COLLECTION

featuring longer, all-metal
semi-monocoque noses which
increased their mail capacity to
3.5 tons. This variant was known
as the Lancaster XPP, standing
for MkX Passenger Plane. Two
arrived in July and September
1944, the rest — incorporating
various enhancements, not
least cabin soundproofing —
following in August 1945.
DATAFILE
Of the initial three
conversions, two were lost.
CF-CMU disappeared over the
Atlantic on 29 December 1944
while carrying British Admiralty
officials. CF-CMS crashed on
take-off from Dorval on 1 June
1945 and was burned out while
undertaking trials with Merlin 85
engines fitted with Lincoln-style
annular cowlings.
The success of the Lancaster
transports, combined with
delays to the Tudor programme,
convinced Avro to put into
production an improved version
under the 691 Lancastrian
designation. The primary
purpose was to provide an
interim type for BOAC to use
on its routes to Australia. These
machines featured 500-gallon
(2,273-litre) fuel tanks in the
bomb bays but were outwardly
similar to the Canadian
intended to be operated by
Transport Command to India,
the Far East and Australia.
Eighteen Lancastrian IIIs
were turned out for the other
state-owned long-haul carrier,
British South American Airways,
under contract number 5820.
These had 13 reclining seats
fitted to improve the type’s
operating economics. When
BSAA was absorbed by BOAC
the remaining 12 aircraft from
the contract were diverted to

THE ‘LINCOLNIAN’
examples. it. Most of them soon found
Twenty-three aircraft were their way into other hands and
produced by Avro for the RAF,

S
designated Lancastrian CI,
everal Lincoln IIs were converted for civilian use with under contract number 4780.
streamlined nose and tailcones similar to those of the They began with PD140, which
Lancastrian. They were known, unofficially, as first flew in October 1944; it
‘Lincolnians’. One of them, Aries II (RE364), operated by subsequently became VB873
the Empire Air Navigation School at Shawbury, made a round trip and then G-AGLF. All but two
to Australia in 1947 to conduct research into the earth’s magnetic were transferred to BOAC. A
field. It was later destroyed by fire and replaced by Aries III further 33 were built for the
(RE367). Four Lincolns were converted for carrying meat in RAF as Lancastrian CIIs to
Paraguay but not delivered and the aircraft subsequently specification C16/77 under
scrapped. Two Argentine Air Force Lincolns, however, were contract number 5328. They
converted to Lincolnian specification. were equipped with nine
passenger seats and were
joined independent carriers like
Skyways, Silver City and Flight
Refuelling.
Eight Lancastrian CIVs were
completed for the RAF under
contract number 5666. Similar
in configuration to the civilian
MkIII, they had 10-13 passenger
seats. Civil conversions were
delivered to Skyways and
Flight Refuelling. A. V. Roe also
conducted three conversions
for Argentine carrier Flota Aérea
Mercante Argentina (FAMA).

88 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

 TECHNICAL Of course there were similarities with
DETAILS the Lancaster, but plenty of differences, too

Open (not that) wide! MkIII

Development
G-AGWI Star Land of BSAA
displays the Lancastrian’s
hinged nose door. AEROPLANE

Technical Details
In Service
Insights
S
ince it was derived riveted metal skin. ‘U’-frames and swaged for stiffness. The Fuel was contained in three
from the Lancaster, it and formers were bolted to the wings themselves were entirely tanks located in each wing,
was inevitable that the longerons to carry the smooth covered by a smooth aluminium- providing a total capacity of
Lancastrian’s fuselage skin plating. All equipment and alloy skin. The ailerons, mounted 2,154 gallons (9,792 litres). The
would be similar to the famous fittings were installed before final on the outer wing sections, Lancastrian II had an additional
bomber’s. The main visual assembly of the separate units. featured metal noses but were two 504-gallon (2,300-litre)
differences were the tapered The mid-mounted wings fabric-covered aft of the hinges. tanks, while the MkIV had a
metal nose and tail fairings and were constructed in five main There were trim tabs on the single 730-gallon (3,319-litre)
the lack of gun turrets. sections. The centre section, of ailerons and split trailing-edge auxiliary tank.
The oval all-metal monocoque parallel chord and thickness, flaps between the ailerons and The cantilever tail unit
structure comprised five was integral with the centre the fuselage. featured twin oval-shaped
separately section of the
assembled fuselage. This
main sections. Passenger cabin was attached to DATAFILE

The backbone
of the fuselage layouts varied between sections and
was formed airlines
by pairs of
extruded
longerons located half-way
down the cross-section of the
three middle sections. Cross-
beams between these longerons
supported the floor and formed
the roof of what had been the
bomb compartment.
The remaining sections
were built up of oval frames
and formers and longitudinal
stringers, covered with flush-
tapering outer
culminated in
semi-circular
wingtips.
Subsidiary wing units comprised
detachable leading and trailing-
edge sections of the outer wings
and centre section, flaps and
ailerons.
There were two spars, each
consisting of a top and bottom
extruded boom bolted onto a
single thick-gauge web-plate.
The wing ribs were aluminium-
alloy pressings suitably flanged
LANCASTRIAN VARIANTS
• Lancaster XPP Conversion of Lancaster X by Victory Aircraft
of Canada; six converted (plus three earlier MkX transports)
• Lancastrian CI RAF designation for nine-seat transport for
BOAC and Qantas; 23 built by Avro
• Lancastrian CII Nine-seat military transport for the RAF; 33
built by Avro
• Lancastrian III Thirteen-seat transport for British South
American Airways; 18 built by Avro
• Lancastrian CIV Ten to thirteen-seat military transport for the
RAF; eight built by Avro

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 89

085-99 Database AM Jun2021.indd 89 27/04/2021 14:11

 DATABASE AVRO LANCASTRIAN
fins and rudders. The tailplane
was constructed in two sections
built up in a similar fashion to
the wings, the tailplane spars
being joined together within the
fuselage on the centreline. The
elevators and rudders featured
trim tabs.
The 23ft 9in (7.42m)-track
main undercarriage retracted
under hydraulic power into
the inboard engine nacelles.
When retracted the wheels were
completely covered by hinged
doors. The tailwheel was fixed.
There was one entrance
door, on the starboard side of
the fuselage just forward of the
tail. The freight door, giving
access to the forward baggage
compartment, formed the
aircraft’s nose. The rear baggage
compartment was accessible
only though the toilet behind
The cockpit was, obviously, a not
the passenger cabin, while the unfamiliar environment for any ex-
under-fuselage compartment Lancaster pilot. KEY COLLECTION
forward of the auxiliary fuel
tanks had an entrance panel
on the port side of the fuselage
below the pilots’ cabin. On
South American Airways
featured 13 reclining seats
SPECIFICATIONS: LANCASTRIAN CI
the Lancastrian IV the under- facing forwards and divided by POWERPLANTS
fuselage compartment aft of the a central aisle. The passenger Four Rolls-Royce Merlin 24 V12 two-stage supercharged liquid-cooled
auxiliary fuel tank also had an cabin was located behind the piston engines, 1,570hp each
entrance panel on the port side. wing. Forward of the cabin DIMENSIONS
Passenger cabin layouts bulkhead was a seat for the Span: 102ft (31m)
varied between airlines. attendant together with the Length 76ft 10in (23.42m)
The Lancastrians operated galley. Height: 17ft 10in (5.44m)
on the ‘Kangaroo route’ by Toilets were provided Crew: Four flight crew plus one cabin crew
BOAC offered seating for nine together with additional Passengers: Nine
passengers on the port side soundproofing, ventilation and
WEIGHTS
facing inwards and separated oxygen equipment. Life-saving Empty: 30,462lb (13,826kg)
from the opposite wall by an dinghies were stowed behind the Gross: 65,000lb (29,484kg)
aisle. They could be converted passenger cabin. Mail and freight
into three sleeping bunks by could be carried in the nose PERFORMANCE
lowering the seat backs. Three compartment and beneath the Maximum speed: 315mph (507km/h) at 12,000ft (3,658m)
further bunks could be pulled cabin floor. The nosecone hinged Cruise speed: 290mph (470km/h) at 17,500ft (5,334m)
down from the ceiling above sideways to provide access to the Range: Up to 4,100 miles (6,600km)
Service ceiling: 24,300ft (7,400m)
the seats. Those flown by British forward compartment.

