Airspeed/D.H. Ambassador.
 

Any memories of this elegant yet powerful little airliner?

Yes, tragically, Munich. Powerful maybe, but not powerful enough to snow plough through slush. A lot learned from that accident but a sad way to do it

Not DH, just Airspeed.

When I started spotting at Newcastle in the early 1960s, the BKS machines (four of them) were the mainstay of the airport's scheduled operation, with three (?) daily LHR services, plus the odd Belfast, Dublin, Dusseldorf, Rotterdam and Ostend. (Dusseldorf, Rotterdam and Ostend were the continental destinations 'of choice' for quite a few UK independent operators)

They were 55 seaters and didn't have a sparkling take-off/climb out performance from NCL's (then) 5700ft runway.

From time to time Dan-Air would schedule 'Lizzies' on Isle of Man rotations, with or without stop in Carlisle (Newcastle-Carlisle one way 18 shillings - 90p) and there would be a very occasional visit from an Autair example - by far the best looking of the three colour schemes.

Not very evident but had a rear skid with a couple of little wheels, saw one settle (very gently) on its tail while bags were being loaded in the aft hold.

If i remember correctly from a front-end visit on a Dan-Air example at Prestwick, the flight deck was 'downstairs' (by a couple of steps) from the passenger cabin.

Not a particularly lovely or iconic aircraft, I'm afraid, best remembered for two fatal accidents. Neverless I do have a lithograph of one in BEA colours on my wall - just for old times' sake.

My father use to fly them in Australia with butler air transport. he always loved them - called them a pilots aircraft. Probably because he then went on to the CV240's which had a single engine climb rate of a snail.

I have in my lounge room a Travel Agents Model of the aircraft in Butler's colours -very large and shold really be in an aviation museum.

Did I read somewhere that Dan Air used to move avons around in one when a comet went U/S?

Im guessing the rear pax door could be opened with a rear baggage door to ge the donk in

Well remembered for copious amounts of smoke in the exhaust - all of the time, not just at start up. You could follow the smoke all the way down the taxiway to the runway.

Photos: Airspeed AS-57 Ambassador 2 Aircraft Pictures | !!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I would actually disagree with that. Had a charm all of its own.

Have to agree with Groundloop. Always thought the aircraft, along with the Connie, epitomised the greatest of grace and beauty.

Reported Hatfield comment
 

I'm another who found the Ambassador/Elizabethan a very elegant aeroplane ... deH was said to have taken over because of either lack of production space at Airspeed's or money to continue the programme - whatever... It was said at the time that people at Hatfield said it was the only metal aircraft designed in wood ...
(but then they would say that ???).
:E

The well-known novelist Nevil Shute (N.S.Norway) started Airspeed in the 1930's and his autobiography Slide Rule has some great stuff on how aircraft were designed and built in those days. The earliest Airspeed aircraft were frankly ugly, the Ferry looked like a chicken shed with wings, but things quickly improved, and the Ensign and its variant the Envoy, which was used by the Royal Flight, were very pretty little aeroplanes.

I must admt I was under the impression that by the time the Ambassador came out the company had been absorbed by De Havilland, but I may be wrong. Either way I thought it was a handsome aeroplane, a sort of little sister to the glorious Connie. I regret never having seen one, especially in light of The SSK's post, as I was a schoolboy in Carlisle in the early 60s and could easily have cycled out to the airport had I known. 18/- single to Newcastle and hitch-hike back would have been do-able as well - just!

Just to set the record straight, I'm the world's biggest fan of the Constellation. In my eyes, just because the Lizzie had a triple tail and curves instead of straight lines didn't make her beautiful.

Or it might have been a case of familiarity and contempt. When you sit around an airfield for hours waiting for something to happen, and the runway lights go on, and a dot appears in the distance, and it turns out to be just another BKS Lizzie, you go off the darn things.

Tankertrashnav: The NCL-CAX service I'm thinking of was Summer 69. Having left home, my employer posted me back to NCL for ten weeks. Every weekend (it was a Saturday service) I promised myself I would make the trip to Carl!isle and every time I put it off for another week. Until I ran out of weeks ... One of my lasting regrets.

My Father worked for Autair when they had 3 and I managed to get a couple of flights. I remember it seemed very smooth although flew nose high.

My first trip was from Luton to Copenhagen and back in 1968. We came back empty and I spent most of the return flight sitting in the Captains seat being shown how to fly it by the F/O. My first flight deck experience at the age of 11! Doesn't happen now unfortunately.

My other trip was returning from Luxembourg the following year after a family arranged wine tasting trip to Germany. The Chief Pilot (Capt Dibley) was flying. After we landed it was taken into the hangar where they found cracks in the main u/c legs and the engineers were surprised it didn't collapse. Unfortunately GALZZ never flew again.

TTN,

There is an Ambassador, probably the last surviving example, being restored at Duxford. I believe she is ex Dan Air.

JP/TTN: elegant, handsome: it's all in the pedigree.
DH's Chief Designer A.E.Hagg (lovely, though wooden, D.H.91 Albatross) fell out with Geo.DH and left in March,1937 to do Heston Type 5 Racer. In 1942 he returned to the DH fold: at Portsmouth Airspeed (1934) Ltd had been formed with Swan Hunter equity and a licence for DC-2, later DC-3. DH bought in 27 May,1940 for production capacity at its new MAP Agency Factory at Christchurch - it would deliver 422 Mosquitoes. Sir Geo.DH joined the Second Brabazon Committee, May,1943 and was, ah, helpful in securing in February,1944 design funding for Brabazon Type IV (to be) Comet I, Type VB D.H.104 Dove, and Type II Airspeed AS.57. Hagg, Chief Designer, set to, aiming to leap-frog (to be) Lockheed L-75 Saturn and Convair CV110 with a Mark II, with MetroVick Mamba or DH(Halford) H.3 propellor-turbines. Work was perceived to drift. Vickers-Armstrongs pitched VC2/Centaurus, Hawker Siddeley bid A.W.55 Apollo/ASM Mamba, receiving design ITPs in April/May,1945 as Types IIB/C. In 1948 DH took effective charge; in 1949 Hagg was replaced by George Miles, having launched M.60 (to be HP Marathon). BEAC ordered 20 AS.57 23/9/48, because VC2 (changed 27/8/47 by Geo.Edwards to Darts) was: “too risky (AS.57 was) best suited (to) its requirements”, Centaurus sooner/more reliable than turbines. C.F Andrews/ E.B Morgan, Vickers A/c, Putnam,1988,P.424. V-A chose not to take no for an answer, pestered, added a Co-funded 3rd. to 2 MoS-funded prototypes... and on 2/8/50 won a BEAC order for 20. Elizabethan (Ambassador) entered BEAC service 13/3/52, Discovery (Viscount), 17/4/53.

DH under-resourced AS.57, using its Airspeed Division (so named, 6/51) as offload site for Vampire/Venom, and declining the obvious step of funding a turboprop Mark 2 (such things flew only as MoS Flying Test Beds). Lockheed abandoned the sector; Convair surmounted CV110 failure and captured the piston market with CV240/340/440. Hatfield's mind was on Comets.

As a whippersnapper teaboy cum ops asst in Autair I was lucky and had many SNY trips in Ambassadors. The Saturday night newspaper run LTN-DUB was a favourite, the Aer Lingus canteen being one of the attractions. This run was often used for Base Checks and it was not unusual for the crew to perform a single-engined ILS and overshoot (usually in 'orrible wx) before landing on two and offloading.
In those distant summers of the mid-sixties two delightful Aussie characters, Warren Wilson and Pete Elliott, would freelance as skippers on the AMB. First Officers new to type loved to fly with these seasoned campaigners who were only too happy to give them no end of P1 "What he let you fly it all the way to Athens and back!?"
Yes the Ambassador belched smoke and chugged along taxiways but once airborne and cleaned up she was as sweet as a nut, whistling not roaring overhead.

I flew for Dan Air in the 1960's on the Ambassador, and many others, and found it to be as delightful an airplane as it looked.

The old theory regarding "if it looks right, it flies right" fitted the machine well.

I also flew with Pete Elliott many times in the Ambassador and the DC4. A good pilot and a great gentleman.

Speedbird 48.

Those really were the days:

B.E.A. Silver Wing Service — 1952

Every day, at lunch-time, 40-seat “Silver Wing” Elizabethans fly between London and Le Bourget. This service is claimed by B.E.A. to be the finest means of inter-city travel anywhere in Europe (a claim, incidentally, which has gained much support from passengers since the inaugural flight on June 9th), and increased bookings are expected to compensate for the loss of seating. The fare is the standard one of £8 17s, and passengers are provided with a four-course lunch, champagne and cigarettes.

