DH/HS/BAe Chester

[ZeBedie]

Some nice photos here:

The TruckNet UK Drivers RoundTable ? View topic - British Aerospace - Chester (http://www.trucknetuk.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=373879)

[mmatthej1]

Thanks for posting - particularly like the Comet fues negotiating The Cross in Chester - unbelievable!

[SpringHeeledJack]

Thanks for posting the link! It's always amazing to see things out of place/context and in the case of aircraft parts just how large they are when viewed away from the space of an airfield.

The photo of the Guppy reminded me of seeing them on the flightpath into Ringway during the 70's. Were Airbus parts dispatched from said airport as well as Broughton, or was there another reason for them to have been there ? Anyone remember that far back ?



SHJ

[ZeBedie]

I think the Guppy flew wings from Manchester because of the runway length at Hawarden. Certainly, the Manchester flights seemed to stop at the time the Guppy was replaced by the Beluga.,

[Duchess_Driver]

Remember seeing Guppies into Ringway as late as 1985/6...

However, IIRC the 600ST Beluga didn't start flying until the mid-90's so they must have either extended the runway at Hawarden to get the Guppies in or continued to use Guppies into Manchester long after I moved away.

I'm sure someone will be along shortly to put exact dates to it all!

Nice shots...

DD

[dereknf]

Airliners.net has photos of Guppys at Manchester until 1995 so that would tie in.
Even managed to photograph one myself in 1990. :)

Photo Search Results | Airliners.net (http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?distict_entry=true&aircraft_genericsearch=Aero Spacelines 377 Guppy&placesearch=Manchester - International (Ringway) (MAN / EGCC))

[SpringHeeledJack]

Out of interest, where were the wings loaded onto the Guppy at Manchester ? It must have been somewhere that the logistics of the wings could have been executed without being near other aircraft. Also what road route would the wings have taken from the factory, bearing in mind it was a regular thing and the loads were oversize ?



SHJ

[Shaggy Sheep Driver]

I remember flying into Manchester in a Citabria in the '80s and getting parked next to a Guppy out on the apron opposite the stands, facing the terminal. In those happy days we could wander round having a good close look at this whale of an aeroplane! Got some photos somewhere.

I also remember the many hold-ups on the M56 as wings were trucked in to Manchester from Hawarden. The vehicle took up 2 lanes of the motorway and had a police escort and even in the lighter traffic back then it caused major tail backs.

[WHBM]

The Comet 2 fuselage negotiating Chester Cross in the early 1950s had been assembled under subcontract by Shorts in Belfast. They were brought by sea from alongside the factory there to Ellesmere Port, then by road to Hawarden. The current main road bridge at Queensferry didn't exist until the early 1960s and the old truss bridge, still alongside, probably didn't have the headroom for the load. Given the large scale of the Hawarden plant, it's not clear why they needed to sub out the Comet fuselage, but DH does seem to have had plenty of work at the time, with Comets, Doves and various military types.

[DaveReidUK]

Given the large scale of the Hawarden plant, it's not clear why they needed to sub out the Comet fuselagePolitics - to boost employment in NI. Same reason Shorts ended up building Britannias.

[bvcu]

wonder if there any pics of the 2nd TSR2 falling off a jack-knifed artic at Boscombe......

[ZeBedie]

wonder if there any pics of the 2nd TSR2 falling off a jack-knifed artic at Boscombe......

Hard to imagine a more valuable aircraft than a TSR2 prototype, at the time the program was still going ahead. Must have been some red faces there?

[bvcu]

thats why it wasnt already flying by the time the axe fell !

[spekesoftly]

Given the large scale of the Hawarden plant, it's not clear why they needed to sub out the Comet fuselage, but DH does seem to have had plenty of work at the time, with Comets, Doves and various military types.

The following link explains the reason why, and the photos illustrate plenty of work at the time.

http://www.flightglobal.com/FlightPDFArchive/1954/1954%20-%200905.PDF

[WHBM]

I don't think I've ever seen such a tightly-packed assembly line as that one in the foreground of the main picture above, with assembled Herons interleaved with assembled Doves facing the other way to fit the wings around each other. For such a large (which it was) factory they certainly seem to have had all the floorspace filled.

[Wander00]

I remember in the 60s being taken round the Hawarden factory by a friend of my Dad's, who was the area man for Customs and Excise. Very interesting ISTR

[ANW]

The first Airbus wing set was flown from Manchester Ringway by Super Guppy (http://www.edendale.co.uk/MAIP/guppy.1.html).

Memory is hazy, as far as I can recall no Guppy has landed at HAW. Possibly a fly past at the annual families' sports day, but never any departing wing carrying flights, due runway length. Unless someone can say otherwise?

The runway was later lengthened at HAW specifically to allow Beluga flights, which nowadays can often see two or three Beluga movements on a daily basis.

[Art Smass]

Guppies certainly had not landed at Hawarden up to August 94 when I emigrated to the land of Oz - we did have a couple of family Day fly-overs as previously mentioned (82 was one I think).

Liverpool Speke was also regularly used for guppy flights in the 80's - it used to park around the back of theold terminal near the Post Office building - remember looking over an ABC Argosy there one day while waiting for the Guppy to taxi in.

Good days....

[chevvron]

Problem with Guppies which restricted the airports they could use wasn't the runway length but the fact the the main undercarriage track was well over 15m, and as many airports only have 15m wide taxiways......
On the rare occasions they visited Farnborough we simply taxied and parked them on the subsidiary runways.

[WHBM]

Politics - to boost employment in NI. Same reason Shorts ended up building Britannias.
I'm not so sure it was politics that determined this, more some excessively over-optimistic sales projections that led to setting up multiple assembly plants which in the end were not necessary. This applied to both the Comet and the Britannia. For the Comet, it wasn't just the initial Comets, as a pioneer jet, that had the inappropriate sales projections - the Comet 4 production was split between Hatfield and Chester as well, by when it was apparent it was well outclassed by the 707/DC8, and in the end only about 80 frames were produced, well within the capability of one of the plants alone.

Even the BAC One-Eleven set up a second assembly line at Weybridge, which produced some of the early ones in parallel with Hurn, just the same as had been done with the Viscount. It all must have been great for the toolmakers producing duplicate production facilities.

[ZeBedie]

I remember watching a Guppy takeoff from Finkenwerder, which had quite a long runway. It used all of it!

[Allan Lupton]

I'm not sure how WHBM comes to "the Comet 4 production was split between Hatfield and Chester as well, by when it was apparent it was well outclassed by the 707/DC8, and in the end only about 80 frames were produced, well within the capability of one of the plants alone".

What seems to be missing from that statement is any reference to the production rate which can be, and was, important if the real orders we had were to be met.
ETA Oh and the actual production numbers were 29 Srs 4, 18 Srs 4B and 28 Srs 4C plus 49 Nimrod MR1 so "about 80" should be 75 or 124 depending on how you think of things.

As a former Hatfield man I will say that Chester had a reputation as the best production site in the de Havilland enterprise and one of the best in the industry as a whole. Airbus wing production didn't go there by accident.

[Art Smass]

"As a former Hatfield man I will say that Chester had a reputation as the best production site in the de Havilland enterprise ..".

Nice to see Hatfield finally admit it:ok: