BOAC’s behaviour of demanding endless changes before saying the aircraft was no longer suitable sounds awfully like the way they behaved over the Bristol Britannia and VC-10.
Maybe the Americans were pulling the strings of the British airlines, as they were reputed to have been doing to ensure the disappearance of most of the manufacturing-competition in the airliner market.
My father witnessed the Llandow crash, he was one of two people first to arrive at the crash site, he said there were three people running from the crash as fast as they could. The sights my Dad saw when he arrived at the crumpled plane troubled him for years, he told us kids many times what he had seen. No counselling in those days. Probably instilled my fascination and fear of flying to this day. I now watch too many aircraft crash videos, but it doesn't stop me flying, just a visit to the airport bar before boarding 🙂
Not one of Avro's best for sure, but it should also be remembered that BOAC was also known as "Boeing Only Airline Company", and not without good reason as its subsequent history demonstrated.
BOAC preference for Boeing's came later with the 707 which was probably justified as the much loved VC10 had heavier fuel consumption and the design wing design varied during production. If anything BOAC preferred Douglas DC4 and DC6 with P&W engines in the 1940's . The Merlin wasn't really suitable as an airliner engine BOAC operated the Merlin powered canadian built version of the DC4 but wasn't a succes either The H-P Hermes was better but was delayed by priority being given to Hastings production for the Berlin Airlift. BOAC did however love and make great use of the Avro York transport.
A good video, thank you for uploading. Tudors of BSAA did play a significant part in the Berlin Airlift - my Father flew them extensively in this operation . Also the BSAA route to Santiago in Chile was not via Buenos Aires etc but down the west coast of South America, via Lima and other airports on the west coast. The route crossing at Panama before heading south. My Father flew Star Tiger - one of the Tudors that disappeared into the Atlantic - just a week before the fatal flight. A close call!
I always admired the Avro Ashton, with its Nenes in neat pods under the wings. The extra tall tail seemed an obvious tweak even to my schoolboy eyes in the early1950s. The Tudor freighters did do sterling service in the Berlin Airlift.
-Modern transport aircraft have to be able to climb at a 2.6 degree angle after losing an engine right at takeoff [technically, V1 speed, but I'll not get too technical]. This is why airlines "lose" your bags; In order to make this 2.6 degree angle, they remove weight from airliners in order to climb this "hill". They can't remove parts of the plane to lose weight, they can't remove fuel, and they have found that people getting to their destination without their bags are happier than if they didn't get there at all, so they leave bags behind. Those tags the put on your checked bag? They have bar codes for a reason; The laser readers are all over the place on the conveyor belts behind the check-in counter, so the airlines know EXACTLY where your bag is at all times. The number of bags left behind depends on the airplane. Some airplanes NEVER leave bags behind; If you want your checked bags to arrive, fly on a Boeing 757. This is a skinny narrow body airliner with BIG fucking engines! Us pilots call it the Porsche with wings for a reason, the plane is overpowered and this is probably why it is not in production anymore, since more modern aircraft such as the A320 and the B737 are a little more fuel efficient. NOW, what does this all mean? The problem with the Tudor was two-fold: 1. The silly stupid tailwheel "conventional" gear arrangement. This causes bad handling characteristics, and is naturally an unstable setup. It is easy to "ground loop" or have the plane spin out on the runway because of this design. 2. It was VASTLY underpowered! Four 3000 hp class turboprops would have transformed this airplane! Modern airliners, as I described above, are actually built around existing or proposed new engines. Back when the Tudor was built, they took an existing airframe and tried to make it wider while utilizing existing power plants which were already pretty much maxed out and the poor performance was the result. Also, they did not have the CAD/CAM design tools we have today, or the ability to determine drag on a computer the way they can now. Basically, they just designed it and hoped it worked. In this case, it didn't, and it wouldn't have been designed this way today.
Thank you Sir for your usual brilliant production - thank you for bringing to us! All through this World there have been failures and successes but when you think how-on-earth the Lancaster could be followed by such a lemon, is unthinkable!
