Aircraft Illustrated Best of British Aviation Part Three 1959-1984

3E BRITISH

BRffiWISH

ie$;l'f'x==

\,)J!

:^:-a^,-l

\\,'

'Li-i--1.:rw'..::'

Avro/ Howker Siddeley 748 Many was the manufacturer who tried their hand at a DC-3 replacement. Of course, nothing ever truly succeeded the Douglas

but the 748 did better than many. It started as an Avro product, the first

classic,

Avro 748 Series I (G-APZV shown here

with second prototype G-ARAY) flying on 24 June I 960, and service entry soon followed with Skyways. Production switched in 196 I to the Series 2, and that was when the twin Rolls-Royce Dart-engined turboprop regional airliner really'took off '. Known from 1963 onwards as the HS748, and still later as the BAe 748, 380 ended up being produced both in Britain and by HAL in lndia. lts most successful derivative was of course the Andover, with its 'kneeling'

undercarriage and re-designed rear fuselage incorporating a loading ramp, of which 37 were built. Today, the 748 can still be found in service in small numbers with various operators worldwide, mainly as a freighter, continuing the life of this unassuming British success scory. liAF 5lrterrs

,[,i,

i l!&&k$&X&;,1i?-i1;: ii ii:ij,J i rtir

ir 1

lrVll;ffiffifi

Hqwker Siddeley Tridenl That just I I TTridents were produced as against 1,832 Boeing 727s tells you all you need to know. British European Airways wanted a 1O0-seat airliner capable of over 600mph, and chose de Havilland's DH l2l design powered by the Rolls-Royce Medway. But then BEA decided it was too large, and the Trident design was 'downsized' to 79 seats,while the Medway engine was cancelled and Speys used instead. lt took to the air in January 1962,ayear before the 727,but the larger Boeing design had already stolen a march in terms of sales and theTrident would never catch up.This was in spite of successively improved, enlarged and longer-range versions being produced, culminating in the I 80-seatTrident 3 as depicted here by G-AWZB.TheTrident was never the best performer on take-off,the latter variant requiring a tail-mounted auxiliary RB I 62 turbojet to augment the Speys, which were not the quietest powerplants around it thus came as no surprise when tighter noise regulations forced British Airways to retire its fleet in 1985. A fondly-remembered aircraft, then, and one which made history in November I966 when aTrident performed the first fully-automatic 'blind' landing by an airliner, but also one thar never achieved its potential.

G-

\

4

z C

an Allan

Lbrary

iitr.irl;j'iitill

Howker Siddeley HSt 25 de Havilland, long purveyors of fine 'gentlemanl aerial carriages', came early to the burgeoning business jet market. lt came up with the DH 125, flown inaugurally in August 1962,and it is a testament to the excellence of that original design that the aircraft remains in production today, looking much the same as the original. The first major change came with the stretched HS 125 Series 600, while the -700, introduced in I 976, replaced the type's Rolls-RoyceViper engines with HoneywellTFET3 ls, variants of which have equipped it ever since. British Aerospace continued its development, initially with the re-designed I 25-800 boasting a glass cockpit, and then the longer-range - I 000. Keen even then to start getting out of the civil business, BAe sold its Corporate Jets division to Raytheon in l993,which started offering the 125 under the Hawker banner, and transferred final assembly to Wichita, Kansas, during l995.Today, Hawker Beechcraft offers the 750,850XP and 900XP as its current production range. Can the 125 family be described as Britain's most successful post-war civil productsfThis elegant type has an excellent case.

AirTeamlmages

Vickers VCI

com Collectron

O

Yet another of the post-war British airliner'what might have beens', theVC l0 came about aftervickers suffered the cancellation of its four-jetvl000. lt was launched in 1958 with the intention of offering excellent airfield performance for'hot and high' operations, British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) having already ordered the Boeing 707 which was nor really suitabre for such

operations.The government of rhe day pressured BoAC into ordering 25 vc I 0s, and there followed a great deal of wrangling between the two parties and the manufacturer, all of which effectively killed off the type's wider sales chances. The first prototype of what became known as the StandardVCl0 flew in June l962,the stretched SuperVCl0 foltowing up in May 1964,a couple of weel