The Silver Wing lunches are cooked just before take-off by B.E.A. chefs in the catering section at London Airport. Meals are then placed in specially designed G.E.C. electrically-heated containers, each capable of holding 12 plates or one and a half gallons of liquid. Shortly before take-off the two stewards arrive to check the contents of the containers, which are then taken out to the aircraft and plugged into suitable power points in the galley. The containers have glass-wool insulation to ensure that no heat is lost in transit to the aircraft. At the same time the stewardess takes charge of blankets, newspapers, magazines and “flight companions” (small personal folders for each passenger containing airmail paper, a post card, route map, and a printed brochure describing the aircraft).
Flight companions, incidentally, are expensively produced and form a fairly weighty item in the airline budget so with their contents often scattered around the aircraft at the end of the flight, economy-minded B.E.A. salvages and repacks them for further use!

Below is a typical B.E.A. Silver Wing menu:

• Potted Morecambe shrimps, brown bread and butter
• Roast Norfolk turkey with braised York ham,
• Kentish scarlet runner beans
• New Jersey potatoes
• Cape pears preserved in port
• Cheddar cheese
• Water biscuits
• Rolls and butter
• Coffee

The Silver Wing service takes ten minutes longer than the normal London-Paris run by Elizabethans, which normally cover the 216-mile route in 1 hr 20 min. Even so, stewards and stewardess are kept constantly on their feet serving the meals and drinks which, as the menu indicates, more than compensate the passengers for the slight delay in their journey.

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...wspaperAd2.jpg

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...wspaperAd3.jpg

Ensign - 2 or 4 engines?
 

@ Tankertrashnav above ...
From memory comes the thought-picture of the Ensign being a 4-engined machine from Armstrong Siddeley.
The twin-engined Airspeed Envoy (very fetching in its Royal livery !) became the Oxford in RAF service (all this of course IIRC)...

I've read where Mr Butler and at one point in time Airspeed, entertained the idea of a 4-engine Ambassador.

Would have been a good idea?

http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/4544/ab4555437.jpg

How to spot the Ambassador from "The Boys Book of Aircraft" of 1953. :cool:

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/8421/ambq.jpg

There is an autobiography by an ex BKS pilot, Arthur Whitlock, called 'Behind the Cockpit Door' with some wonderful stories of flying the Ambassador.

Jig Peter - Yes, you are quite right, the basic aircraft was the Envoy, and the "posh" version was the Viceroy. Dont know where I got Ensign from! As you say the RAF development of the type was the Oxford, which must have been far and away the most numerous of Airspeed's types.

Warmtoast - after posting some beautiful pics of the Victor protype on another thread you've come up with these lovely mementoes from the days when flying was still a treat. A few years ago Mrs TTN and I got upgraded to business class (or club, or whatever they called it) on an Amsterdam - Heathrow flight. Even so, there was a distinct lack of potted shrimps, free fags and champagne!

Ah the Lizzie!! my first job at B.E.A. was on the modification and repair gang at Heathrow in march 1954 modifing the Lizzie's Aviation fuelled anti icing system [where was "elf and safetythen] which was to say the least tempremental . .
As an airplane it was beautifly built [the riviting was superb until you got to the tail plane] and then it fell well short of the rest I dont Know if DH/Airspeed ran out of money but the skinning was to put it bluntly very crude
It was lovely to fly in and could take off on 1 engine its crashes were due to 1 engine going into reverse pitch on approach, and of course the other slush and ice ruining all its lift on takeoff, ZO the reverse prop a/c though heavily damaged was brought back to Heathrow and repaired the 3 rd one was the B.K.S which broke a flap rod and crashed into the nearly built Terminal 1. Like all a/c of the period it was hard to work on as the access to alot of the systems left a lot to be desired but it kept me in work for just over a year until I moved onto other a/c in B.E.As fleet:D:D:D

Ambassador Photo's
 

I was for quite a few years engaged to the grand-daughter of Robin ' Bob ' Milne, Airspeed / D.H. Test Pilot, who amongst test flying such things as Mosquito's, personally test flew over 2,000 Oxfords !

He was also shot down in his Camel, waited for the guard to fall drunkenly asleep, then used his ski's to successfully escape ( that's the family version, I suspect weapons were involved) ; later on he climbed the summit of the Eiger, just before WWII - I would be surprised if he was not on a recce' mission.

I managed to get him a mention on the Tartan Terror's tribute site as his daughter Jenny ( my potential mother in law, strange I spent more time talking with her than with my then fiancee' ?! ) just before she died.

