The "Whistling wheelbarrow"
 

The Argosy is an aircraft I remember well in service, both civil and military. So can I please hear your memories of working on, flying or being on board this very distinctive aircraft.

To jog your memories, here are links to the only four photos of Argosies that I have. Firstly, a RAF aircraft at Biggin in May 1973, at the annual airshow:

JetPhotos.Net Photo » XN814 United Kingdom - Royal Air Force (RAF) Armstrong Whitworth Argosy C.1 by Michael Blank

Sorry, run out of time, will post links to the other photos later this week.

It was also called 'The Whistling Tit'.

Is it true that the only cargo it could carry that simultaneously was the maximum allowable weight and the maximum possible volume for the cargo bay was....potato chips? (Hence the alternate moniker, 'Crisp Carrier').

I remember as an apprentice being fed down the booms to wirelock the turnbarrels on the flying control cables. I was slim in those days. Someone forgot to put the notice in the cockpit not to operate the rudder. Some berk did and the barrels traversed across my forehead leaving some rather nasty gashes which took about two weeks to heal.

Just another 'war' wound from my days as a fitter!

I worked on the civil version at the Best Ever Airline 100 & 200 series.

One of the overriding memory was it was the only aircraft that I have worked on where you had to lie on the floor, to release them hydrualic accumulator pressures, the put a 9 foot pair of steps in the left main gear bay climb up, & in my case stand on the handrails so I could open the panel & check the fluid level in the hydrualic tank!!

tristar 500

The 'Whistling Tit' was the RAF one with the 'nipple' on the nose, wasn't it? I remember BEA Wheelbarrows at Manchester in the '60s (no nipple!).

I flew them for 10 years and enjoyed most of it.

Ian Bashall
 

Ian told his story of his experiences on Argosies one evening in a Berlin pub and it went rather like this. "It was a dark and stormy night when as copilot I took off with Capt Paddy ??? from Turin and as we climbed I realised that something was wrong when the windscreen became buried in snow and we came to a halt on a mountainside. Later we found ourselves in adjacent beds in a hospital. The BEA Chief Pilot came to visit and Paddy asked for him to pass him his briefcase. He fumbled inside, pulled out his chequebook and said "what did you say I owe you?" "

Later on Ian was the safety pilot on the jumpseat for base training at Stansted. At V1 a simulated engine failure resulted in the aircraft cartwheeling across the Essex countryside, coming to a halt with a big hole behind them whereupon Ian called out "follow me chaps - I've done this before! "

During the late 1970s I was a relatively new RAF Air Engineer and that, sometime after my OCU at RAF Lyneham (to the C-130K), I was asked to spend a couple of weeks at Boscombe Down to fly their C-130 whilst they were short of crew.

At that time Boscombe still had their own "Whistling Tit" and that one of the Boscombe Air Engs invited me to join him for a trip in the old lady. That particular Air Eng was MEng Lenny Edwards (who I had previously met on LXX Sqn). Given that Lenny knew that part of my basic Air Eng training was conducted on the Argosy simulator he said that I perhaps knew more about the aeroplane than he did (Lenny had said that he now had ten-hours on type)!

I followed Lenny around the aeroplane as we prepped-it for flight and that Lenny offered some useful advice... don't turn left as you exit the crew door or you'll otherwise end-up with an eye-full of VHF aerial!

The pilot's arrived on-scene and the crew got the "show on the road". Five circuits later, one of the three pilots had to get off the aeroplane to attend a meeting; hence, we landed and taxied around to the "Weighbridge Hangar" to drop the said pilot off at the dispersal (B Sqn in those days); at which point Lenny said, "I'm getting-off as well"! "Yours truly" ended-up fullfiling the Air Eng's role for the next dozen or so circuits without ever having qualified on-type.

Not long after my return to Lyneham the same aeroplane was "written-off" in a landing incident at West Freugh.

Happy days.

TCF

Boscombe Argosy
 

Didn't one crash there?

