PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - The other E.E. classic, the Canberra. (Merged 23rd July '04)
Old 25th Mar 2004, 22:00
  #96 (permalink)  
Beeayeate
 
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The Canberra was a delicately balanced aircraft, not in the air I mean on the deck. A few times I've seen the result of filling No 3 tank faster than the forward tanks; or, more usually, de-fueling No 1 and 2 before No 3. The elegantly gentle way the airframe would slowly tilt backwards onto the bump-stop under the tail. The sudden realisation the "see-saw" was happening and the rush by all the blokes to get under the rear fuselage to support it whilst the tail-stay was pinned into the bump-stop. All accompanied by much shoutng and cries of "Ooops. . ." etc mingling with an irate chiefy's choice words.

And when it snowed. . .! With some sort of met warning we could fit the tail-stays before knocking off for the night, but once, in Germany winter of 1962, all the sqn blokes were called out at 0'dark-hundred due to a sudden, un-forcast snow storm. Met reckoned it was too cold to snow, but it did anyway. Had two kites on their bump-stops before we could tail-stay them all. As I recall however, no damage was ever done to Canberras that sat on their ar$e, just eardrum damage from the chiefy.
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