INTERIOR LAYOUT OF BOAC LANCASTRIAN CIRCA 1946

Radio/navigation
Steward’s equipment Main spar
seat Navigator
Rear (early)
Three Fridge Steward’s Radio
freight
upper seat (late) officer Forward
hold Galley
berths Pilot freight hold
Toilet

Nine passenger seats facing starboard Long-range fuel tanks

Vestibule & (three lower berths) Extra seat facing starboard
Flap cylinder (First officer/rest seat)
wardrobe

90 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

085-99 Database AM Jun2021.indd 90 27/04/2021 14:26

 DATABASE AVRO LANCASTRIAN

Development
LANCASTRIAN III

Technical Details
LANCASTRIAN CIV

In Service
Insights
LANCASTRIAN CIV

LANCASTRIAN CIV

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 91

 IN
SERVICE
BSAA: reaching for
the stars
On New Year’s Day 1946,
Lancastrian III G-AGWG
— christened Star Light by
its operator, British South
American Airways — lifted off
from Britain’s newest airport. It
was the first aircraft to make an
international flight from what
would become Heathrow.
Commanded by AVM
Donald Bennett, the airline’s
chief executive and legendary
wartime RAF Pathfinder leader,
Star Light was en route for
Buenos Aires. Earlier that day,
the airport had been hurriedly
declared open by minister of
civil aviation Lord Winster. In
fact, the airport was so new that
the passenger terminals were
ex-military marquees which
formed a tented village along the
Bath Road. These unheated tents
were primitive but comfortable,
equipped with floral-patterned
armchairs, settees and small
tables containing vases of fresh
flowers. To reach aircraft parked
on the apron, passengers walked
over wooden duckboards to
The four Merlin 24s are run up to high power as
MkIII G-AHCA of Skyways prepares to depart
from Geneva’s Cointrin airport. ETH-BIBLIOTHEK ZÜRICH
92 www.aeroplanemonthly.com
There were tragedies along the way, but
the Lancastrian was a true post-war pioneer
protect their shoes from the
muddy airfield.
But, not for the first time,
Bennett was bending the
rules. The newly named
London Airport wouldn’t be
officially open for commercial
operations until 31 May and
Star Light shouldn’t have been
anywhere near it. Because of
the airport’s primitive facilities,
the government had designated
London Airport wasn’t officially open and Star
Light shouldn’t have been there
Bournemouth’s Hurn airport,
three hours’ drive away, to
operate long-haul flights, with
Croydon and later Northolt to
handle short-haul work.
Don Bennett hadn’t been
appointed the RAF’s youngest
air vice marshal for nothing.
He’d been determined his
airline would use Heathrow,
just four miles away from the
former Hawker airfield at
Langley which BSAA was using
as a maintenance base. Driving
past on his way to and from his
Mayfair office every day enabled
Bennett to keep a close eye on
the airport’s development. One
day just before Christmas 1945,
Bennett stopped for a few words
with the resident engineer for
contractor George Wimpey.
Bennett told him he planned to
fly a Lancastrian in the following
day, so could the runway be
cleared of all plant and building
materials?
Whether or not any money
changed hands to facilitate
the transaction isn’t clear,
but Bennett was notoriously
tight-fisted. He was also very
persuasive. Accordingly, the
Lancastrian landed the next day
and Bennett tucked it out of the
way while he went to London
for a discussion with the Air
Ministry and BOAC about the
start of operations.
BOAC was outraged by
Bennett’s attitude. It had
opposed the establishment of
BSAA, believing it should have
the pick of the Latin American
and Caribbean routes. Indeed,
it was poised to start services
within three months as soon
as its equipment had arrived.
But Bennett calmly announced
that he could start immediately.
He’d paid A. V. Roe £30,000 each
for BSAA’s Lancastrians, which
were in the final stages of being
equipped for passenger service
with 13 reclining seats. He’d also
recruited more than 40 former
Pathfinder personnel, including
12 captains and 15 first officers.
One of them was Cliff
Alabaster, who accompanied
Bennett on the inaugural flight to
South America. He later joined
BOAC’s Comet Development
Flight and captained the world’s
first passenger jet on the final
leg of its journey from London
to Johannesburg on 2 May 1952.
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

New Year’s Day 1946, and the crew of BSAA Lancastrian III
G-AGWG Star Light gathers on the London Airport tarmac for
the first commercial flight from the new facility. LHR AIRPORTS
Alabaster retired from BOAC as
a VC10 check captain. He died in
2014 at the age of 95.
Bennett told the meeting that
route agreements with Brazil,
Argentina and Uruguay had
already been negotiated. He later
confided to Lord Winster that the
chairman of Wimpey, a fellow
Aussie, had loaned him some
buildings at Heathrow to enable
BSAA’s operations to start.
Recalling those days 40 years
later, Bennett told a reporter,
“The whole atmosphere wasn’t
exactly make-do but we had to
get on with it despite the lack of
posh buildings for passengers to
be held up in. We had to ask the
contractors to clear the runway
so that we could take off. In
those days it was almost exciting,
certainly very interesting.”
Bennett also managed to
persuade Winster to bring
forward the airport’s hand-over
from the Air Ministry to the
Ministry of Civil Aviation. “Good
God!”, the minister was reported
to have exclaimed when Bennett
told him he wanted to start
operations on 1 January.
Accordingly, there was a brief
ceremony with microphones
rigged up beneath Star Light’s
starboard wing, watched by a
small gathering including BSAA
chairman John Booth. In his
remarks Winster said that his
ministry “got on with things”, The
Aeroplane noted approvingly.
Wearing a smart lounge suit
and homburg hat, Bennett
led his crew aboard the
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 93
Lancastrian. With him were first
officer Wg Cdr D. A. Cracknell,
second officer Wg Cdr Cliff
Alabaster, first radio officer J. A.
McGillivray, second radio officer
R. W. Chandler, first engineer
Tom Campbell, second engineer
Gordon Rees and Star Girl — as
BSAA dubbed its stewardesses
— Mary Guthrie. There were 10
passengers, some of whom were
BSAA employees who would
staff the airline’s stations along
the route.
Ahead lay a gruelling 60-hour
trip to Buenos Aires, the first
of six proving flights to South
America. Authors Susan and Ian
Ottaway described the scene in
Fly with the Stars (Speedman
Press): “The crew and passengers
climbed aboard, the door was
closed and one by one the
four Rolls-Royce engines were
started. The aircraft slowly taxied
across to the end of the 3,000-
yard runway, which had only
been cleared for use three days
previously. As the polished silver
Avro Lancastrian gathered speed
down the huge new runway
the small crowd applauded.
They were witnessing the
first international departure
from London’s new Heathrow
Airport.”
On 15 January, Star Light
was back at Heathrow, and the
news media was there in force
to welcome it and its crew. For
British people emerging from
nearly six years of war, for whom
intercontinental air travel was
something of a novelty, the big
DATABASE AVRO LANCASTRIAN
story was the suitcase bulging
with goodies brought back by
Mary Guthrie. Bananas and
tangerines were still in short
supply in post-war Britain. “She
had collected these and also a
tropical bronze on the first all-
British airline flight to Buenos
Aires, a 14,000-mile (22,400km)
trip that started only a fortnight
ago”, reported Daily Express air
correspondent Basil Cardew. He
noted that the journey between
London and Rio de Janeiro had
taken 28 hours 18 minutes and
that Star Light had achieved
BSAA’s G-AGWJ Star Glow departs
from the then empty wastes of the
new London Airport in 1946.
KEY COLLECTION
speeds of 240mph (384km), “the
fastest cruising speed of any
Development
airliner”. Cardew also quoted
Bennett as saying that BSAA now
intended to keep British aviation
“right ahead on the British-South
American run.”
On 5 April, the scheduled
timing from London to Buenos
Aires was cut from 77 to 56
hours. Meanwhile, Star Land
under Bennett’s command
Technical Details
conducted a further survey flight
between 22 April and 5 May,
specifically to check facilities
along the route. The Lancastrian
reached the Argentine capital via
Santiago, Lima, Bogotá, Caracas,
Port of Spain, Trinidad, Natal
and Bathurst. This involved
crossing the Andes at 23,000ft
(7,000m), obliging the crew
to don oxygen masks. The
experience gained during the
In Service
trip prompted Bennett to report,
“the Andes must be crossed
in clear conditions unless it is
certain that no large cumulus
and cumulonimbus are likely
and that the wind at high level is
less than 30 knots.”
By that time, BSAA had
Insights
already started what would be
a twice-weekly (Tuesdays and
Fridays) service to Buenos Aires
via Lisbon, Bathurst, Natal, Rio
de Janeiro and Montevideo. It
was inaugurated on 15 March
by Lancastrian G-AGWK
Star Trail and involved an
DATABASE AVRO LANCASTRIAN
1,870-mile (2,992km) ocean
crossing from Africa to Brazil.
Later, Sunday services to Rio via
Dakar were offered, together
with Wednesday flights to
Santiago. On Mondays, BSAA
flew to Caracas via Santa Maria,
Bermuda and Jamaica.
The cost of a one-way ticket
to Buenos Aires was £192 6s.
Considering that the return
fare of £346 3s was equivalent
to about £15,000 in today’s
money, travellers needed to be
pretty well-heeled to fly to South
America in those days. But they
also had to be in something of a
hurry to endure up to 30 hours in
the cramped, noisy Lancastrian,
potatoes, mixed vegetables and
gravy, followed by fruit salad and
cream, and cheese and biscuits.
At one stage, pre-flight safety
briefings were given via a film
shown from a projector set up
at the rear of the cabin. BSAA
was one of the first airlines to
do this, but the practice was
subsequently banned on the
MkI G-AGMD became VH-EAS with Australian flag-carrier Qantas in
October 1947. The South East Asia Command-style roundel was worn on grounds that the projector might
flights to Japan on behalf of the RAAF. BEN DANNECKER COLLECTION obstruct passenger evacuation
in the event of an on-board
emergency.
despite the reclining seats. The They had first to place the cutlery A new weekly Lancastrian
aisle between the seats was so on passengers’ tables, then bring service from London to Santiago
narrow that the stewardesses the food on trays. Typical meals via Bathurst, Natal, Rio and
were unable to use trolleys to comprised roast beef cooked Buenos Aires was inaugurated
serve meals to the passengers. and carved in the galley with on 27 June 1946. G-AGWL