Err, yes... as I said, the aeroplane was written-off.

As far as I understand it, a propellor malfunction occured during the approach to land and that when "reverse" was selected... the aeroplane departed the runway.

Argosy crash
 

Sorry Chitterne, I meant at Boscombe. I was in ATC there 83/6 and IIRC was told about a fatal Argosy crash happening a few years before.

Also known as the `Armlong Woolworth Allsoggy` ..

Once again, a mere passenger's viewpoint; not a nice aircraft to jump out of if you were No 1 in the stick, due to the pronounced curve of the fuselage. You had to put your hands on the outside and try to not just fall out during the run in to the DZ......

What with the dreaded Hastings, the even more dreaded Beverley boom exit and the Argosick we didn't think much of the transport laid on for our outings in those pre-C130 days.

Love it... it's on a par with the Andover...an Andover, on handover, over Dover, over.

TCF

This was a story told to me by a BEA Ground Gripper pilot.
Would love to hear if this was true, and if so, what the correct details are.
One of the regular BEA Argosy cargo runs was to Northern Italy to collect Ferraris, Lamborghinis etc. I understand that this was a 2 crew operation, and the outbound route was over the Alps, but the return route was via the southern French coast and thence up through France. This routing was because the a/c performance was not good enough to climb over the Alps when laden.
En route home from Italy, the autopliot went u/s. No problem, just meant hand flying. Came the time when the skipper wanted a pee, so he went down the stairs from the flight deck to the crew toilet.
When the skipper had not returned after about 10 mins, P2 began to get anxious, after 30 mins he was seriously worried and he decided to divert to an aerodrome in France. He could not leave the flight deck because of the inop autopilot.
After landing and shutdown, P2 went in search of the skipper. He could not be found anywhere. Perplexed, P2 then heard a faint tapping and a muffled voice. Going up the line of cars he at last spotted the skipper at the wheel of one of the cars. Opening the door, it transpired that the skipper had become curious about one of the cars and slipped behind the wheel. Came the time to stop fantasising about owning such a car, he then found to his horror that he was locked in, leading to the events as described.
A good story anyway.....

I flew with Ian on Tristars and the story is a bit different, as is the official report.

They were outbound from LHR to Italy, and attempting an ADF approach in stormy weather with thunderstorms, when all of a sudden the thing came to a grinding halt with a lot of snow around!! They had slid onto the top of a mountain some distance from the expected arrival airfield!! Lucky lad, and then he was in the other one!! Time to give up.

I also saw one land on Salisbury Plain, and the nosewheel doors departed the airframe on touchdown!! Not a rough field airplane by any means.

The next experience with one was to load a Bristol Hercules powerplant on its stand and take it to the Chief Of the Air Staffs Valletta that had let us down just before Easter in Germany. The big problem was that with all the heavy and fancy roller flooring the darned thing would not go in, and maintain a CofG that was acceptable to the beast. It meant dismantling a lot of the cowlings and take the wheels off of the stand before it would just fit under the spar.

Hence known as the best crew transport in the RAF as that was all it would carry, plus their shopping of course!!

Another British masterpiece!!!!

Speedbird 48.

Chris, that story appears in the late Ken FitzRoy's excellent book "No Time on the Ground".

He also mentions a P2 who was on board both of BEA's Argosy losses, the first ('SXL) was inadvertently parked on an Italian hillside, the latter ('SXP) cartwheeled off the side of the runway at Stansted after a Check Captain retarded a throttle to simulate an engine failure. All crew survived both accidents.

Edit: Speedbird48 - snap! Ooops, just realised I missed some earlier posts!

I seem to remember that someone once said that flying the Argosy was

'rather like landing a cottage from the bedroom window'.

You will find an interesting, if sad thread here showing the demise of the"whistling tits". this page has several, but there are more on the others!

Scrapyard Photos; Any More? - Page 40 - Key Publishing Ltd Aviation Forums