Blackburn Beverley Albums
 

Just completed Albums on that withdrawal from Empire Workhorse the Blackburn Beverley C1 with Notes and Slideshows on Caz Caswell's Aviation Photographs a non-commercial website - As the Beverley keeps 'popping up' in the forum I felt it worth passing the details on.:

A three way joint venture, with Robin A Walker supplying many of the Photographs, Caz Caswell the rest plus most of the Notes and yours truly the remaining notes and website build.

Album 1, Album 2 and Main Album Notes

For each picture we have tried to provide a thumbnail Summaryof the Aircraft's Career. The Main Album Notes covers more ground and is divided into sections similar in concept to a Wiki (but not quite). Caz and I have tried to be as accurate as possible and although not always successfully, limit my tendency to ramble.

I am sure the Guru's will find errors (all of which will be mine) and if PM'ed once my brain has recovered will attempt to address corrections.
Opssys

Very nice work. Reminds me of some interesting trips I had while with the Oxford UAS courtesy of 47 Sqd at Abingdon, especially one to the SBAC at Farnborough in 1961.
beverleys (lgarey)

Laurence

Ah, the good old four fan cantilever council house! Memories of 34 Sqn at Seletar.:)

Bob C

If of use, I have a copy of a photograph of the smallest (at the time) Beverley built:confused:. Re. the narrative on site, the mention of the main fuselage side plates (Elephant's Ears) cites the wrong reason for their presence. They were added following a combined Heavy drop and Para trial sortie - dropping Para's from the boom. The Para's were dummies for the exercise and when released, disappeared from view rather quickly!!:eek: Not surprising really, as they had shot straight into the open freight bay!!:D Enter the 'mod-men' with the Elephant's Ears and thereafter the 'meat-bombs' went where they were intended to:D A real mixture of pleasure for some memorable flying and sadness for lost friends and acquaintances.As is often said, we will never see the like again.:{.

Beverleys
 

Sadly, I am too young to remember the Beverley in its flying days, but I thought I would contribute a link to the Blackburn Beverley Association's excellent website, dedicated to the only survivor, XB259. Go to:

The Blackburn Beverley Association - Beverley XB259

I saw this aircraft in 1994 at the Museum of Army Transport in, appropriately enough, the town of Beverley. When that museum unfortunately closed in 2003, the owner of Fort Paull-a museum not too far away from Beverley-bought XB259 and, at great cost (and all credit to him for this) had her dismantled, transported to and re-assembled at Fort Paull, where I saw her again in 2006.

I also remember XH124 outside the RAF Museum at Hendon-tho the less said here, in light of previous controversy on the net, re its demise, the better, tho you will see my view on this if you go to a photo I took of the aircraft in December 1986, at:

JetPhotos.Net Photo » XH124 (CN: 1030) United Kingdom - Royal Air Force (RAF) Blackburn Beverley C.1 by Michael Blank

See also:

JetPhotos.Net Photo » XH124 (CN: 1030) United Kingdom - Royal Air Force (RAF) Blackburn Beverley C.1 by Michael Blank

Cornish Jack.
Re the Elephant Ears. Thank you for the correction. While Caz is collating the 'errors' passed to us from site emails, I shall will try to think of a different form of words than: .
Unfortunately I cannot get the phrase out of my subconscious!
Maybe alcoholic beverages will assist.

I believe I'm right in saying '259 was originally flown from Luton to the airfield at Paull ( Sqdn Ldr Rich Rhodes, Farnborough TP, was captain) prior to being moved to Leconfield. I can vaguely remember details of this airfield in Pooleys as being 800m oriented on a QDM of about 12/30. I have failed to find this on googlearth although I can find Fort Paull so it's obviously long gone, anyone know where it was?

According to my old OS Map, it was centred on:

53°42'22.10"N
0°10'50.40"W

chevvron,

According to the UK Airfield Catalogue kml file, Paull airfield was 2 miles ESE of Ft. Paull, at 53° 42' 22"N, 000° 10' 55"W.

A kml file is a Google Earth overlay file. This particular kml file is a "must have" for AH&N readers :ok:

It can be downloaded from UK Airfield Catalogue

Edit: for some reason, ZH875's post did not show up when I started my reply. At least we agree on the location!

