PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - TSR-2 (Merged a few times)
View Single Post
Old 25th Jan 2003, 01:10
  #55 (permalink)  
GotTheTshirt
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Dunstable, Beds UK
Posts: 545
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Tsr 2

Bit along the lines of the Nene thread but the actions of the "Government " on aviation will always be source of amazement!

Aerodocks at Southampton developed a system of aircraft recovery based on the hovercraft principle.
Very clever ( well I though so! ) consisted of a series double floored 8 foot square" boxing rings" that were about 2 foot thick with plates on all four sides. Each unit had a mounting for a Coventry Climax engine ( I think!) driving a big fan on the top of each unit.
You decided how many units you needed for the weight of the aircraft and then bolted 2, 4 or 6 of them together with the side plates removed where the squares butted together and mounted a Climax unit on one of the units. A skirt went all round the perimiter and "voila" a hover craft.

I was working as one of the aeroplane interface consultants getting weights, where to lift etc!. The lift was actually done by airbags on the platforms.
The first demo was on a Hermes (??) at London., across a ditch, which was of course the sales pitch that we could cross any kind of terrain ( and water)

Then I got a call to go to RAF Henlow.

I got here and there was nothing spectacular, it was an RAF grass airfield with light aircraft and gliders. We all met and went across the airfield with all our machinery to a couple of hangar right on the far side or the airport.

Well what a sight. In one hangar was a complete TSR2 and the other hangar had a guy breaking up Shackletons ( I think !!)
Well we did our party piece and lifted the TRS2 on the 2 hover platfroms, 1 under each wing, and transported it to the main airport area where it was loaded onto a low loader and sent the a RAF museum ( was it Cosford?).

The aircraft was complete and looked suberb. Another "Labour" victim!

I was tolds that particular one had flown and I have no idea how it got the Henlow but I am sure some pruner will know

That the nice thing about Pprune you can come up with long forgotten tales and some will always fill in the gaps !!
GotTheTshirt is offline