DATAFILE

A RISKY BUSINESS
L
ong-distance air travel was still in its
infancy in the years immediately
after the Second World War, when
the Lancastrian was being operated
to far-flung destinations in South America
and Australia. BSAA in particular was
pioneering new routes and crashes were
not unexpected.
Three of BSAA’s machines were written
off following accidents, while a fourth was
lost in circumstances that would remain a
mystery for over half a century. Lancastrian
III G-AGWH Star Dust had been delivered to
the airline in January 1946. On 2 August
1947, the aircraft disappeared over the
Andes during a heavy storm while en route
from Buenos Aires to Santiago. The flight
from London to Buenos Aires had been
made by a York but the final leg, from there
to Santiago, was flown by the Lancastrian.
The aircraft had left with six passengers and
five crew under the command of Capt
Reginald Cook, who was warned to expect
snowstorms and turbulence over the
mountains. Regular position reports were
received from the aircraft, and four hours
after take-off radio officer Dennis Harmer
transmitted a message estimating arrival at
Santiago in four minutes’ time. No more was
heard from the aircraft and no trace found,
despite aerial searches directed personally
by Donald Bennett.
It wasn’t until January 2000 that the
mystery was solved when climbers
discovered the wreckage of Star Dust and
the preserved bodies of its passengers and
crew near the peak of Argentina’s
Tupungato mountain, close to the border
with Chile. But one mystery remained.
Harmer had ended his final Morse code
message with the word “STENDEC”. The
radio officer in Santiago who received the
message asked Harmer to repeat it, which
he did twice. An investigation by the
Argentine Air Force cleared the
Lancastrian’s captain of any blame,
concluding the crash had resulted from a
heavy snowstorm and very cloudy weather.
As a result, the crew had been unable to
correct their positioning.
G-AGWG Star Light, which had made the
inaugural flight from Heathrow on 1 January
1946, was written off in November 1947
after it crashed on landing at Bermuda.
G-AGWJ Star Glow crashed on take-off at
Bathurst in August 1946 and was
subsequently written off, while G-AGWK
Star Trail came down on approach to
Bermuda in September 1947.
Not until 2000 was the Star
Dust mystery solved
BOAC’s G-AGLX, under the command of
Capt O. F. Y. Thomas, disappeared over the
Indian Ocean on 23 March 1946 with the
loss of all 10 occupants. It happened on the
leg between RAF Negombo, Ceylon (now
Sri Lanka) and the Cocos Islands. Departure
had been delayed by two hours because of
a radio equipment fault. The last position
report from the aircraft was received at
18.00hrs Perth time. The scheduled
18.30hrs report was never received. An
extensive search failed to find any trace of
the aircraft.
That May, two further BOAC Lancastrians
were written off, without fatalities. The
undercarriage of G-AGMC collapsed on
landing at Sydney, and about a fortnight
later G-AGMH was damaged beyond
economic repair in a heavy landing at
Mauripur, India. Two more of the airline’s
Lancastrians were lost in August. G-AGLU
ran off the runway while taking off from
Hurn. The undercarriage collapsed and the
aircraft was damaged beyond repair. More
serious was the crash near Rouen of
G-AGMF during a training flight with the loss
of eight of the nine on board. All told, seven
of BOAC’s Lancastrians were involved in
accidents.
There was a particularly bizarre incident
involving the death of a passenger who had
boarded a BSAA flight from London to
Bogota. The woman was taken ill in the air
and died at Santa Maria, the Azores, while
being treated by the airport doctor. This
gave rise to numerous accusations. It was
alleged that the Lancastrian’s captain had
refused requests to land and enable the
woman to receive medical treatment. The
police became involved as it seemed the
husband was suspected of causing his
wife’s death. The matter remains shrouded
in mystery.
BSAA Lancastrian III G-AGWL Star Guide
played a role in the drama surrounding the
disappearance of Star Tiger in January
1948, having left Santa Maria for Bermuda
an hour ahead of the Tudor. Both captains
had filed identical flight plans for the trip
and the two aircraft were in regular contact
for much of the long over-water flight.
Following Star Tiger’s failure to arrive at
Bermuda, Star Guide took part in the
search. Star Guide’s navigation log provided
evidence for the subsequent public inquiry
into the loss of Star Tiger, but in the
absence of any trace of the missing aircraft
the cause is still unknown.

94 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

 DATABASE AVRO LANCASTRIAN
Star Guide, commanded by Despite the nationwide the BOAC Development Flight 63-hour journey was a trial
Capt Gordon Store, opened a publicity in Britain and South which had been formed at Hurn of endurance for the few who

fortnightly route from London to
Caracas via the Azores, Bermuda
and Jamaica on 2 September.
Dakar was substituted for
Bathurst from 23 September as
a stop on the London-Buenos
Aires run. On 18 January 1947,
the route from London to
Venezuela via the Caribbean was
extended along the west coast
Development
America generated by BSAA’s in October 1943. Between 23 and travelled this way. The route
flight on New Year’s Day 1946, it 27 April 1945 this machine made was changed on 30 January
was always regarded as a proving a record-breaking proving flight 1946 to include stops at the
flight rather than an ‘official’ to Auckland, New Zealand. The Cocos Islands and Perth, but
service, even though some of the 13,500 miles (21,700km) were was suspended altogether on 24
passengers had paid to be on flown at an average speed of March after Lancastrian G-AGLX
board. BOAC later claimed that 220mph (354km/h). was lost in the Indian Ocean
those carried by G-AGLS on 28 After months of debate, it was without trace. Consolidated
May were the first fare-paying BOAC rather than the newly Liberators provided an interim
passengers to depart from the formed BSAA which operated service from 7 April, but were

of South America to Lima and
Santiago.
Back home, BSAA celebrated
the festive season with a
Lancastrian ‘Christmas special’
conveying Santa to the airport.
Some 250 children whose parents
worked there were waiting on
the tarmac to greet him as the
highlight of a seasonal party.
The Lancastrians were finally
replaced in BSAA service
Technical Details
airport. the first British survey flight to withdrawn on 29 August.
But which airline would South America. Lancastrian In September 1946, Qantas
have the honour of being the G-AGMG Nicosia, under the ordered four Constellations,
first to land at London Airport command of the legendary which plied the London service
following its official opening on Capt O. P. Jones, took off from from 1 December 1947. The
31 May? It could have been a Pan Hurn on 9 October 1945 bound L-749s cut the journey time from
American Constellation after a for Lisbon, Bathurst, Natal, Rio the seven-day average achieved
14-hour flight from New York’s de Janeiro and Montevideo. by the Hythe flying boats initially
La Guardia, or a Bennett, who used to four. From this time
similar aircraft was already in the Australian airline reigned
operated by The scheduled 63- post at BSAA, supreme on the ‘Kangaroo route’
American hour journey was a trial was not on until BOAC introduced Bristol

by Tudor 4s on 31 October
1947, but two of them were
to be lost in still unexplained
circumstances. The British
mid-Atlantic service was not
resumed until 5 March 1950
when BOAC, which by this time
had taken over BSAA, opened a
In Service
Overseas board. Britannias in 1956.
Airlines from
of endurance
Lancastrians The first Qantas services,
the same had been other than on the ‘Kangaroo
airport. In the end, it went to used for the initial regular route’, to reach beyond Australia
the BOAC/Qantas Lancastrian, flights between the UK and used Lancastrians to operate
which arrived two hours ahead Australia, an express service to Japan. They began on 16
of schedule thanks to a tailwind. organised to carry important December 1947 under a charter
It had completed the 12,000-mile mail between the two ends of arrangement with the Royal