Neither the York, nor the Lincoln, nor the Shackleton, nor the Vulcan were "lemons". AVRO's specialty was not civil aircraft. Furthermore, there was a lot of political tampering with Tudor design, testing and production. Plus the unexplainable (and as yet unexplained) "oops" event of cross-wiring the control surfaces, coincidentally destroying not only the Tudor II prototype, but the life of one of the world's leading aeronautical engineers. Plus the unexplainable (and as yet unexplained) Bermuda Triangle crashes. My hunch: shot down by yankee naval fighters, then the debris rescued and hidden by the USN.
Thanks for this. My mother had worked for DAP at Fishermans Bend Vic after the war and mentioned that she had seen the drawings of the Tudor there, and I always wondered why. Transports for the RAAF would have been interesting!
interesting to see the jet powered versions of this plane had the engines located below the wings as opposed to inside the wings like the comet. Below wing placement is clearly superior even if not hanging from pylons. So much less danger of damage from a failure and so much easier access for maintenance and replacement
@@anthonyxuereb792 Aerodynamically the Me262 and Ar234 were the worst designs, for the same reasons NO jet fighter has engines on the wings - drag and grossly reduced manoeuvrability. Pod mounted engines are great for maintenance but lousy for flight. That said both the Me262 and Ar 234 were what would be classified as hangar queens with a mean time to engine failure of ten hours of flight time so maintenance was a high priority. The British jet engines were FAR more robust and reliable with 100hrs between overhauls in the early ones rising to 500hrs later in WW2. The swept wings in the Me 262 were an utter accident - the centre of gravity was catastrophically wrong (too far back) in the first prototype (to the point it wouldn’t take off) so they bent the wing back in the second to get the centre of pressure aligned properly (and then discovered it flew better at high speeds).
@@allangibson2408 All those details aside, the fact remains that it is a convenient location to put the engines under the wing. No doubt you've witnessed aircrew having a walk-around-the engines prior to boarding as an added precaution.
With so many agencies involved, this sounds like the epitome of one definition of a camel - a horse designed by a committee. Thanks for an interesting video.
When I was listening to the video, that was my thoughts, a plane designed by committee with the chief committee members not having any engineering experience and over ruling the engineers.
I consider a significant problem was to allow the two, then state-owned, airlines to participate in the 'committees.' They were constantly moving the goal posts and then complained that they were taking delivery of aircraft that didn't meet their needs.
The use of Merlin engines was itself a bad idea. The noise they emitted made Merlins unsuitable for passenger airliners as demonstrated by the Canadair North Star which entered service in the 1940s with several airlines, including BOAC. This was a Canadian development of the Douglas DC-4, but powered by Merlins. It was quite a bit faster than the Douglas, but its engines made it uncomfortably noisy for long flights to the tune of 102db for window seats ! and this was after installing noise-reducing exhausts...
Avro Canada C102 jet airliner was in the air 13 day behind the Comet . Avro Canada canceled it due to delays with their CF-100 interceptor. The C102 had round windows and never would have crashed like the Comet. Avro Canada like canceling Aircraft ahead of their time. The Avro Arrow meant the same fate.
I have to point out the patience HRH ER2 had when she was christening an obsolete airplane with her name. I don't know if BOAC or BA named anything more modern after her. RIP ER2: (1926 - 2022)
I'd known about the Avro Canada C102 Jetliner for years, but somehow I hadn't learned about the Avro Ashton until this video. Unfortunate that neither model has a complete surviving airframe - would've loved to see the two side by side.
Avro Canada C102 jet airliner was in the air 13 day behind the Comet . Avro Canada canceled it due to delays with their CF-100 interceptor. The C102 had round windows and never would have crashed like the Comet. Avro Canada like canceling Aircraft ahead of their time. The Avro Arrow meant the same fate.
How can a plane using Merlin engines have engine oil cooling problems? All the bugs must have been worked out of that engine , it was used in the Lancaster ,Spitfire and Mustang.
As an American I have to wonder why the government was so involved in the procurement process- what was their "value add"? I'll add that there is no hell like trying to satisfy a customer who isn't in a hurry to decide what they want.
