'Old Timer' Truckies - Why Was The Belfast Replaced By The Herc?

[seafuryfan]

...Helping to respond to a question on a 'Prune' like website for old aeroplanes (to which there will be many viewers), could you answer this please?

Thank you

[ORAC]

I think you'd be better off asking the question down in Aviation History and Nostalgia rather than here.

[adrian mole]

The Belfast (good old BelSlow) was not replaced by the Herc. 10 aircraft were procured for the RAF as long range heavy freighters. The last one was delivered to 53 Sqn at Brize in late 1966. Sadly they were disposed of by a Labour Government as part of defence cuts in 1976 leaving the Hercs as the only long range freighters left. Six years later we spent a lot of dosh hiring them back to haul 'outsize' cargo to Ascension during the Falklands campaign. The money made set up Heavylift for many years after that. Just recently the RAF had to move SeaKing helios to Cyprus by sea whereas with the Belfast you remove the main and tail rotors and wheel them in!

[Archimedes]

Just to add to that - if you look at the ISD for the C-130 and the Belfast, you can see that the types were complementary. The Belfast, as AM says, entered service in 1966, and the Herc came in the following year (or maybe even in '66 as well?).

The Herc was purchased when a Hawker Siddley short-range/VSTOL (yes, V/STOL!) transport design was cancelled. The decision to withdraw from 'East of Suez' removed some of the rationale behind the Belfast (if you were a bean-counter, that is); when the dream combination of a Wilson government, followed by Ted Heath and coupled with a world recession in the mid-70s appeared, the Mason Review in 1975 cut back heavily on defence spending. The transport fleet was heavily cut bakc - 2 Herc squadrons went along with the two Britannia squadrons. I think that the Andovers also went as a result of this. The Belfast was simply removed as part of a wider review. And we've been regretting it ever since...

[Rattus]

Someone please correct me if my memory is playing tricks, but wasn't the first thing the MoD did after selling the Belfasts, to charter one back to lift the Hawk simulator to Valley as it wouldn't fit through the Menai Bridge?

I also recall that Heavylift had some difficulty obtaining CofAs for the fleet as they didn't have stick-shakers. It was pointed out that they would only be flown by ex-RAF types with N,000 hrs on type, who could be relied on to recognise a stall, but this seemingly cut little ice with the men from the ministry.

Rattus

[Lukeafb1]

Probably totally apocryphal, but on one of its original proving flights via that well known holiday isle, one of the trials crew mentioned that it had the range of a shuttlecock and had to go round the Alps, cos' it couldn't get over them!!

[Specnut727]

Mike, any more info on it's destination 'down under'. Maybe I'll get to see it ! I don't know of a Belfast visiting oz before.

[Lukeafb1]

Mike, fair point, (although I did say the story was probably apocryphal!).

The specific airframe I was referring to, did carry shedloads of test equipment/racks and about twenty civilian boffins (or freeloaders - depending on your perspective). But I doubt that that lot would have approached anything like a normal load.

[seafuryfan]

Thanks for the replies to my post - interesting.

[Lybid]

See 'BELFAST The story of Short's Big Lifter' by Molly O'Loughlin White.
Published by Midland Counties Publications
ISBN 0 904597 52 0

Yours
Lybid :)