She knew Nevil Shute Norway well, he flew a lot with her dad; including finding a ' secret corridor ' for the Luftwaffe to get to Portsmouth between the barrage balloons, and as a little girl she grew up playing in the local Windmill Nevil often stayed in, ( along with another house nearby ) .

The windmill is now the symbol of our sailing club nearby ( though most sailors are clueless as to it's history, except that it was briefly owned by a James Bond film producer ).

Not too sure about the Ambassador / Oxford link, but if you read any of Nevil Shute ( Norway )'s books, a passion for simple, sound aviation is very clear; my personal favourites might be ' Requiem For A Wren ' and ' Round The Bend ' - which should be mandatory reading for anyone, ground or air crew, joining the aviation world !

In the book ' Test Pilots ' by Don Middleton - ISBN 0-00-218098-7 Bob Milne get's a brief mention; he started flying on Sopwith Camels against the Bolsheviks, ended on Comet airliner prototypes with John Cunningham.

I think it was his colleague & friend Ron Clear who worked on the testing & development of the ' Airspeed Fleet Shadower ' - enormous drag, ugly as sin but not as much fun, designed as a sort of propelled recce' balloon - after years of work, he found it's sole use was being used to fan the flames for fire crew training !

The point is, I was given a few truly great photo's of the Ambassador in flight, I'm too thick or lazy to post them here ( but will if pushed ) but I'll happily JPEG them to you.

All the best,

DZ

For any of you that want a good record of the Amabassador on film, possibly the only DVD available with Ambassadors on it can be found here:

Avion Video Airliner Videos and DVDs

All in colour from restored cine film with sound! Ah wonderful stuff!

Airspeed Ambassadors
 

Whilst working outside at McAlpines in the 60's , looked up to see an Autair Ambassador aquaplaning and do a complete 180 and with a great roar of power managed to avert a reverse trip over the end of the runway.Very lucky to end up safely like it did.

'The Lizzie'

Ah.......the nostalgia. Smokey on start up [permission to make smoke had to be requested!], spacious cabin, large windows, smooth and quite advanced in many ways. A pleasure to travel in them!

helen 49

Here are Double Zero's photos. Nice pictures of a lovely aircraft. The first photo is of the prototype G-AGUA, powered by Centaurus 631s.

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c3...mbassador1.jpg

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c3...mbassador2.jpg

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c3...mbassador3.jpg

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c3...mbassador4.jpg

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c3...mbassador5.jpg

When I was training at Oxford in 1965 we had the Ambassador simulator there to practice on. It had a computer room the size of the Albert Hall and of course was completely static. Rumour had it that it was the nose of one of the prototypes but I have not been able to find any confirmation of this on the internet. Does anyone know the answer and what happened to it – was it scrapped or is it still in some dusty corner somewhere?

I subsequently joined BKS where several course members were posted to the “Lizzie” fleet in Newcastle and London – I went to the 748 in LBA. Having made my first flight ever in the Lizzie as a schoolboy LHR-JER in 1958 I positioned around the network quite a bit in it for the next 2 years until they were withdrawn from pax service, I was always impressed with the antics of the F/O who had to leap out of his seat after engine start to pull a large switch on the rear cockpit bulkhead to inflate the door seals to allow pressurization after the aircraft was airborne, presumably in BEA service the R/O did the job?

One of the most comfortable aircraft I have ever traveled in from a passenger point of view.

Thinks!! did BEA have R/Os in 1953? I can't remember or did they go out with the Navigator after the Dak and Viking, can anyone remember?:bored::bored: Iknow there was a positon in the Viscount 701s for a R/O but by the late 50s i can't remember them being used .

The only reference I can find to the dates of the role of the R/O in BEA is that they were phased out finally in 1962. This would have covered the service years of the Elizabethan as they were sold around 1958. I can certainly remember them being on the Viscount 701 in the late 50s/early 60s when my father flew them, they were gone by the time he transferred to the 802.

Double Zero - shame on you for being too lazy to post those pictures ;) but many thanks for providing them and thanks India Four Two for doing the necessary :ok:

Seriously, what wonderful pictures, what was it about that period that so many aircraft types were so elegant?

They were designed by designers, who had a feel for their art, as opposed to computers, which produce the most efficient design regardless of the fact that it doesn't look very nice. Look at the modern car. Apart from the badge, it's often difficult to tell them apart.

A bit of a slippery customer.
 

