Strange type?

[Flap40]

I saw this on a poster in Fife a couple of months ago.

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~jodel/photos/DSC00070.JPG

It's not a type that I recognise. Can anone ID it?

[Peter Barron]

Its the Bristol Brigand.

Peter.

[Flap40]

Thanks for that. I now see why I could not find it. The poster was advertising an exibition about the Fife fishing villages in WW2 so I assumed (incorrectly) that this would be a WW2 type. At least my hunch that it was a Bristol was correct (shape of the nacelles).

[BEagle]

A very nice pair of Bristols.....:E

Sorreeee!

[chevvron]

Remember reading about the Brigand. Post WW2; used in SE Asia against communist insurgents in Malaya, then became a Nav trainer and possibly target tug? I stand to be corrected on that.
Had an old Air Clues at the ATC squadron when I first joined and it had an article about the Brigand being retired from service possibly as late as 1960? Seems a bit late, they'd only just retired Lincolns then.

[BEagle]

The Brigand left RAF service in March 1958. It was the last piston engine attack aircraft flown by the RAF, but was never a target tug.

The Beaufighter soldiered on as a target tug until May 1960 in the Far East Air Force at RAF Seletar; however, 151 Sqn's last Lincolns didn't leave RAF service until May 1963.

[Dan Winterland]

Post WW2 actually. In service in 1947 (I think).

[BEagle]

Delivered to Coastal Command initially as a torpedo fighter in June 1946, but then withdrawn and rebuilt as a bomber (a sort of reverse Tornado programme?) and delivered in December 1948 as the B Mk 1.

[JW411]

I had a mate in the RAF who flew Brigands in the Far East. I have it in my mind that the Brigand killed a lot of pilots out there with the props coming apart.

There was also a Bristol Buckingham and a Buckmaster of similar configuration.

Certainly the last Bristol Beaufighter in service was a target tug in Singapore. I have never heard of a Brigand target tug.

[Peter Barron]

BEagle.

" Bristols " not sure what you mean, are you on about the Two lovely big Radials :E
As in " look at the radials on that " :ok:

Peter.

[brickhistory]

The dive brakes on the Brigand opened asymetrically on numerous a/c doing strikes; the sideloads ripped the props off.

This from a gent named Peter Weston who was a WOP on Lancasters during WWII, a nav/rad on Brigands, then a WOP on Sunderlands in Korea. He survived an incredible crash in a Brigand. For that story, google "Peter A. Weston."

Unfortunately, Peter died a few years ago. I had interviewed him for a Beaufighter/Brigand story. Very nice man.

[Bof]

Used at Colerne in 1953-54 (and probably earlier but not much later), equipped with AI Mk 10 for initial radar training of navigators before going to Leeming to join pilots at the Meteor NF 11 OCU.

[Noah Zark.]

Apparently at least some of the prop problems were caused by some sort of corrosion in the propellor hubs.

[chevvron]

Beagle
I bow to your superior knowledge about the retirement of the Lincoln. I based my statement on my (older) brother telling me that when he went to ATC camp at Lindholme in 1960, they'd just retired all their Lincolns to the fire dump. Certainly when I attended camp there a few years later, there was no sign of them; they had Varsities and Hastings, although the latter were grounded because of a structural problem.