As a Brit' I can answer that we find our government's interference irritating too, as did the aviation industry which it gradually strangled to death through a mixture of sheer incompetence and malicious intent. The politicians and civil servants were riding an ego trip after WWII, under a Delusion that gained the label "Big government works!" from a particular MP's speech (I forget which one). The irony is that the government nor the state sector had anything close to a lead role in winning the war, as it was the private sector that was the prime mover in producing the bulk of domestic wartime hardware, while insuring those at home were kept in food. As for customer service: usually true, but it is hard to overstate how toxic a customer BOAC was. The domestic aviation industry pretty much always went to them and BEA first for what they wanted, yet said airline's would set requirements only to either change their mind late into the process, or worse straight up damning the aircraft they'd specified from the wheels up with faint praise while backroom dealing with Boeing. Needless to say the aviation industry would have been wiser to focus more on overseas airline's and be stronger at hardsell, but the perception was - it should be noted - that the national flag carrier airline was a must to please if big overseas sales was to be realised. (a bit like how fighter planes made in the US for instance that the USAF don't choose rarely sell on the export market) Several times the government - to their limited credit - came down on the aviation industry's side, strong-arming BOAC to stop pishing about; it wasn't often enough though, Needless to say.
Some spice(wich lays inside the first moments of the intro) inside the warm and already familiarly loved format of documentation of machines {Ur voice}
I think part of the problem with the British approach to airliner development after the war was the fixation with the Merlin engine. A great engine for war time it was not really suitable for civil use, my father who battled with it on Argonaughts for Derby Airways/British Midland as Director of Engineering was convinced of the fact.
William Dempster Airlines used a Tudor to fly German migrants from Germany to South Africa in 1953 on a two to three weekly schedule. Whilst serving in the RAF at El Adem in Cyrenaica the aircraft developed an propeller blade route seal oil leak which I and another mechanic cured over-night by replacing the seal with a new one.
Interesting and highly detailed video. It seems, they must have known that the airline requirements could not be met....so many ministries with different priorities and motives. With limited funding after the war, they seemed (without any alternatives) to press onwith now-obsolete projects when it was apparent that the speed of innovations in transport airliners would leave them far behind.
Considering that they had just been through a war, the British cranked up their aircraft and automobile industries amazingly quickly and produced some truly great stuff
Yes , I agree with what you say. With hindsight it is easy to criticize but other nations had their failures after the war even when they had not been as weakened as the UK.
hello Ruairidh MacVeigh, I'm admin of the modelkitindo channel, I ask permission to hanging this video on my channel as a teaser, and I will enclose your channel name on the video and link in description ... thank you
If BOAC just wanted an interim aircraft they should have bought some DC-4's. Pilots, including Ernest K Gann, loved the plane. Sure Britain was cash strapped after the war but buying surplus DC4 planes would have been cheaper than developing a brand new model - you'd think!
Well of course it would.....but, Britain had an aircraft industry to support, and a lot of pressure from that industry to " Buy British" and something of an ego after its WW2 record. At that stage it was envisaged we would compete with the USA. Given the antiquated proprietorial fragmented structure of the UK aircraft industry we can see that was pie in the sky looking back, but that's not how they saw it then.
They listed seating capacity for passengers in this video as capacity with and without the flight engineers position, does the mean the aircraft could both be flown with and without a flight engineer? Was the FE operations just left up to the two pilots then in the non FE configuration? Or was this just weird with on the videos part? I've never heard of an aircraft with options FE position.
From Wiki BSAA's chief pilot and manager of operations, Gordon Store, was unimpressed: "The Tudor was built like a battleship. It was noisy, I had no confidence in its engines and its systems were hopeless. The Americans were fifty years ahead of us in systems engineering. All the hydraulics, the air conditioning equipment and the recircling [sic] fans were crammed together underneath the floor without any thought. There were fuel-burning heaters that would never work; we had the floorboards up in flight again and again." It was a piece of junk. Built to cater to a tiny, clientele of well heeled businessmen to travel around Britains ever shrinking post war empire. I doubt any of the British aircraft companies back then even considered the possibilty that flying would one day become available to the public at large.
Not ony AVRO suffered a prototype crashing because of a suspicious reversal of the Tudors tailplane control wires. During the War Armstrong Whitworth had an identical and ....unusual ....reversal of it's control wires in the tailplane when they were air-testing their very advanced Armstrong Whitworth Deerhound radial engine in a Whitley bomber. There were many such happenings in british aviation. No one seems to have investigated the cause of these because of the war?
When you consider what other British aircraft were under development at the time i.e. The Comet (all be it with its serious faults) this aircraft was developing into a bit of a turkey. The choice of engine although OK for military use was far to thirsty for operation by an airline when one has to consider a profit. The whole idea and specification just like the Brabazon was totally flawed.
A great deal of political interference from various quarters resulted in the waste of time, money and effort expended on what was always only intended to be a temporary solution. BOAC should have been told, "There it is - take it as it is and use it until the Comet/Stratocruiser/Connie/Britannia come on stream."
15:09 And why oh why did this Chadwick hooray have to go flying with prototypes all the time. He was the culprit who reused a reused reuse-aircraft to design the silly thing in the first place. Why did he not stay in his cozy office and design something smarter than another version of another version of the Manchester.
...except when it didn't 😂 . One of the worst period air crashes in the US involved a Constellation, and its design was not free of gremlins. That said: some aircraft have few if any faults but never get taken up (like the F-20 Tigershark), or have all the faults yet are taken up (>ahem< F-111 >ahem
Almost Avro Tudor Nemesis for pilot Pathfinder chief Bennett operating during the Berlin Airlift. During pre flight check overlooked elevator wedge. Only a pilot with his superb skills avoid the inevitable using trimming tabs and brute force. For landing varied engine power settings and used passengers as vital ballast in appropriate areas to maintain stability.
All that effort for 30-odd airframes, basically the story of British aviation after 1945 right there - Hunter and Hawk aside - because remember, whilst the Lightning was amazing, who''s got them now? No one. Meanwhile Pakistan still fly the Mirage III.
The only time you need to use words like "golf", "romeo", "foxtrot" etc is when you are in the cockpit communicating to air traffic control. It's far easier to follow a narration like this if you just say the letters.
Thank god our RAAF cancelled its order! The old saying if it looks right it usually is but that crate looked just plain ugly and the rear fin and tailplane geez what were they thinking let alone something large in a tail dragger! Strewth Qantas also came their senses and never looked back with its Constellations before the 707’s
In retrospect, the MD-11 can be considered a stopgap, bridging the gap between the first-generation multiengine wide body jets and the now-dominant twin-engine types.
@@RonJohn63 Not sure about MD and other airlines, but my husband was with AA for many years, and the "Scuds" didn't stay very long, going away as fast as the 777s came in.
Ah. The poor old Avro Tudor. Bad luck in aeroplane form. Hey, Ruairidh, how about the Westland Whirlwind, and the Focke-Wulf FW187? One hamstrung by dodgy engines and high landing speed, and the other killed by politics.
BOAC had a history of rejection of British planes in favour of American airplanes it was that bad you could be forgiven for thinking that someone in BOAC was getting a back hander from the Americans. It makes you wonder ???????
15:27. With Chadwick dead, why did they not simply scrap the whole scheme and also all aircraft. It would have save a lot of lives, specially those from BSAA.
Not really no. Aviation history isn't that clear cut, and never has been. Now had BOAC not been run by utterly fickle plastic faced pish takers, a lot of people's time wouldn't have been wasted.
8:47. If they would have even tried to correct some faults, they could have replaced the stupid landing gear and 90% of the shite would have been solved, if only optically. At least it would have started to look halfway modern. What did they do. Sweet eff all.
The bigger picture & behind the scenes, BOAC brought the double decker Boeing 377 Stratocruisers for the Altantic service in 1949, only airline outside of US to fly them. Pressured by war reperations to the US & the economics the of aircraft could easily serviced in the US. ( those old piston engines needed regular attention). There's always politics behind every deal, ( BOAC was Govt owned) its not always about what products best.
Would it be naive of me to suggest that a commercial operator such as BOAC is free (using the phrase quoted in the video) to have it's cake and eat it? Regarding the carrier's constant altering of it's design requirements, could I further suggest that the customer is always right. Why accept and inferior design, even as a stop gap, unless one does so purely out of patriotic reasons?
The fixation on pronouncing acronyms with full words (alpha etc.) is extremely annoying and disorienting. It is just a video, not an emergency/military radio broadcast.
Of course, it didn't help Avro that the Douglas DC-4 in ex-military form was available for cheap to convert to civilian airliners, and Douglas had the DC-7 in production by 1947 and Lockheed offered the Constellation at the end of World War II.
