On Saturday of this week one of my old Hercules engines is being brought back to life by some really good engineers up in North Yorkshire, I did previously loan that engine to the YAM, to fit into the Halifax, that was up there, however it came to my knowledge that the Halifax was no more, and my pristine Herc had been effectively dumped outside in the weather without any sort of protection, so after getting a little stern it was agreed that it could be collected , and so it came to pass, sadly a lot bits were missing along with a library of of paper details and boxes of spares such as plugs, spanners and like. Very sad to discover all that sort of problem.
However s group of enthusiastic and brilliant engineers contacted me and are now the owners of said Herc, they have located many parts and rebuilt the engine as well as locating and fitting a "Dumb Prop", and this Saturday it is hoped that with a few titres of primed fuel and the will of "Zeus" the Hercules will again bark out its powerful note's that will remind many of days gone by, plus it is hoped that another Herc from Stafford will also be there so we will hopefully have 28 cylinders making their muted sounds of power !.
The sad thing is that my old father has gone to the great apron in the sky, he would have loved to hear that sound again as he did way back in the 90's when my own engineers started it up for a few minutes, he spent most of WW2 in Beaufighter's, when we started the Herc in the 90's it was the first time I had seen tears rolling down his cheeks.
Our generation of "Boomers " owes an awful lot to those men and what they did, and endured, many were unlucky and didn't get back, they lucky ones just came back and got on with their lives.
Peter R-B
Lancashire for those of you who may want to see a good history of rebuilding a Bristol Herc look here........
http://bristol-hercules.co.uk covers the Engine mentioned above