Lockheed Constellation service
via Bermuda.
BOAC and beyond
On 28 May 1946, BOAC
Lancastrian G-AGLS took off
from a rain-swept Heathrow and
headed into leaden skies on the
first stage of its voyage to Sydney.
The service — operated jointly
with Australian airline Qantas —
had actually been inaugurated
four months earlier from Hurn
and had already established a
record 49-hour flying time for
the journey.
(19,200km) journey in 63 hours.
Waiting to greet the
passengers was Lord Winster. He
told them that the airport would
soon have fine new terminal
buildings to replace the tents.
But an American passenger
who had disembarked from
one of the Constellations was
distinctly unimpressed by the
army-surplus marquees. “Say”,
he asked, “what time does the
circus start?”
Lancastrian deliveries to
BOAC had begun in 1945. The
first of 21 Avro-built aircraft,
PD140/VB873/G-AGLF, went to
the Commonwealth. The first of
these, taking a small quantity of
mail, left Hurn on 31 May 1945.
It reached Sydney less than three
days later, having stopped only
at Lydda, Karachi, Colombo and
Learmonth (or Exmouth Gulf,
600 miles north of Perth). It was
under BOAC command as far as
Karachi and Qantas thereafter.
Passenger services began
on 30 November 1945, the
Lancastrians being fitted out
rather austerely with nine seats
(or six bunks) arranged along the
starboard side of the aircraft’s
narrow fuselage. The scheduled
Insights
Australian Air Force. Tokyo
became the terminus on 15
October 1948. The service left
the quasi-military category on
3 March 1950 when it became a
normal civilian one.
In Qantas use the Lancastrian
was equipped to carry nine
passengers by day or six in bunks
at night. One aircraft, VH-EAV,
was modified with a pod to carry
spare Wright Cyclone or Pratt &
Whitney Twin Wasp engines for
the airline’s Constellations and
Douglas DC-4s should engine
changes be required along the
route. It became known as the

Framed by the wing of a DC-4, a

BOAC Lancastrian arrives at Hurn
from Sydney with passengers and
mail after a 62-hour flight. AEROPLANE

As fuel and oil tankers,

Lancastrians forged
a significant niche for
themselves on the Berlin
Airlift, such as these examples
from Flight Refuelling. COBHAM

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 95

DATABASE AVRO LANCASTRIAN

The two crews of No 24 Squadron, RAF Lancastrian VM726 at RNZAF Argentine Air Force Lancastrian T-62 was converted from Lancaster
Station Ohakea after their record flight from England in March 1946, B-045, and later became T-102. It wears the badge of CAME (Correo
with aircraft captain Sqn Ldr J. Adams DFC AFC in the centre holding a Aéreo Militar al Exterior), the Argentinean military air mail service.
package. NZDF VIA SANTIAGO RIVAS

‘Pregnant Pup’. The Lancastrian
remained in service with Qantas
until 1952, when the survivors
were broken up.
From 4 February-28 May
1948, weekly non-stop London-
Montreal cargo services were
operated as part of a series of
in-flight refuelling trials for
the Ministry of Civil Aviation.
Liberator G-AHYD was
used, topped up en route by
Lancastrian tankers of Flight
Refuelling, which were based at
Shannon and Gander.
A milk shortage in 1947
resulted in the four Lancastrians
operated by Skyways being used
to carry milk in churns from
Belfast’s Nutts Corner aerodrome
to Liverpool-Speke. During the
Berlin Airlift, Flight Refuelling
was called in to handle the bulk
delivery of petrol and diesel
oil. Five former BOAC/BSAA
Lancastrians, together with four
TCA machines specially ferried
in from Montreal, were equipped
MkIII G-AHCE was transferred to Alitalia in August 1947,
being re-registered as I-DALR and named Borea. It served
the new Italian national airline for five years. KEY COLLECTION
with 2,500-gallon (11,365-litre)
fuselage tanks. The combined
fleet made a total of 3,600 trips,
starting on 27 July 1948 when
G-AKOR flew from Tarrant
Rushton to Gatow. Staging to
Berlin from first Bückeburg
and then Wunstorf, they had
carried some seven million
gallons by the time the operation
concluded on 12 May 1949. Five
Skyways tankers completed
an additional 2,000 flights, but
the useful lives of these aircraft
ended there. In 1951 they were
flown back to Hurn, Dunsfold
and Tarrant Rushton where they
were broken up.
Following the partition of
India in 1947, one of BOAC’s
Lancastrians participated in the
airlift of refugees from Delhi
to Karachi and carried food,
medicines and vaccines to Delhi
and Lahore. On 16 November
1949, Canadair Argonauts
replaced Lancastrians — which
in turn had supplanted Yorks —
on BOAC’s services to Colombo
via Rome, Cairo, Bahrain and
Bombay, reducing the journey
time to 32 hours.
Although primarily a transport
aircraft, several Lancastrian IIs
served as long-range navigation
trainers with the RAF’s Empire
Air Navigation School at
Shawbury, and as transports
with No 24 Squadron. Among
the notable achievements
was a 36-day, 34,000-mile
(54,400km) round-the-world
flight in November 1945 by
VM701, commanded by AVM
Arthur Fiddament. The following
March, VM726, captained by Sqn
Ldr J. Adams, became the first
aircraft to circumnavigate the
globe in less than a week. It flew
from Northolt to RNZAF Station
Ohakea in 62 hours six minutes.
VM727 broke that record a
day later, establishing a new
benchmark for the journey of 61
hours 15 minutes.
Other airlines to operate the
Lancastrian included Alitalia and
Flota Aérea Mercante Argentina.
Alitalia was associated with
British European Airways which,
initially, held 30 per cent of the
shares. In its early days — it
began operations in May 1947
— Alitalia’s fleet comprised a
mixture of Fiat G12s, Savoia-
Marchetti SM95s and five
Lancastrian IIIs, which in 1947
were replaced on the airline’s
main routes by DC-4s.
Argentine Lancastrians
Flota Aérea Mercante
Argentina (FAMA) was formed
on 8 February 1947 with an
authorised capital of $150
million, of which the state was to
supply one third. It became the
national airline for long-distance
operations and was supplied
with three Lancastrian CIVs for
international flights. The aircraft
had originally been allocated
RAF serials TX287, TX288 and
TX289.
The first machine received
Argentine civil registration
LV-ACS in May 1947. Less than
a fortnight later it was lost on
just its third operational flight
to London when it crashed in
bad weather at Natal, Brazil.
In August 1948, the other two
Lancastrians, LV-ACV and
LV-ACU, were transferred to
the Fuerza Aérea Argentina
with serials T-65 and T-66
and assigned to Regimiento 2
de Transporte Aéreo at Base
Aérea Militar (BAM) Morón,
subsequently subsumed into
I Brigada Aérea at BAM El
Palomar.
Although intended for
transport duties, T-65 was
also used to aid the projected
participation of the IAe 30
Ñancú fighter-bomber at the
1948 Farnborough show. Like
the Lancastrian, the Ñancú
was Merlin-powered and

96 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

 DATABASE AVRO LANCASTRIAN
Lancastrian IV T-66 depicted during its use
as a VIP transport by Argentina’s aviation

Development
ministry. CHRIS SANDHAM-BAILEY

T-65 assessed its likely fuel
consumption on the ferry flight
to the UK. But in the end the
Ñancú was not exhibited at
Farnborough. T-65 was retired
after corrosion was discovered
in its wing, but T-66 supported
Argentine Antarctic operations
in 1951 and served as an
observation aircraft during the
revolutionary disturbances of
1955. On 16 October 1958, it
mishap in La Paz, three of the 12
crew and passengers on board
being killed.
Parts of T-65 were used to
convert Lancaster B-045 to
Lancastrian standard as serial
T-62, a process carried out
in Argentina. In June 1959 it
was reserialled as T-102. This
machine too was lost in tragic
circumstances, crashing near
San Andrés de Giles, west of
1960. All eight crew and 23
passengers lost their lives.
Two of the 30 Lincolns
delivered to Argentina were
modified to ‘Lincolnian’
specification with Lancastrian
noses and tails. One of them,
B-003 (later LV-ZEI, T-68 and
T-101), was adapted by Avro
at its Langar, Nottinghamshire
works and arrived in Argentina
in March 1949. It had a long
Technical Details
numerous roles including
aerial photography, long-range
transport, Antarctic exploration
and humanitarian relief. It was
wrecked in an accident at El
Aybal on 13 July 1961. Using
elements of that aeroplane,
B-022 was converted locally to
‘Lincolnian’ specification in
1962 to serve as a long-range
Antarctic transport. It was struck
off air force charge in 1965 and

In Service
met its end following a landing Buenos Aires, on 11 December and distinguished career in scrapped two years later.

