A new replacement for the A400 has just hit the market
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Craggy Island
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No coincidence about the comparisons with the A400. I was working in Shorts circa 93/94 when a delegation from what was then known as the Euroflag Consortium came along to hoover up every scrap of data available on the Belfast - there's a lot if the old girl in the A400.
Also in my time in Shorts I came across info on a concept from the early seventies involving the grafting of a C-141 wing and engine set to the fuselage of a Belfast so we could have had a C-17 back in the seventies! Sounds ridiculous but true.
No coincidence about the comparisons with the A400. I was working in Shorts circa 93/94 when a delegation from what was then known as the Euroflag Consortium came along to hoover up every scrap of data available on the Belfast - there's a lot if the old girl in the A400.
Also in my time in Shorts I came across info on a concept from the early seventies involving the grafting of a C-141 wing and engine set to the fuselage of a Belfast so we could have had a C-17 back in the seventies! Sounds ridiculous but true.
Wasn't there also an even earlier proposal to try and graft a Comet wing onto the still-born HS681? The British jet the RAF was to have instead of the C-130 - which met the same fate as the P1154 and TSR2....
Slight drift - through my pre-retirement job I knew a guy called "Titch" Taylor. He had been (amongst other things, including a DFC on
Mosquitos), Chief Test Pilot for Shorts so tested the Belfast. Apparently, at the time there was a newspaper headline "Britain's shortest test pilot flies world's largest plane". Coincidentally, my predecessor in that last job was at the time the Belfast was being flight tested, CO of the local UAS, and had at times been Titch's co-pilot.
Mosquitos), Chief Test Pilot for Shorts so tested the Belfast. Apparently, at the time there was a newspaper headline "Britain's shortest test pilot flies world's largest plane". Coincidentally, my predecessor in that last job was at the time the Belfast was being flight tested, CO of the local UAS, and had at times been Titch's co-pilot.
