Researching Bristol Brabazon
 

I am writing a piece for publication on the Bristol Brabazon (Bristol Type 147), last seen in the skies around 1954.

There's not much of the Brabazon left, but I'm hoping to speak to someone who saw the aircraft fly, flew in it or who has any inside knowledge about the design and construction of the plane. I'd also like any photos, exterior or interior of the aircraft.

I'm particularly interested in the reasons the Brabazon did not proceed to production. I'm aware of the changes in passenger demand which doomed the project, but I'd also like any information on whether the engineers' practice of minimising metal thicknesses throughout the design induced premature metal fatigue.

I'm in South Australia, and I would like to at least complete the initial article without visiting Bristol, but if all goes well I would like to expand the article into something longer in which case a visit to Old Blighty would be worthwhile.

My email address is [email protected]

Thanks in anticipation.

Tim Simpson aka RJM

Brabazon Committee's Type I, December,1942, was inspired by US schemes - Consolidated XC-99, Lockheed XRO-6 Constitution, Boeing 377 (in its original 6-engine guise), Douglas XC-74. Perception was that size mattered - like pre-War Transatlantic liner Blue Ribbon contenders - and that 1950's luxury business would be won in elegant aerial hotels. All of them failed because that's not what passengers were prepared to pay for. By late-1947 wondrously capable DC-6/L-749 had defined the airline business. UK tried to put turbines on T.167 Mark 2 and did so on T.175 Britannia, but enhanced DC-7/L-1049 did for them. Any production commitment would have been by Bring Over American Currency about 1949, by when they just wanted anything that was not a Tudor or Hermes and was made on US W.Coast, and UK was devalued, cold and bankrupt. The fatigue issue (5,000hr. structural life, given the Pacific 75ton Bomber origin of the design) was not then understood and is an excuse emerging in hindsight. Go to Beaverbrook's 1944 Air Transport Committee Secretary P.Masefield's Flight Path where he has a Chapter on his innovation - a slide rule over the economics of Committee Types, demonstrating none could ever break even.

Tim,

Suggest you try and get hold of a copy of the following DVD, it has lots of info on it on the Brabazon by the people who built it :-

Bristol Aircraft, a century of flight produced by 1st take productions - www.1st-take.com

also might be worth seeing if you can get in touch with Walter Gibb who was the Bill Pegg's co-pilot on the first flight of the Brabazon and later became it's second captain.
I also suggest seeing if you can get a copy of Sir Archibold Russell's autobiography available from airlife publications ISBN 1-85310-234-2. Also try and contact Oliver Deardon of the Bristol Aero Collection he has lots of contacts who will be able to give you more info on the Brabazon.

PM me if you want to contact him - i have his phone number.

Hope this is of help.

brgds

W.G

Thanks tornadoken and Whispering Giant for the information.

I'm aware of a 1942 agreement between the US and UK dividing efforts towards transports (US) and bombers (UK) (although I haven't yet seen a copy) and of the 'Types' that followed the Brabazon Committee's report.

I was wondering about the fatigue issue, given the pre-Comet understanding of it. Thanks for the tip, tornadoken. The business of so many savvy people missing the mark completely about the future of air travel is very interesting. They were 180 deg out. The story of the other Types is interesting too. I'd called the Bristol Britannia a success in certain roles. I don't think the 170 Bristol Freighter was one of the 'Type' aircraft but they were very popular around Australia and NZ until relatively recently.

Anyway, thanks very much for the information. I knew Pprune would deliver!

I'll PM you, WG

I'm aware of a 1942 agreement between the US and UK dividing efforts towards transports (US) and bombers (UK)
There was no US veto on UK airliners: this is a misreading of Lend/Lease Act requirement that recipients not copy or sell US supplies. Priority in production was agreed as bombers/UK, transports/US. This was not to inhibit new US bombers, nor to impede Cabinet Committee on Reconstruction Problems from examining airliners. War Cabinet Minutes W.M.(43).35, 25/2/43, SecState for Air approving spend on Brabazon Types: “We will not accept a solution (to Civil Air Transport) on the basis that we won’t build any a/c and we want authority (to) plan some production” (allocation of strategic materials was prioritised, 1941-45, by a Joint US/UK Committee in light of military exigency).

UK Aero has been superb at spin, to obscure the true causes of its shortcomings - which were that, commercially, it was hotbed of cold feet, expecting the State to fund its R&D and provide its markets.(Beaverbrook, attributed to (Sir)Peter Masefield by Nahum,P.30 in R.Bud/P.Gummett,Cold War,Hot Science,Harwood,1999.)

WG

I am sorry to say that Walter Gibb died over a year ago

JF

Thank's for letting me know John, Met him on numerous occasions when i was living in Bristol - but lost contact with him 6-7 years ago.

Do you still do bit's and pieces up at Cranfield ??? can remember seeing you there about 4-5 years ago walking around the campus whilst i was there doing my ATPL written exams with Cabair.

brgds
W.G

I came across a slightly "off the wall" fact about the Brabazon many years ago when I owned a Bristol motor car, a 1957 405 sports saloon (there goes what's left of my incognito!).

Apparently the air intake on the Bristol 404 and 405 cars - which were built in the 1950s at Filton by the aircraft company - was a scaled down version of the Brabazon air intake.