DATAFILE

ENGINE
TESTBEDS

W
ith the advent of gas turbine
power there was a need to test
the new engines in a controlled
flight environment using
well-instrumented installations. Because it
could easily accommodate the necessary
test instrumentation, and fly on the power of
two piston engines if required, the
Lancastrian was considered ideal for the job.
Several were assigned to testbed duties
with turbojets replacing the outer Merlins —
or piston engines under test — in the inner
nacelles. Fuel arrangements varied but could
include jet fuel in the outer wing tanks or
fuselage tanks, with avgas carried in the
remaining fuel tanks.
Perhaps the most notable was VH742.
Two of its Merlins were replaced by
Rolls-Royce Nenes, each developing 5,000lb
static thrust. It flew on 8 August 1946 and
made the first international passenger flight
under jet power when it went from London to
Paris on 18 November 1946 commanded by
Sqn Ldr Ronald Shepherd, chief test pilot for
Rolls-Royce. Avro’s chief designer Roy
Chadwick was also on board. The flight,
between Heathrow and Le Bourget, took 50
minutes at an average speed of 247mph
(398km/h). One London Airport worker
recalled how the jet blast from the Nenes
had turned a flower garden into a “brown
scalded patch”. By the time VH742 returned,
Insights
The props on its inboard Merlins feathered, VM703 flies solely under the power of its two de
Havilland Ghosts. This aircraft was also fitted with Walter rocket packs, originally intended to
provide the DH106 Comet with a power boost on take-off. AEROPLANE
a fence had been erected around the still thought the type would be suitable for
garden! The return flight was made on 22 North Atlantic services, but the flight trials
November and took 49 minutes, actual flying were to show that this was impractical.
time being 41 minutes. An average speed of VH970 was equipped with Avon 502s,
322mph (518km/h) was achieved despite the destined for later Comet variants.
drag of the two inboard Merlins, used only Lancastrian VM733 flew for the first time
for take-off and landing. on 18 January 1950 under the power of two
Also used as a Nene testbed was VH737, Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire turbojets and a
while VH732 was equipped with a pair of pair of Merlins. Two further examples, VM704
Avons. VM703 and VM729 were fitted with and VM728, were used to test piston
Ghost engines to handle development and engines. On ’704, Rolls-Royce Griffon 57s
certification flying of the Ghost 50, so that were installed in the inboard nacelles with
when the DH106 Comet made its maiden Merlin T24/4s outboard to test the Griffon
flight it would be powered by reliable and variant intended for Avro’s Shackleton
mature engines. At the time the design team maritime patrol aircraft, while ’728 flew under
was authorised to proceed with the final the power of four Merlins, with Merlin 600s
DH106 design back in February 1945, it was in the outer nacelles.

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 97

085-99 Database AM Jun2021.indd 97 27/04/2021 13:43

 It wasn’t the most practical of airliners,
INSIGHTS but the Lancastrian was liked by pilots

A
“ lthough the Lancastrian
is virtually a converted On board BSAA’s Star Light,
Lancaster bomber, with its 13-seat layout.
KEY COLLECTION
in fact it is an airliner
superior to the vast majority of
aircraft on the world’s air routes
today.”
When he said that, Don
Bennett was possibly somewhat
biased as he had just returned
safely from British South
American Airways’ first proving
flight to Buenos Aires in Star
Light during January 1946. But
the Lancastrian was certainly
straightforward to fly.
According to the official
pilot’s notes, the aircraft was
eased off the ground at 115mph
(184km/h) indicated air speed
at 60,000lb (27,000kg), or
120mph (192km/h) at 65,000lb
(30,000kg). Maximum climb
speed was 155mph (248km/h)
to 15,000ft (4,600m), reducing
by 23mph (37km/h) per 1,000ft spongy, becoming very heavy at with either wing dropping fairly and 150mph (232 and 240km/h),
(308m). Recommended climb 255mph (408km/h). The rudders sharply, followed by the nose. gradually reducing to cross the
speed was 175mph (280km/h). were heavy and this tendency Recovery was straightforward airfield boundary at between 110
Longitudinal stability increased with speed. Coarse although it could involve and 115mph (176 and 184km/h)
was satisfactory at all loads, use of the rudders at low speed considerable loss of height. flaps-down, or 133 and 138mph
although the aircraft tended to had to be avoided since it could In a dive the aircraft became (213 and 221km/h) flaps-up.
wallow, especially in bumpy promote a mild degree of rudder increasingly tail-heavy. Aileron At moderate altitudes the
conditions and at high altitudes. over-balance. controls became increasingly aircraft could maintain height
The elevators were relatively Slight elevator buffet occurred heavy at speeds above 265mph on three engines at full load and
light and effective, while the 4-5kt before a stall. Entering it (424km/h). Landing approaches trimmed to fly hands and feet-
ailerons proved heavy and there was strong aileron snatch were carried out at between 145 off. Recommended three-engine

BOAC MkI G-AGMO — which was never actually

operated by the carrier, instead being transferred
to the RAF as VM702 — in flight during 1946. It may
have made a majestic sight, but the Lancastrian was
far from an ideal passenger-carrier. GETTY

