Originally Posted by
brakedwell
To be honest Bergerie it surprised me too! The fact that we were slowly overhauling him surprised me. I think he was flying from Akrotiri to Nairobi while we were flying from Cairo to Nairobi, heavy with 48 tonnes of cargo. Maybe we were cruising a little faster than .82, - more 83 - 84.
48 tonnes of freight on a DC-8-54F? The max on the contemporary B707-320C was about 39 tonnes (including the pallets). I thought the DC-8-50F was only a tonne or so more than that.
But, returning to topic, the VC10 combis could only manage about half of that, which - in addition to the payload-range disparity - is another reason we (BCAL) let ours go in 1973/4.