The eminently sensible engineers at Filton semed to have realised that once you've designed a good intake, you can use it elsewhere in the company!

I'll try and dig out a photograh in illustration.....

These do?

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...as/bristol.jpg

Thanks again. I'm sorry (for my sake as well as his, I must be frank) to hear of Mr Gibbs' death. I was looking forward to meeting him. I hope there is someone I can talk to who flew on the aircraft.

It looks as though my article may become a documentary.

tornadoken the British aero industry looks fairly Byzantine. Can I use 'hotbed of cold feet'? :ok:

Tornadotoken - there's pretty good coverage of the British attitude toward civil aviation development in the Flight archives for 1945.

forget

excellent pictures - better than mine I'm sure. For the petrolhead/anoraks, your picture is the (even rarer) 404, mine was the four-door 405, although identical from the front bumper to the A-post.

More spookily, mine was the exact same colour as your pictured 404, and it wasn't a standard Bristol colour either ....

I'll try even harder to find my picture now...

Edited to add:

http://i334.photobucket.com/albums/m.../4050001-1.jpg

The photo (taken in 1976) has faded somewhat - it was really the same colour as forget's 404 picture. Originally both would have had a single spotlight in the centre of the air intake - which must have played havoc with the airflow and is now illegal anyway!

WG

Yes to your query. I am off there again in two weeks for this year's stint.

Regards

JF

Brabazon video
 

Just in case there's still somebody who has not seen it, this ten minute Brabazon clip is really worthwhile:

YouTube - Bristol Brabazon

The pre first flight discussion about the aircraft being too large for the traffic density of the times is eerily reminiscent of the same Airbus/Boeing arguments today on the A380!

The extended runway at Filton has always been known as the "Brabazon runway". This seems inaccurate as many aircraft manufacturing plants have lived with notably short runways, you need nothing like the performance with new, empty, minimum fuel aircraft. Boeing's Seattle Renton plant has always managed to ship out swept wing, runway hungry jets like the B-52 or the 707 from a small strip squashed in beside the lake. Likewise the VC-10s that went out of Weybridge.

I wonder why the same approach could not be contemplated for the less-demanding, prop-driven, straight-wing Brabazon. The runway extension caused a considerable amount of dislocation at the west of the airfield and cut through the new Bristol by-pass dual carriageway that ran from Patchway to Westbury, which had only been completed just before WW2 and was never properly used. No substitute for the road was really available until the M5 came along in the 1970s.

Although I am just too young to remember the Brabazon our family lived in south Bristol at the time and my father spoke about an occasion when the aircraft came in at low level over the house on a westerly heading for an overflight of Whitchurch airfield, then Bristol's airport, who were possibly having an open day/small airshow. Now the runway there would have been inadequate for the Brabazon. I believe it might have still been grass.

It seemed that about half of Bristol claimed some personal knowledge/contact with Bill Pegg, such was his charisma and prominence.

Always seemed that the Brabazon had been designed and developed quite independently of any market analysis of customer airlines for what they wanted. The same was true of the Saunders-Roe Princess, a flying boat of comparable size. In fact the whole set of Brabazon Committee designs seems to have been put together without any reference to who might buy or use them.

Apart from the excellent coverage of the Brabazon, the YouTube footage got me thinking.

All those young lads on the derelict building cheering the aircraft into the sky. No "Health and Safety" gestapo clearing them off, no-one worried about a "security threat" to Britain's #1 prestge project at the end of the Berlin Airlift period and the first post war Communist scare and no derisory remarks in the commentary about their interest.

Fast forward 60 years and any such gathering would be swiftly cleared by a heavy handed mix of Health and Safety and anti terrorist police and the media would shake its head and poke fun at the "trainspotting mentality", whilst at the same time bemoaning 13 year olds carrying and using knives whilst their less dangerous bretheren head for obesity in front of their games consoles.

So much misdirection.....so much lost.

Boysie from Only Fools & Horses - "I'm going to Bristol to see a man about a Capri...I wish it was the other way around."

One of my favorite aviation books is James Gilbert's The World's Worst Aircraft.

The Brabazon had a chapter to itself.

There is/was a US Transport Aircraft Trader as Bristol Associates. He chose that name after discovering the meaning of Cockney Bristols *.

Filton runway extension went up to Cabinet for Approval, because it involved demolishing the village of Charlton and rehousing its denizens. In 1947 we had no $ and few markets, and saw airliners as a National opportunity, where such UK products as tractors, lorries, domestic appliances, radios, movies, had no chance against US' volume/ quality. So Govt. paid 100% R&D of Brabazon Types and gave T.167's safe first flight, thus workers' future employment, priority over their settled housing. Maybe it could have unstuck from the existing piste, but contemplate the blow to prestige if it had slithered into the village.

Helpful is M.Phipp, The Brabazon Committee and Airliners 1945 - 1960, 0752443747.

* rhyming slang: soccer club Bristol City, lovely xxxxx

Filton runway extension went up to Cabinet for Approval, because it involved demolishing the village of Charlton and rehousing its denizens.

Sounds like the same arguments used to justify the disruption caused by the roadworks required for A380 road shipments into Toulouse??

Zut, alors, I didn't say that???....