98 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021


cruising speed was 170mph
(184km/h). The autopilot had
enough power to maintain
a straight course with either
outboard engine out, but only
if assisted by use of the rudder
trim tab. If two engines failed,
height could be maintained at
140mph (224km/h) at moderate
loads using climbing power on
the two good engines. At heavy
loads, height would be lost
slowly but it was recovered as
fuel was consumed.
For BSAA stewardesses the
Lancastrian offered a decidedly
cramped workplace. As one of
the first Star Girls, Mary Guthrie
was aboard Star Light during its
inaugural visit to South America,
which aroused the interest of
the daily newspapers eager to
publish her story.
The Daily Mail reported that
Guthrie had been picked out of
100 applicants for the position.
“All the food that will be taken on
board is frozen and Miss Guthrie
will have the job of unfreezing
it and heating it in a small
kitchenette”, the paper said.
In an interview 60 years later
quoted by Alan Gallop in Time
Flies — The Heathrow Story (The
History Press), Guthrie, now
Mary Cunningham, recalled
she hadn’t actually seen the
Lancastrian’s galley before the
flight. To prepare her for the task
ahead, BSAA arranged for her to
have two days’ training at the J.
Lyons restaurant at Marble Arch.
“I learned how to heat up food in
an aircraft galley, one plate at a
time”, she remembered.
“The galley was tiny. We only
had cold water and no detergent
to wash the crockery and glasses.
I had to sit down because there
wasn’t room to stand. All the
pots and pans were stowed away
on floor level so there was a lot of
stooping and crouching involved
in preparing meals and clearing
up.”
On the Lancastrian’s outward
journey to Buenos Aires,
passengers were served chicken
à la king — diced chicken
cooked in mushrooms, butter
and peppers, although the last
two items were rationed and
difficult to come by. “So they
were probably substituted
with something else”, Guthrie
observed.
The food was bought in
frozen from Lyons, thawed out,
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 99
reheated and served. “It didn’t
look very pretty or appetising
on the plate. And it had a funny
smell too — nothing like chicken
as we now know it. But everyone
ate it.”
Passing from the galley into
the cabin meant negotiating a
metal spar from floor to ceiling.
Inevitably, at least one Star
Girl fell foul of this obstacle,
tripped and spilled food over
a passenger. To preserve their
modesty when negotiating the
Lancastrian’s main spar, Star
Girls were issued with culottes,
then called divided skirts. One
was heard to remark it was a
pity the Lancastrian hadn’t yet
been “properly converted”. She
was apparently unaware that the
“large lump” was holding the
aircraft together.
The first flight to South
America was a long one. “I
thought it would go on forever,”
Guthrie said. “The only time
we stopped was for refuelling…
We were all dog tired when we
arrived, but very excited to be
in South America, a place that
was all bright and shiny and
colourful.”
The Daily Herald told its
readers that Guthrie had gone
without sleep on board the
aircraft. Describing the duties
DATABASE AVRO LANCASTRIAN
facilities were provided, full four-
A BOAC aircraft’s course meals were still served,
Development
passenger
the food being contained in large
accommodation,
with seats and Thermos flasks.
sleeping berths. At the top of the rear end of the
KEY COLLECTION bomb bay was a light bulkhead
with a door and a step down
into the passenger cabin. The
passenger accommodation
consisted of three settee-type
benches, each divided into three
individual seats by fold-back
Technical Details
armrests. The benches were
arranged lengthwise along
the port side of the cabin with
the passengers sitting facing
starboard. This meant that each
time the steward — no Star
Girls on BOAC’s Lancastrians
— needed to walk the length of
the cabin, he had to step over
the outstretched legs of the
passengers.
At night, the three benches,
In Service
with armrests raised, served as
lower sleeping berths. Positioned
above them, and strapped tight
against the cabin ceiling during
the day, were the three upper
berths arranged in the style of
contemporary Pullman train
of Star Girls, it reported, “She sleeper coaches.
Insights
cannot relax for a moment as she Compared with its
has 14 passengers and five crew contemporaries like the York and
to cook for, wash up for, tuck in Tudor, the Lancastrian was faster
with pillows and blankets and in terms of maximum speed and
watch for sleeplessness and air cruising speed and had a longer
sickness.” range, but its all-up weight was
On BOAC Lancastrians, the the lowest. The Lancastrian was
galley contained a sink, a two- smaller and carried nine to 13
gallon water boiler and full-sized passengers, while the York could
electric refrigerator. Even though accommodate 30 to 50 and
no cooking or food reheating the Tudor four to 32.
DATAFILE
BY THE NUMBERS
H
aving a fleet of aircraft powered by similar Merlin
engines gave BSAA a big advantage over its state-
owned rival. Based at Langley and operating from
London Airport, BSAA reported a net operating surplus
of £56,729 in its first four months of operations. For the following
year, 1946-47, the surplus rose to £72,736, although this was
largely due to the lack of competition. In 1947-48 BSAA made a
net loss of £161,481, even after exchequer grants totalling
£260,000 were taken into the accounts. This loss was blamed on
the late delivery of the Tudors.
In 1946 BOAC, by contrast, was operating a variety of aircraft: 16
Lancastrians, 41 flying boats, 30 Yorks, six Handley Page Haltons,
five Constellations, 42 Douglas Dakotas, 16 Lockheed Lodestars
and 54 other miscellaneous types. The Lancastrian cost 60 per
cent more to operate than the Constellation. But then the Short
Hythe flying boat cost 234 per cent more to operate on Empire
routes and the York 190 per cent. Utilisation of the Lancastrians
was about 1,000 hours a year.
 Reviews
REVIEWS RATING
★★★★★ Outstanding
★★★★★ Excellent
★★★★★ Good
★★★★★ Flawed
★★★★★ Mediocre
Enough said

The latest books and products for the discerning aviation enthusiast
BOOKS
English Electric
Lightning Genesis &
Projects
by Tony Wilson
published by Tempest Books
This volume offers much
more than just the story of the
Lightning. In 150 pages it BOOK
reviews the origins of English of the
Electric’s work on a “high- MONTH
speed fighter”, starting in
1948 and progressing through
many design iterations including the
“transonic fighter aircraft” of late 1948,
as seen on the cover; highly swept wings,
minimal frontal area and twin-engined
but featuring a butterfly tail with small
‘endplate’ fins. By late 1949 the basic
aerodynamic configuration of the P1 (as
the project was designated; the name
Lightning was not adopted until October
1958) had been agreed. The initial RAF
single-seater would be the P1B and the
Supermarine
Southampton
by Jo Hillman and
Colin Higgs
published by Air
World Books
This volume’s
sub-title is ‘The
Flying Boat that
made RJ Mitchell’.
While this is an
undeniably true statement, the Supermarine
Southampton might also be described as
‘the flying boat that made the RAF famous’,
as the type undertook a series of high-profile
long-distance, flag-waving formation flights
in the late 1920s. Four Southamptons of the
Far East Flight, under the command of the
gloriously named Gp Capt Henry Cave-
Browne-Cave, set off in October 1927 for
a 27,000-mile journey that would take in
Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong, and
paved the way for the establishment of the
Empire air routes.
The authors cover well the Southampton’s
design and construction as well as its
service — with Argentina, Australia, Japan
two-seat trainer the P11, but
progress to front-line service
took more than 10 years. Later
projects including a variant
with variable-geometry wings,
a navalised Lightning and the
P34, a ground attack aircraft for
the RAF, are similarly treated to
detailed discussion.
Author Wilson is a heritage
advisor for the BAE Systems
Heritage Department at
Warton. This title makes full use of archive
material with an unequalled number
of revelatory ‘not seen that one before’
drawings and illustrations, all well-
reproduced. Better, it sets the Lightning
story within the whole procurement system
and against changing RAF requirements. At
£12.99, it’s a snip. Denis J. Calvert
ISBN 978-1-911658-40-5; 9.7 x 7.2in
softback; 150 pages, illustrated; £12.99
★★★★
and Turkey as well as the RAF — and
there is a production list giving squadron/
flight allocations where known. This is the
first published volume dedicated to the
Southampton and it is pleasing to record that
it covers the subject both comprehensively
and readably. The photo selection is
well-chosen and representative, but its
reproduction is on the ‘hum’ side of ‘ho-hum’,
with too many images flat and showing low
contrast. DJC
ISBN 978-1-52678-494-0; 9.5 x 6.4in
hardback; 230 pages, illustrated; £25.00
★★★
Top Drawings 104:
Dewoitine D520
by Marek Ryś
published by Kagero
Word content in this nicely produced
softback is minimal. Just one page
summarises the history of Dewoitine’s World
War Two D520 fighter and concurs with
the general opinion that it was “the best
French fighter of that period”. Everything is
bilingual Polish and
English, the latter
reading well. But
any discussion of
the quality of the
text surely misses
the point. If you
buy this volume,
it’s a pound to a
penny that you’re a
modeller and that
the reason for your
purchase is the scale plans contained within.
Here, you’ll find six pages of drawings in 1:72
of the D520C-1 and its two-seat derivative,
the D520DC (13 aircraft converted), followed
by nine pages of the same in 1:48 and four
pages of colour views and profiles. For those
who model in a yet larger scale, there are
1:32 drawings of the late-series D520C-1,
these presented as a 58 x 40cm folded pull-
out sheet to avoid the need to print across
the page gutter. No, it’s not cheap, but this
volume oozes quality. If you intend seriously
to model the D520, it represents a solid
investment in accuracy. DJC
ISBN 978-83-66148-98-7; 11.7 x 8.3in
softback; 20 pages (plus pull-out),
illustrated; £18.95
★★★★
Korean
Air War
by Michael Napier
published by
Osprey Publishing
The Korean War was
the first full-scale
conflict in which
jet-versus-jet air
combat became
commonplace. It was effectively a proxy war
fought between the superpowers and, like
too many campaigns, had no clear outcome.
This volume’s sub-title ‘Sabres, MiGs and
Meteors’ underlines the fact that several
other nations got involved, the Meteors in
question being those of the Royal Australian
Air Force. There are good accounts of the
air war, including some in the first person,
and a discussion of tactics and of the cult
of the ace. The final chapter ‘In Retrospect’
sums up well the effectiveness or otherwise
of the air forces and equipment involved

100 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

and the rise in importance of the helicopter,
taking the first steps towards combat SAR.
The comment that Britain’s armed forces
were at the time overstretched and had “little
left to commit to a conflict in Korea” seems
strangely prescient.
Fortunately for authors, the Korean War
was well documented photographically,
and the photo section here is excellent and
accorded a decent standard of reproduction.
A good percentage of the images are in
colour, but the black-and-white shots have
acquired (why?) a variety of tints, from warm
to blue. This volume holds its own against a
wide range of other titles on the Korean air
war. DJC
ISBN 978-1-4728-4444-6; 9.8 x 7.2in
hardback; 320 pages, illustrated; £30.00
★★★
Darwin’s Air
War 1942-1945
by Bob Alford
published by
Avonmore Books
The Japanese air
attacks on Darwin
and north-western
Australia during
1942-43 had a
profound effect. For
some months the defence of the strategically
important port of Darwin and the Northern
Territory largely rested with the US Army
Air Forces. However, from July 1942 Royal
Australian Air Force fighter squadrons took
over, and by early 1943 an RAAF/RAF Spitfire
wing assumed the mantle. Through 1943 they
fought off the Japanese raids, which ended
by the end of the year. The area around
Darwin by then boasted a clutch of airfields
from which RAAF Beaufighters, Beauforts,
Hudsons and Liberators conducted an
effective campaign across the Timor Sea into
the Netherlands East Indies.
This very well-researched and presented
book first appeared in 2011, but a new
edition has been issued to coincide with the
RAAF’s recent centenary, now distributed in
the UK by Casemate. It is profusely illustrated
with relevant photographs of the men and
machines involved on both sides. The well-
written text is complemented by pilot profiles
and highly detailed appendices tabulating,
for example, every Japanese raid on the
Northern Territory. It is as authoritative
an account as we are likely to see and is
well-written in a style that makes it an easy
read. Although expensive, it is well worth the
investment for serious historians or the more
casual reader. Andrew Thomas
ISBN 978-0-9807713-0-5; 11.7 x 8.25in
softback; 320 pages, illustrated; £39.95
★★★★
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
PRINTS
Sqn Ldr Frank Carey DFC* AFM* DFM*
This release from the Military Signature Archive includes
a print by Darryl Legg showing the No 135 Squadron
Hurricane flown by the unit’s CO, Frank Carey, on 26
February 1942. That date saw him leading an attack on
Japanese forces at Moulmein (now Mawlamyine), Burma,
and — as shown — bringing down three Japanese Ki-27
‘Nate’ fighters. Also included are a print of a pencil sketch
of Carey, metal RAF wings and replica mini-DFC, and
Carey’s signature in pencil, all issued with a certificate of authenticity. The
whole item measures 12 x 16in and can be framed in either silver or gun-metal grey.
Prices: £105 unframed, £125 framed Information and ordering: Call 0247 699 2004
or visit www.militarysignaturearchive.co.uk
WATCHES
AVI-8 Hawker Prices: Blue Diamonds and Diables
Rouges £335, Black Arrows £365
Hunter Avon Information and ordering: avi-8.co.uk
Automatic
Another newcomer AVI-8 Spitfire Type 300
from AVI-8 pays
tribute to the Hunter Automatic Royal British Legion
and its Rolls-Royce This year sees the
Avon engine. centenary of the Royal
Design cues, the British Legion, and AVI-8
manufacturer says, Watches has become
come “straight from an official partner of the
the Hunter”s engine charity, releasing this
and cockpit”, the bezel and crown having limited-edition timepiece
been “machined with a turbine-inspired in support. Just 500 of
pattern”. Three versions are available, each these watches are being
of them named after different Hunter- produced, the design
equipped aerobatic teams, and reflected being influenced by
by the colour of some of the wording original Spitfire cockpit
and detailing on the watch — the Blue gauges. The Legion’s two-
Diamonds, the Diables Rouges and the Black petal poppy naturally features strongly.
Arrows. The latter is shown here, and has a
darker strap compared with the silver of the Price: £295
other two. Information and ordering: avi-8.co.uk
PRODUCTS
Super Guppy Aviationtag
Having been scrapped at
Bruntingthorpe this March,
the skin of ex-Airbus Skylink
Super Guppy F-BTGV has
in part been turned into
Aviationtags, these being the
latest in a series of such key
and luggage tags from a Cologne-based firm available in a
strictly limited edition. Featuring precise laser engraving,
each Aviationtag is one of a kind, differing from each
other in terms of thickness, colour and structure. They
feature the aircraft type and registration, the edition
number and size.
Price: €29.95
Information and ordering: aviationtag.com
www.aeroplanemonthly.com 101
 A DAY
AT T H E
SHOW
40 YEARS OF
THE CANBERRA
When RAF Wyton celebrated 1989’s 40th anniversary of the English
Electric Canberra, it pulled out all the stops WORDS: BEN DUNNELL
I
“ said it’s an old man’s
aeroplane. I believe I’m
going to find out about that
tomorrow…”
On the eve of re-enacting
the Canberra’s maiden flight,
legendary test pilot Roland
Beamont was on fine form. With
the television cameras looking
on, ‘Bee’ addressed a formal
dinner in RAF Wyton’s officers’
mess, his invited audience
Canberra people past and
present. That recollection of what
he told English Electric general
manager Arthur Sheffield
after the prototype’s early test
sorties must have struck a
chord, for even then the aircrew
roster among the units at the
Cambridgeshire station included
some decidedly senior figures.
Roland Beamont accompanies pilot Sqn Ldr Dave
Watson and navigator Flt Lt Michael Baker as Canberra
T4 WT478, alias prototype VN799, lands after the first
flight re-enactment on 13 May 1989. PETER R. FOSTER
102 www.aeroplanemonthly.com
102-105 A Day at the Show AM Jun2021.indd 102
Beamont was looking
forward to 13 May, 40 years
to the day since he and the
English Electric A1 prototype,
serial VN799, lifted off from the
Warton factory airfield. Unlike
in 1949, for 1989 there were
two VN799s on hand — a pair
of Canberra T4s, WT478 and
WJ877, provided by No 231
Operational Conversion Unit
and painted blue with ‘P for
prototype’ markings to depict
the original. With no period
colour references, how well the
shade of blue matched was a
matter of discussion. But it was
a splendid gesture for this one-
off event.
Over the weekend of 13-
14 May was staged a private
airshow on a marvellous scale,
AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
27/04/2021 09:26
 The 40-strong Canberra static
more than 2,000 Canberra display, all but two Wyton-
veterans and their then-current based. Prominent in the right-
successors, their friends, hand line is WJ877, the spare
families and the press present prototype-painted machine.
in celebration. The gathering With the aircraft earmarked
for the flying display parked
truly spanned the generations.
elsewhere, and one more in the
Sqn Ldr Dick Smerdon, who main hangar, in excess of 50
piloted several Canberras Canberras could be seen over
during his posting to Ferry the weekend. PETER R. FOSTER
Command, was there with son
Giles, a No 231 OCU instructor.
They had both flown one of the
airframes present. Many of its
Wyton-based brethren must,
likewise, have cropped up often
in the logbooks of the honoured
guests.

❖
The old cross runway boasted
no fewer than 40 Canberras, all
but two of them from Wyton’s
units. Aside from No 231 OCU,
Nos 100 and 360 Squadrons,
and No 1 Photographic
Reconnaissance Unit were
all still active at the time. The
remaining pair were the only
visiting examples, TT18 WK142
from the Royal Navy’s Fleet
Requirements and Air Direction
Unit at Yeovilton, and the
Royal Aircraft Establishment’s
Llanbedr-based B2(TT)
WH734. Quite why RAE
Bedford’s fleet, located literally
just down the road, went
unrepresented remains a