Interesting to read of an Ambassador aquaplaning at Luton - it was perhaps something the aeroplane was prone to do. I remember how one day in August 1967 we laughed our socks off in the Autair ops room on hearing that Channel had a double upset with their 748s at Portsmouth.
Blow me down a few weeks later our Ambassador G-ALZS with 65 pax arrived one wet evening on the not over-long (in those days) Luton runway, aquaplaned and was written off. Fortunately nobody was injured but it taught me not to laugh too heartily at the misfortunes of competitors.
Writing of Channel (a digression here) ;we used to hold our breath at Luton whenever their fully laden Tridents struggled upwards to the warm summer skies. At these times it was said that the Sevres Porcelain at Luton Hoo was regularly rattled whilst the trees in the park shed their leaves and perhaps a branch or two.

A slight digression, but there was the Autair Herald that put the gear up to quick and then settled back on the runway with the wheels safely tucked away!

Ah, the Herald, just about as ugly an aircraft you could design, compare it to the Friendship, now that looked beautiful. Those photos really are evocative of the post war period, stunningly detailed black and white..... quite takes me back to my schooldays!!

The Ambassador was not particularly well received by BEA, the only airline to buy them new. Introduced in 1952, the 20 were all out of service by August 1958 and then took some years on the market to trickle down to secondary users.

The Munich accident was shortly befre their final withdrawl. I believe the charter flight to Belgrade and return used an Ambassador because there was no supply of jet fuel readily available at Belgrade so a Viscount could not be used.

Dan-Air did a daily sevice from Liverpool to Amsterdam with them in the 1960s. I recall the start-up each morning was accompanied by clouds of smoke, seemingly the sleeve-valve concept with radial engines allowed even more lubricating oil to seep down into the bottom cylinders than happened on other radials, which was then burned off in the initial seconds.

Ah, the Herald, just about as ugly an aircraft you could design

You can't have seen the Shorts 330/360 then? As someone once said: "It was unfair of Shorts to enter two aircraft in the "ugliest airliner" competition; much less to win both first and second prize."

Hope to just wet your appetite there is a book coming out on the Ambassador in the not too distant future - I will try to keep you all informed.

A handsome aircraft although I sadly never got to fly in one. We lived south of LTN in the 1960's and Autair's three Lizzies (ZS/ZV/ZZ) were daily sights. They made a very distinctive smooth muffled sound on climb-out, quite unlike the throaty roar of a P & W radial such as on the DC6, or the Wrights on the L-749 Connies. They certainly were heavy smokers on start-up, especially in the morning as WHBM describes. I remember a BKS Lizzie virtually fogging out the Queen's Building at LHR one morning with its smoky start. They even left smoke trails on climb-out sometimes!

Re- their early life with BEA, I can recall reading somewhere that BEA were very pleased with the passenger reaction to the Lizzie (not surprising as they replaced Vikings and DC3's) and wished they had ordered more. However, they were rapidly outclassed by the new Viscounts which started arriving only 1 year after the Lizzie entered service.

The amazing Silver Wing flight to Paris seems like a throwback to the same pre-war service operated by Imperial. All that fgourmet food, champagne and fancy service on a 90-minute flight to Paris! It really was a different world back then.

The terrible accident to ZR at LHR in 1968 (due to assymetric flap deployment and ensuing loss of control) was so sad; I remember it well. Some good people lost their lives that day. As someone else has mentioned, Arthur Whitlock's book has some great accounts of flying the Lizzie during his time at BKS, and includes the ZR incident.

For a piston engined airliner the Lizzie had a pretty long service life, from 1952 to 1969 or thereabouts. I missed the Autair aircraft when they were repaced by those noisy One-Elevens in 1968.

"Ah, the Herald, just about as ugly an aircraft you could design"

Joy is in the eye of the beholder! I have fond memories of the Herald at Hurn in BIA orange and white. Whereas I never took to the HS748, in Dan-air colours especially. Now if you're really asking, give me 4 x Darts on a Viscount and don't spare the two-blue colour scheme (of BMA). :)

Ambassador photo's
 

TTN & co,

Thanks for pointing out my laziness, agreed !

The aircraft looks good to me; I remember as a young boy watching them at Gatwick, knew them as ' Smokey Joe's '.

The photo's were supplied by the late Jenny Blower, daughter of Airspeed / D.H. Test Pilot Robin ' Bob ' Milne. They look like the work of Peckham or Brown to me - whoever it was did a good job, especially considering the distinctly user-unfriendly camera kit of the time...

DZ