A new replacement for the A400 has just hit the market

[NutLoose]

It's bigger and can haul more than a Herc :E

Shorts Belfast SC-5 Super Transporter for sale by Flightstar Trading LLC from 1968 (http://www.aviatorsale.com/aix7529/)

[charliegolf]

But guess why it was nicknamed the 'Belslow'!

CG

[99luftballon]

It can't be that slow with only 11200 hours!

Either that or it's not gone far in the 42 years since built...

If the airframe hours are correct, then it's probably fresher than all but two frames in the RAF's entire transport fleet!

[howiehowie93]

The MOD should buy them back as a stop gap !!

[Standby Scum]

Wasn't the Belfast built to transport the Chieftain / Sherman? tank but the internal fuselage width was 2" too narrow? 60,000 lbs of stressed flooring as well.

[LowObservable]

It will have another 100 hours once you get it back from the land of Oz.

[cornish-stormrider]

calling all really old lineys...........

here comes the bus - max speed 0.1 mach

[The Helpful Stacker]

Just 100 hours?

It'd be quicker to ship it back via sea wouldn't it?

[sled dog]

Saw the old girl at Cairns a couple of years ago, nice shiny paint job. But who would buy a museum piece ?

[Fareastdriver]

I think it is the end of the road for the Belslow. There was one at Manston awaiting the magic wand but it did not materialise. Some great loads, railway carriages, etc but never good enough to pay its way.
At the end of the road it was just a big fat Brittannia.

[Motleycallsign]

Fareastdriver you can thank that nice Mr Wilson and his cronies for that. Original design was for four jet engines and a high 'V' tail. Ooh look a 42 yr old C-17......................

[Seldomfitforpurpose]

Remember arriving at Bzn in 1975 and working on them as a very young Nav Inst mechanic, lovely aircraft :ok:

[bingofuel]

Similar thread on 'freight dogs'

[mayorofgander]

SFFP

You old git!!:ok:

Later...MoG

[denachtenmai]

Flew back from Akrotiri once, in the 60's, in a "Fastback", much more comfy than a Herk.
ISTR that there was a speedo just by the skipper's nose steering wheel.must have been of some use!:hmm:

[Type1106]

Joking aside, I think you'll find the interior dimensions of the Belfast are almost identical to the A400 - and the A400 still won't be able to carry any main battle tank (unlike the C17)

[mr fish]

not carrying a MBT won't be a problem.

after the SDR, we won't have any:{

[NutLoose]

So I take it when you see them throwing stores out of the back of a Belfast in flight, they are simply getting rid of the stuff that has time expired and past it's sell by date since departing ? :p

[sisemen]

Remember sitting on the pax deck on a SCT sortie and watching the wing and the two starboard engines all doing their own thing during a practice stall. Nothing, but nothing, was moving in synchronisation with anything else!

[pontifex]

I seem to recall that, shortly after entry to service, the Belslo carried out a non-stop AAR flight to either Singapore or OZ. On arrival the captain sent signal to MOD (or was it the War Office in those days.) "Arrived safely, no signs of scurvy on board". Bad for his career seemingly.

[Father Jack Hackett]

Type 1106,

No coincidence about the comparisons with the A400. I was working in Shorts circa 93/94 when a delegation from what was then known as the Euroflag Consortium came along to hoover up every scrap of data available on the Belfast - there's a lot if the old girl in the A400.

Also in my time in Shorts I came across info on a concept from the early seventies involving the grafting of a C-141 wing and engine set to the fuselage of a Belfast so we could have had a C-17 back in the seventies! Sounds ridiculous but true.

[BEagle]

Wasn't there also an even earlier proposal to try and graft a Comet wing onto the still-born HS681? The British jet the RAF was to have instead of the C-130 - which met the same fate as the P1154 and TSR2....:mad:

[Wander00]

Slight drift - through my pre-retirement job I knew a guy called "Titch" Taylor. He had been (amongst other things, including a DFC on
Mosquitos), Chief Test Pilot for Shorts so tested the Belfast. Apparently, at the time there was a newspaper headline "Britain's shortest test pilot flies world's largest plane". Coincidentally, my predecessor in that last job was at the time the Belfast was being flight tested, CO of the local UAS, and had at times been Titch's co-pilot.