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 103

102-105 A Day at the Show AM Jun2021.indd 103 27/04/2021 09:27

 A DAY
AT T H E
SHOW
mystery. Also surprising was
the non-attendance of either
example then on the strength
of West Germany’s WTD 61
military test unit. But there
was nothing disappointing
about the spectacle: two rows
of 20 Canberras, immaculately
arrayed in a magnificent salute
to aeronautical longevity. By way
of contrast, consider that when
the RAF celebrated its centenary
at the Royal International Air
Tattoo 2018, the entire service
was able to muster just 26 static
aeroplanes. How times have
changed.
That wasn’t all, for the second
part of the
Wyton static
park comprised
Two rows of 20
aircraft Canberras were
from former
Canberra units immaculately
and operators.
Most were of
arrayed in salute
course Tornado
GR1s, seven in
to aeronautical
all, but joining longevity
them were
a Tornado F3, Jaguar GR1A,
Phantom FGR2, Buccaneer
S2B, Andover E3, Chinook HC1,
Wessex HC2 and an FR Aviation
Falcon 20. Conspicuous by its
absence was the other element
of Wyton’s ‘home team’, No 51
Squadron with a Nimrod R1,
but the electronic intelligence-
gathering outfit — previously
a stalwart Canberra user,
alongside its Comets — was not
then officially acknowledged.
No wonder there was such a
surge of interest when one of
its charges suddenly departed
during Friday’s enthusiasts’
photocall…
❖ show was repeated on Sunday,
So there was at a civilised
post-lunch hour the next day,
when Hangar 1 — the focus for
a meet-and-greet, exhibitions
and ceremonials — emptied,
and eyes turned to Wyton’s
‘rhapsody in blue’. Canberra
T4 WT478 was the mount for
Roland Beamont, pilot Sqn
Ldr Dave Watson and Flt Lt
Michael Baker, the youngest
navigator on the station, as they
took to the air for the maiden
flight re-enactment. A smooth
display routine understandably
exhibited little of the agility that
once characterised ‘Bee’s’ famed
demonstrations, but this was
104 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021
no longer time for such antics.
His verdict on landing, as
expressed to the BBC? “A lovely
aeroplane 40 years ago and a
lovely aeroplane today.”
There were a few other
items. The Red Arrows added
spectacle, while the Battle of
Britain Memorial Flight, British The Royal Navy’s Fleet Requirements and Air Direction Unit at
Aerospace’s Mosquito and Yeovilton provided TT18 WK142. This aircraft is today stored by the
— flying from North Weald’s Pima Air Museum in Arizona. PETER R. FOSTER
Fighter Meet — Vulcan XH558
furnished further nostalgia.
But all were thoroughly
overshadowed, for soon it was
back to Canberras. No 231
OCU provided its occasional
four-ship formation, dubbed
the Green
Marrows,
while Nos
100 and 360
Squadrons
carried out
an airfield
attack with a
mixed quartet
of Canberra
E15s, TT18s
and T17As.
Before they recovered, No 1
PRU’s Sqn Ldr Terry Cairns
and nav Duncan Horler used
a max-performance take-off to
launch their PR9 straight into a
routine that made spectacular
use of the variant’s extra power.
It may, controversially, have
found less favour with the
International Air Tattoo flying Pride of place in Hangar 1 — home to an extensive historical
exhibition, as well as the ceremonials and socialising — went to No
control committee later in the 360 Squadron’s Canberra T17A WD955. Originally built and delivered
year, but this remains the best in 1951 as a B2, it was the oldest example in the active fleet and the
Canberra display I’ve ever most venerable front-line RAF aircraft. Note the bit of aircrew humour;
seen, or ever will see. even this elderly aeroplane was Sidewinder-armed… DENIS J. CALVERT
There was inevitably an
element of remembrance, too
— of friends and colleagues
lost during the Canberra’s
service. Before the Wyton
a church service was held
at Bassingbourn, for so long
No 231 OCU’s home, in their
memory. Among those in
attendance was Wyton’s
station commander, Gp Capt
Reg McKendrick, architect of
the 40th anniversary events.
On 18 March 1991 he, Flt Lt
David Adam and Flt Lt ‘Eddie’
Wilkinson were killed when
T4 WJ877 — which had been
the back-up blue ‘VN799’
— crashed at Wyton while The primary pseudo-VN799 goes through its paces. When the
Canberra’s 50th anniversary was marked in 1999, a T4 was again
practising a simulated engine painted as the prototype, research resulting in a darker shade of blue
failure after take-off. It was being used. However, it is actually suggested that Wyton got it right
a tragic coda to a great first time. JOHN DUNNELL
occasion.
 Taxiing out to rehearse their part
in the programme are two of No
100 Squadron’s Canberras, E15
WH972 in the lead. On the show
weekend itself, this aircraft would
be in the static park. PETER R. FOSTER

When No 231 OCU formed a

Canberra four-ship for Wyton open
days, families’ days and the like, it
was dubbed the Green Marrows.
Unless anyone knows otherwise,
the 40th anniversary event was the
occasional team’s last outing.
PETER R. FOSTER

Rather surprisingly, the only representative of the UK’s flight-

test Canberras was B2(TT) WH734 from RAE Llanbedr, none of
the other establishments sending an example. PETER R. FOSTER

A fast, low pass by Sqn Ldr Terry Cairns in No 1 PRU Canberra

PR9 XH131, surely the individual star of the show, even bearing
in mind the blue T4’s appearance. This powerful mark had
hitherto seldom been displayed in a full-throated solo routine,
Cairns’ performance harking back to the glory days of Canberra
demonstrations. PETER R. FOSTER

AEROPLANE JUNE 2021 www.aeroplanemonthly.com 105

 ch 20 n
NEXT MONTH
i
1
ct NE le
an 2
su 0 J n 1
Co UK E g LY he
nts n 1 s o 2
bje U sa
nte o oe 20
U T

g e
the ISSU J

to
Editorial
Editor: Ben Dunnell
E-mail: ben.dunnell@keypublishing.com
News Editor/Editorial Assistance: Tony Harmsworth
E-mail: tony.harmsworth@keypublishing.com
Regular Contributors: Ian Bott, Denis J. Calvert, James
Kightly, Chris Sandham-Bailey, Steve Slater, Barry Wheeler
Design: Craig Chiswell, Chiswell Creative, Gloucestershire

Advertising
Senior Advertisement Manager: Gemma Gray
E-mail: gemma.gray@keypublishing.com
Advertisement Production Manager: Debi McGowan
E-mail: debi.mcgowan@keypublishing.com
Advertisement Production Controller: Clare Thornthwaite
E-mail: clare.thornthwaite@keypublishing.com

Head of Production: Janet Watkins

Head of Design: Steve Donovan
Head of Advertising Sales: Brodie Baxter
Head of E-Commerce: Martin Steele
Head of Finance: Nigel Cronin

THE AEROPLANE’S

110
Head of Content Management: Finbarr O’Reilly
Head of Content: Hans Seeberg
Chief Digital Officer: Vicky Macey
Chief Content & Commercial Officer: Mark Elliott

th
Group CEO: Adrian Cox

Subscriptions/Mail Order
PO Box 300, Stamford, Lincs, PE9 1NA, UK
Tel +44 (0)1780 480404; Fax +44 (0)1780 757261
E-mail: Subscriptions: subs@keypublishing.com
E-mail: Mail Order: orders@keypublishing.com
Or order online at www.keypublishing.com
Readers in the USA can place subscriptions by visiting
www.imsnews.com or calling toll-free 757-428-8180
Alternatively, you can subscribe in writing to: Aeroplane,
International Media Service, PO BOX 866, Virginia Beach 23451, USA.
Aeroplane Monthly, ISSN 0143-7240 (USPS 16220) is published
monthly by Key Publishing Ltd, PO Box 300,

ANNIVERSARY
Stamford, Lincolnshire, PE9 1NA, UK.
The US annual subscription price is $72.99. Airfreight and mailing in
the USA by agent named World Container Inc., 156-15, 146th Avenue,
2nd Floor, Jamaica, NY 11434, USA.
Periodicals postage paid at Brooklyn, NY 11256

Our Database tells the story of this

US Postmaster: Send address changes to Aeroplane Monthly,
World Container Inc., 156-15, 146th Avenue, 2nd Floor,
Jamaica, NY 11434, USA

magazine’s illustrious ancestor

Subscription records are maintained at Key Publishing Ltd,
PO Box 300, Stamford, Lincolnshire, PE9 1NA, UK.
Air Business Ltd is acting as our mailing agent.

Distribution

DEFENDING
Seymour Distribution
Limited:
+44 (0)20 7429 4000 To find a stockist near you,

BRITAIN
visit www.aeroplanemonthly.com

Printing
How the RAF’s tactics and William Gibbons Ltd, Willenhall, UK
ISSN: 0143-7240

technology developed
AEROPLANE

All rights reserved. The entire content of Aeroplane is © Key Publishing 2021.
Reproduction in whole or part and in any form whatsoever is strictly prohibited

between the wars without the prior permission of the Publisher. Publisher: Mark Elliott
While every care is taken with submissions, the Publisher cannot be held
responsible for any loss or damage incurred. All items submitted for publication
are subject to our terms and conditions which are regularly updated without

‘BIG CAT’ AT SEA

prior notice and downloadable from www.keypublishing.com.
We are unable to guarantee the bona fides of any of our advertisers.
Readers are strongly recommended to take their own precautions before

Flight-testing the navalised

parting with any information or item of value, including, but not limited to,
money, manuscripts, photographs or personal information in response to any

SEPECAT Jaguar
advertisements within this publication.
PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY
Key Publishing Ltd, PO Box 100, Stamford, Lincs, PE9 1XQ
Tel +44 (0)1780 755131 Fax +44 (0)1780 757261
Website: www.keypublishing.com
PHIL WILKINSON

P UB

LI
S HIN

106 www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE JUNE 2021

Untitled-1 1 14/04/2021 09:22:59
Untitled-1 1 07/04/2021 10:57:39