My copy of "Broken Wings" by JJ Halley (Air-Britain publication) states:

21.10.57 Hastings C.1 TG615 511 Sqn 1 1/4 miles SSW of Colerne: Undershot asymmetric landing and bounced; yawed on attemted overshoot (go-around) and flew into a hill; caught fire.

Hope that helps.

Another Report

Thanks to both of you. That looks about the right place on the map. After an undershoot on 25, bounce and loss of control, it's amazing it made it to the other end of the airfield (south of 07 threshold). Good old asymmetric practice strikes again.

Nose Job
 

Moving a Belfast into a hangar by lifting up the nose may seem a bit drastic but at least it went in fore and aft. As a new aircraft fitter propulsion posted to Thorney Island in December 1966 ( so new the trade didn't exist until Aptil 1967 ), I was posted onto Beverley 2nd line. The procedure for inserting and extracting the Bev into and out of the hangar was in essentials similar to the Belfast except we did it sideways!
In order to get it into the hangar the aircraft was positioned across the hangar entrance with the main undercarriage on two skates to enable the aircraft to be towed sideways into the hangar. To get the fins down low enough to go through the hangar doors the nosewheel was on a third skate which could elevate the nose undercarriage to the required height after which the whole ensemble was towed sideways into the hanger, the nose then lowered ensuring the fins the went up BETWEEN the rafters of the hangar and the aircraft jacked to remove the skates.
A problem could, and to my knowledge did arise on at least one occasion, in that there was no limit switches to control how far you could lift the nose and unless constantly monitored you could lift it too far until the nose began lifting of its own accord! The situation was saved by the immediate addition of a number of techies to the nose skate until the down button was pressed and the skate and nose undercarriage returned to Terra Firma.
In the words of Max Boyce "I know cos I was there".

Shorts Belfast - why?
 

Every so often I browse the net for the SC5 Belfast and it was with great excitement that I found this site and this particular thread.
I should explain that I worked in Shorts Queen's Island Factory from 1962 to 1971 initially as an apprentice and eventually graduating to the drawing office.
The Belfast was in full production in those years.
The many posts on this thread brought back a host of memories.
She was a mighty giant of an aircraft built in an enormous factory or so it seemed to a seventeen year old. The final assembly area was three hundred foot square of unsupported roof and as mentioned in the thread the Belfast was a major problem to move about during its various stages of manufacture. The tail fin was added at the very last stage with the roof structure modified to suit and yes as mentioned to extract the plain from the building a special hydraulic lifting trolley was attached to the front under carriage to raise the nose of the aircraft up and allow the tail fin to clear the roof structure. In fact on the day of the first role out the local morning paper had a head line " SHORTS HAVE BUILT AN AIRCRAFT THAT CANNOT BE REMOVED FROM THE BUILDING" or something to that effect, it caused great amusement in the factory among the staff. There are many memories and stories that I can relate during those years on the shop floor with the Belfast, but the crowning moment was when in the drawing office one early afternoon I received an invite to go on a test flight, initially I thought it was a joke but it did happen. The aircraft trundled up and down a test corridor between the Mourns and Co Fermanagh testing the stall points. It was my first experience of a flight deck in action. When the chimes went off over my head without warning I was very startled. We did not see the take off or landing as we were seated in the crew seats in the galley but were allowed unto the flight deck for most of the flight.
She was a big aircraft and had many faults but she survived went to the Falklands and many other strange places lifting strange shapes and loads in fact I think that the hold shape was her saving grace.
I watched with great anticipation as the work went on at Southend only to be greatly disappointed at the destruction in the end. Is this to be the fate of Hector sitting in Australia.

Father of a lad on a recent trial lesson said he flew these for Heavy Lift.
He said they rarely got across the Atlantic on all four engines.

So I wonder what Heavylift did wrong. I only ever had to shut one down (LP5 failure) when I flew them in the RAF.

What was the total fleet hours for the Belfast when RAF operated them?

According to Belfast: Story of Short's Big Lifter byMolly O'Loughlin White, the fleet did 82,000 in RAF service, and the individual airframes flew between 6,000 and 10,000 hours.

DH

Nil engine failures in my 1,100 RAF Belfast flying hours.

I worked for Heavylift for 11 years from the early 90's, and I don't remember the Belfast fleet having an extraordinary amount of engine failures that required an engine change, especially considering the age of the aircraft and engines. In the early years some of the expertise came from former 53 squadron people.

I did a similar number of Belfast hours in Heavylift service, and had only one engine shutdown, mid-atlantic, due to loss of oil from an accessory gearbox.

Belfast at Cairns-Guppy at Hurn
 

Can anyone bring us up to date with either-or indeed both.
We have a man on a daily mission to see if anyone is kicking the tires or indeed countin' the Tynes and since we lost our man at Cairns, we hear nothing from that quarter. Sure would be obliged for any info-but please make it 'real'.

I think someone's just being a bit provocative about the shutdown record in HLA. The earlier posts in the thead are all about Britannias rescuing Belfasts with duff Tynes etc. Yes, there were possibly two LP5 failures I can remember (one at Akinci needing a 3E ferry), but most shutdowns were prompted by gear box drive problems. Remember double alternator failures? I know about 5 of those. Not all required gearbox changes. 30W eastbound, Bateen, Stansted, enroute ICT - BGR, enroute FAO -CWL. One engine overheat enroute ASI - DKR. Stopping from V1 minus about 2 kts at SEN with a fuel pump fracture failure and fluctuating/decaying tq. There may have been more in the 4500 hrs I did on them. I don't think we did anything wrong, but ask Hockham Admiral - I think he has the highest hours of anyone on the SH5. We wouldn't have a bad word said about them. Keep the one at Cosford. I hope they cut up the one at Cairns - it's time.

Belfast on ILS approach to Manchester in November 1973
 

I've very recently unearthed a distant shot of a Belfast (XR371) coming in on what I'm pretty sure was the second of two practice ILS approaches to Manchester in November 1973-photo caption explains why photo is distant:

Belfast XR371 overflying home, Nov 1973e | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

So, can any former Belslow crew here possibly remember making those approaches way back then? If so, I was below you and I saw you!

I've seen film of a HL Belfast sliding off a runway onto the grass during a landing with apparently a retracted or collapsed starboard main gear. Any idea when and where this was?


Rob

On my first trip on a Belfast (XR 369) we did practice stalls. I was seated on the mezzanine deck on the starboard side and can vividly remember the wings and each engine being completely out of synch with each other and bouncing around totally independently. :eek:

Does anybody know where any decent pictures of the Belfast (in RAF markings) can still be found? I keep trying to find a few but most are either small or bad quality. Wonder where all the lovely official photos went?

53 shots on Airliners.net: click here

Yes, some nice shots there. I'd love to find some of the old official shots though. I seem to recall a set that was taken at Akrotiri, but I haven't seen them for years and years now. Shame that the poor Belfast is so under-photographed.

Short Belfast

Wikipedia lists all the Belfasts built for the RAF by name, but I have a photo of myself alongside a Belfast that is not listed. In 1966 I was serving in the VASF (Visiting Aircraft Servicing Flight) at RAF Khormaksar, where one of those visiting aircraft was a Belfast named 'BELFAST'. That name is not listed as being one of the RAF aircraft and, although it appears to be in RAF Transport Command livery I am not certain it had an RAF registration. It was probably transiting to Gan/Changi, so was this aircraft on a proving flight and was it subsequently renamed or was it separate from the ten RAF aircraft?