As is obvious, American R & D resources for civil aircraft were sufficient in WW2 to get ahead start and put the British aviation industry out of business, as intended. But this aircraft was supposed to be a stop gap, until more revolutionary designs were forthcoming, but BOAC wanted the glamour of a nose wheel, and the aircraft that Hollywood stars would be seen at photoshoots in the US...........
@@artrandy - It is somewhat less than obvious that America set out in any way to put the British aviation industry out of business. And by the way, the US government largely curtailing gas turbine/jet engine development certainly should have been quite beneficial the British aviation industry and given them a solid step up against any US competition. Between the white elephant Barbizon and the Comet fiasco, the wounds were self inflicted.
@@scootergeorge7089 The US selfishly destroyed the prospects of Concorde. That might be later, but is incontrovertible. As for jet engines and the Comet, Sir Frank Whittle invented the jet engine in the 1920s. Years later, in the 1930's, he was having to pay £5 out of his own pocket to renew his patent, because the RAF didn't think it worthwhile to continue with it. Meanwhile, German engineers had copied his designs and WW2 was coming. Suddenly, the RAF wanted jet aircraft, and devoted vital resources to it in wartime, being second after Germany to put those designs into practice. These designs could have been accomplished in peace time. So we all know about British governments killing off British design innovations, and this is just one of them. By the way, the first jet engine available to American aircraft was in fact British, and it wouldn't surprise me that the second was German, taken from captured Me 262s, after Operation Lusty, a USAF adventure to secure German technology. It might be that the third was Japanese, after they received German technology in turn, but maybe by 1945 the Americans were then developing a reasonable jet engine of their own!! I can't be bothered to check. Consequently the UK was way ahead of either US or Soviet jet engine designs in the 40s and 50s, which led to the tragedy of the Comet 1, not because the British couldn't design world class cutting edge technology, but because of the discovery of metal fatigue after 3 aircraft broke up mid air, a phenomenon "not fully understood at the time", according to Wikipedia. It was only after years sifting through the wreakage that the problems were found, and it was thought unconscionable not to tell the world, and especially the Americans, Britain's greatest friends and ally, even though these were commercial secrets, and which then directly helped the Boeing 707 and DC8 rule the skies of the 1960s, to the cost of the revised Comet 4. To suggest that the Comet was a "self inflicted fiasco", when US manufacturers were about to walk into the same trap, and were only saved themselves by an act of friendship from Britain, is totally disingenuous of you, and represents the zenith of hypocracy. As for British state airlines run by Governments, they destroyed the Bristol Britannia and the Vickers VC10, and more, all of which could have propelled British aviation forward. (pun intended) After the demise of the British Empire, the UK became a much smaller market place for aircraft than the US, and resources should have been used more selectively. Aviation geeks in the UK know all that buddy. Please don't think for one moment that Im an American hater, because the opposite is the case, the Americans gave everything in WW2, and were absolutely magnificent allies, but there are times when some individual Americans behave in a crass manner, when believing that the US did it all first and better than anyone else, and the world should be grateful. That is a very insensitive trait with which to treat others and their technological ideas, which the US has sometimes piggy backed rides on, since they entered WW2, and without giving due credit.........
@@artrandy - Yes, I am full aware that Sir Frank Whittle invented the turbojet engine AND the Air Ministry was extremely slow in investing in that technology. And I am certainly aware that the first American jet aircraft used Whittle's design. But that does not detract from my statement that Britain had a head start in developing advanced jet aircraft for both military and civilian use. But American companies, starting with Westinghouse, quickly developed the superior axial flow engines. But the US government believed the war would be won with piston engine technology. But as far as the US "doing it all" I am in complete agreement with Winston Churchill who said that the soviets tore out the guts of the German army. I suppose I went a bit far with my Comet claim but in hindsight it appears that de Haviland lacked sufficient knowledge on metal fatigue and stress. And it may have been more than the much maligned square windows that caused airframe failure. Punching, rather than drilling of rivet holes was much faster but resulted in micro cracks around those rivet holes that, over time, spread with tragic consequences. As a parting comment, I must say it was England that stopped Hitler and because of that, Hitler turned east where the bulk of his armed forces were destroyed.
