17000-19000 feet....
17000 feet was almost unheard of in a Stirling I'm afraid. Most of them flew between 12000 and 16000 feet. Sir Arthur H called them his old lags.
I got to meet several ex aircrew over the years, especially when we put a book together on RAF Chedburgh a few years ago. The short wingspan was mentioned on more than one occasion and was due to the hangar door restriction. It did however make the aircraft very manouverable at lower altitudes. It could also absorb more punishment than most other aircraft in service at the time as it had air cooled Bristol Hercules engines and was built like a, and I quote, brick 5h1thouse. The other main faults was the high complex undercarriage which was prone to fail under side loading during take off swings caused by the hydraulic exactor throttle controls which were slow to respond if not primed and that the bomb bay could not accommodate any munition larger than 2000 lb.
There are various large sections left including an entire port tail plane that we found in a wood in Suffolk back in the 90's.