I love "Auster Grange" just to the west of the airfield :)

48/34 Changi/Seletar
 

In another place, it has been pointed out we were not entirely accurate re 48/34 Squadron. Although, this and other corrections will be done on the Website over the weekend as I am dealing with the Gurus of PPRune I better sort it out here before others spot it:

Current Entry: 48/34 Squadron:
With the RAF Far East Air Force in Singapore was 48 Squadron, which flew a mixed fleet of Aircraft including a Beverley Flight, but on the 1st October 1960 the Beverley flight was given full Squadron Status, becoming 34 Squadron at RAF Changi, finally disbanding there in January 1968 and, has at time of writing never been re-activated

Corrected Entry: 48/34 Squadron
With the RAF Far East Air Force in Singapore was 48 Squadron, which flew a mixed fleet of Aircraft including a Beverley Flight from its base at RAF Changi.

On 1st October 1960 the Beverley flight was given full Squadron Status, becoming 34 Squadron and promptly moving to RAF Seletar, which remained their base until disbanded in January 1968. At time of writing 34 Squadron has never since been re-activated.

Just north of where the airfield is shown on the OS map there is Oxgoddes Farm, which contains something which certainly looks like a blister hangar (53 deg 42' 27.1" N 0 deg 11' 1.3" W)and possibly another hangar and parking area more recent. Can't get my googlearth to work but using flashearth.com instead.

Beverley at Paull
 

Interesting posts re Paull airfield. I read that XB259 stood, for some time, on the airfield, surrounded by nothing, until it was moved to the Museum of Army Transport at Beverley. It was quite a sight apparently, in the middle of the very flat countryside there and with almost all traces of the airfield gone.

Here's a picture of XB259 at Paull:

Photos: Blackburn B-101 Beverley C1 Aircraft Pictures | Airliners.net

It looks in its element to me. One of my UAS QFIs was an ex-Beverley captain. He told us that one of their exercises was a tactical landing into a ploughed field with the brakes locked. They didn't do it very often, because they had to change all the wheels afterwards!

I managed to get a good copy of Bill Overton's excellent book "Blackburn Beverley" by Midland Counties 1990 for £10 . The book is quite rare and is a good reference work .

All this about the Bev, and no one has mentioned pumping the oil!

I have made the corrections to the errors Caz and I are currently aware of.
One thing that I think we maybe missing (pumping oil not withstanding) is brake fires being a serious problem in the early days, or is this misinformation?

As I allow page caching on these albums, so if anyone wants to see the changes to the Main notes, they may have to Refresh (IE), or Reload (Firefox).

Opssys

Beverley Photos

Some from my album.

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r.../Beverley1.jpg
14th February 1958 - RAF Gan

This 47 Sqn Abingdon-based Beverley "K", serial number XB263, pilot F/Lt Peter Dudley, flew in the advance contingent of Pakistani workers who were to do most of the construction work to convert Gan from a sleepy island with a short crushed-coral landing strip to a busy RAF staging post with an 8,694ft/2,650m long concrete runway.

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r.../Beverley2.jpg

Personnel clustered around the aircraft add scale to its size.

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r.../Beverley3.jpg

A close up of the nose of the aircraft shows that it sports the arms of the town of Abingdon (where it was based) and above the arms the ribbon of the GSM annotated underneath “Malaya”.

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...heet-front.jpg

Finally, the dreaded Beverley "Trim Sheet" which for the first time for an RAF aircraft (I think), need calculations for the vertical C-of-G as well as the usual ones for the horizontal C-of-G.

Warmtoast.
Thank you for an Interesting Post, Pictures and although I had heard about the requirement for Vertical Trimming, I never thought I would see a Beverley Trim Sheet (from memory the person who told me about the Vertical Trim used words much stronger than 'dreaded').
Opssys

The three colour photos shown on the Abingdon page were taken at Bicester, not at Abingdon.

Royal Air Force Abingdon April and May 1968 - Index - 9 Photographs plus Slideshow - Caz Caswell's Aviation Photographs Web Site

Abingdon Albums Correction
 

Amos.
You are correct :\. This was one of the first Albums on the revised site and in first flush of enthusiasm we made a mistake. It has been on the list to correct for about a year. But as no one had noticed :bored: it kept slipping down the priorities.

As a completely rebuilt Abingdon Album is in the process of being put togther, you spotted an error that was/is planned to be corrected by the Weekend !

Opssys
Note to Self: When error spotted don't put off correcting because the Gurus of PPRune will be Watching!