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SPECIAL SECTION
BRITISH AIRLINERS:
September
2017
Issue No 553,
Vol 45,
No 9
WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
RUHR
EXPRESS
SALUTING A LEGENDARY LANCASTER
HISTORY IN THE AIR SINCE 1911
DATABASE
DH84 DRAGON
£4.50
AUS$11.75 CAD$10.50
This summer’s
WW2 blockbuster
DUNKIRK FILM
Swordfish over the Scheldt
RAF ‘STRINGBAGS’
PLUS…
FLYING LEGENDS REVIEW
l
MUSTANG ACROSS THE ATLANTIC
OFFERED FOR SALE
£1
CE RE
,59
DU
5,0
CED
00
PR
I
Courtesy Hangar 11
Courtesy: John M. Dibbs/The Plane Picture Company
Hawker Hurricane 2B
S/N: CCF/R20023
Registration: G-HHII
Price: £1,595,000 + VAT if applicable
Vickers-Supermarine Spitfire FR XVIIIe
S/N SM845
Registration: G-BUOS
Price: GBP£1,700,000 + VAT if applicable
IC
£3
E RED
49
UC
,0
ED
00
PR
Courtesy: Philip Makanna/Ghosts
Courtesy: Owner
Yakovlev Yak 3M
S/N: 0470107
Registration: G-CGXG
Price: £349,000 + VAT if applicable
North American TF-51 full dual-control Mustang
S/N: 44-63473
Registration: D-FUNN
Price: US$3,200,000 + VAT if applicable
+1800.210.1951
Contents
September 2017
62
See pages
24-25
for a g
reat
subscription
offer
58
BA
OOK
TAIN B
1
BRI
e 10
g
See pa ails
for det
IN!
W
TLE OF
T
72
ED
BRITISH AIRLINERS: PROJECT CANCELL
26
BRITISH AIRLINERS:
33
PROJECT CANCELLED
96
NEWS AND
COMMENT
4
6
FROM THE EDITOR
NEWS
• BBMF marks 60th anniversary
• Dumfries Spitfire unveiled
• P-51B goes trans-Atlantic
• Sea Fury T20 flies again
• Boeings and Bells star at Oshkosh
• Mosquito fuselage at V&A
…and the month’s other top aircraft
preservation news
HANGAR TALK
Steve Slater’s comment on the
historic aircraft world
FLIGHT LINE
Reflections on aviation history with
Denis J. Calvert
EVENTS
Flying Legends reviewed, plus reports
from Yeovilton and RIAT, and show
dates for September
100
REVIEWS
106
NEXT MONTH
96
48
58
62
FEATURES
26
DUNKIRK
FILM
Assessing Christopher Nolan’s new
WW2 epic, in which warbirds play a
major role
72
LANCASTER
RUHR EXPRESS
A flying tribute to the first Canadian
‘Lanc’ and its wartime history
ALITALIA MB326s
When Italy’s national airline flew the
elegant Macchi jet trainer
AEROPLANE
MEETS…
LEE LAUDERBACK
The world’s highest-time Mustang
pilot — ever
RAF ‘STRINGBAGS’
No 119 Squadron flew the Swordfish
with great success
DATABASE:
DH84
DRAGON
de Havilland’s
popular inter-
war twin is
described by
James Kightly
17
19
81
33
REGULARS
20
22
78
SKYWRITERS
Q&A
Your questions asked and answered
BRIEFING FILE
Our series on aspects of aviation
technology or tactics. This time we
examine the Vulcan rotary cannon
38
43
SARO JET FLYING BOATS
The era of the flying boat airliner
was over, but it seems no-one told
Saunders-Roe
VICKERS VC11
The last major airliner design
proposed by Vickers before it was
merged out of existence
DOUBLE-DECK VC10
How to increase the capacity of the
big British four-jet? Turn it into a
double-decker
IN-DEPTH
PAGES
14
103
AEROPLANE
ARCHIVE:
‘LONGSTOP’
1947’s big UK airborne forces exercise
COVER IMAGE:
The Canadian Warplane Heritage
Museum’s Lancaster X.
ERIC DUMIGAN/CWHM
COVER IMAGE US:
Stallion 51’s two TF-51D
Mustangs.
PAUL BOWEN/STALLION 51
AEROPLANE
SEPTEMBER 2017
www.aeroplanemonthly.com
3
eading about the aircraft featured
in our special ‘British Airliners:
Project Cancelled’ section of this
month’s issue brought mixed
feelings. This is not so much the case with
the Saunders-Roe jet flying boats: the
manufacturer’s continued development
of these behemoths, as impressive as the
concepts were, can only be seen as a blind
alley. Even at the time, the signs were
clear that the era of the commercial flying
boat was over. But with Vickers/BAC’s
VC11 and double-deck VC10, things
are less clear-cut. These are designs that
were expected to compete on the global
market, to assist in bringing the British
aircraft industry back to its former position
of pre-eminence in the civil sector. But,
as with many other projects that fell into
that category during
the 25-30 years
following World War
Two, not a single
example was built.
And, as we know all
too well, many of
the designs that did
reach production —
the VC10, for one
— failed to win the
hoped-for orders.
To this day, Britain’s post-war jet
airliners provoke great debate. Take
another of those that came to fruition, the
Trident. Had British European Airways
not insisted that the design be downsized
as a knee-jerk response to falling passenger
figures, the argument goes, it could have
been a true British rival to the wildly
successful Boeing 727. Personally, I am
less than convinced. Such was the might
attained by the major US manufacturers in
the field of transport aircraft development
— whether military or civil — since
the late pre-WW2 period that their
dominance was always going to be all but
impossible to unseat. Yes, the Vickers
Viscount and BAC One-Eleven attracted
R
Editor
From the
Maybe the failure of
many post-war British
airliner designs was a
virtual inevitability, rather
than the result of home-
grown mistakes
notable orders from US carriers, but they
were rare exceptions rather than the rule.
Viewed with the benefit of hindsight,
period reports of high-level discussions
between representatives of British airliner
manufacturers and their counterparts at
the major US airlines seem, at best, highly
optimistic.
In considering the reasons for this,
one needs perhaps to take a slightly longer
view. To my mind, the failure of most
post-war British airliners to gain a solid
commercial foothold in the world market
can be put down not to decisions taken at
the time, but to developments in the pre-
war years. Consider, for instance, 1934’s
MacRobertson Air Race. It was won by
a British aeroplane, but in the form of a
purpose-built racer. Behind the DH88
Comet finished
two advanced
American airliners,
the Douglas DC-2
and Boeing 247.
Look what designs
followed in their
wake — helped, of
course, by the vast
industrial capacity
built up in the USA
during hostilities. Maybe the failure of
concepts like the Vickers designs discussed
in this magazine was a virtual inevitability,
rather than the result of home-grown
political and commercial mistakes.
Whatever the truth, it’s one of the reasons
why these topics remain so fascinating
even now.
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AEROPLANE…
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@HistoryInTheAir
CONTRIBUTORS
THIS MONTH
LUIGINO CALIARO
With the help of two
former Alitalia pilots,
together with some
superb historical imagery
drawn from friends’
collections, Luigino this
month tells the unusual
story of how the Italian
national airline briefly used
the Aermacchi MB326 for pilot instruction. The
pretty little Italian jet trainer is one of the more
unusual types to have worn the livery of a
European flag-carrier, but it proved very effective
in the role.
BRUCE HALES-DUTTON
“I recently had my first
flight in a double-deck
airliner”, reports Bruce.
“While I find it fascinating
that British Aircraft
Corporation engineers
were beavering away on a
two-tier version of the
much-loved VC10 four
decades before the A380, I’m not sure I’d have
wanted to fly on it. What’s really interesting,
though, is that they were considering wide-body
layouts as their counterparts in Seattle were
thinking along similar lines. The difference
being, of course, that BAC’s work led to the
promising Three-Eleven, which was cancelled in
the year the first 747 arrived at Heathrow.”
JAMES KIGHTLY
James enjoys travelling in
inter-war airliners when
and where possible —
including Stan Smith’s
DH84 Dragon, flown by
Andrew Schooler in New
Zealand. Working on the
Dragon Database and
reading
Flight
and
The
Aeroplane
to research it felt like going back to
the early thirties for a week, when aviation’s
horizons were very different. Today, the Dragon
is mostly eclipsed by the Dragon Rapide, but
James hopes this feature will bring back some
credit to a reliable old stager.
Subscribers to
Aeroplane
will receive the
2016 Index, kindly compiled by Vicky
Hales-Dutton, free with this issue. We
hope you find it useful. If you’d like your
own copy, why not take out a subscription?
Our latest great-value offer is featured on
pages 24-25.
Ben Dunnell
RICHARD PAYNE
“Already being interested
in airports and airlines,
living near Hatfield I was
able to visit the site and
see the BAe 146 gestate
from wooden mock-up to
flying prototype”, recalls
Richard. “The gift of the
excellent
Project
Cancelled
book instilled in
me a love of all things unbuilt of any genre, and
in 2004 my own book
Stuck on the Drawing
Board
was published. Over 20 years I have had
articles published in many periodicals on both
aircraft and anything British.”
ESTABLISHED 1911
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 years until 1998.
4
www.aeroplanemonthly.com
AEROPLANE
SEPTEMBER 2017

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