Bristol Britannia Record Flight - Dec 1956

[ATR42300]

Hi All

I was recently reading a very short article about a record breaking flight by a Britannia of El Al which whilst route proving in December 1956 flew New York - Tel Aviv direct by maintaining the jet stream across the Atlantic and beyond.

The article stated "once at 25000ft they noted the tell tale rise in air temperature and radar altitude".

Two things: Is there a more detailed account of this remarkable flight anywhere and I thought Radar Altimeters did not operate above 2500ft.

[Heilhaavir]

ATR, would you have a link to the article and was the name of the crew published?

[Sir Richard]

Radar Altimeters were different from today's Radio Altimeters and were used at cruising altitudes to refine a technique known as "Pressure Pattern Flying".....I think

[WHBM]

It would take me a while to thumb through them all - maybe someone has better recollection of exactly which issue - but there was a full article about all this in Propliner magazine some 10-15 years ago, about the introduction of the Britannia into El Al service.

One thing that sticks in my head is their ops team ran daily paper "flights" for some 12 months prior to introduction, where they planned the flight on the basis of the weather forecasts (such as they were in those days) and then subsequently evaluated them in the light of reality, and when the aircraft was first introduced they calculated they were saving probably an hour of flight time by this prior experience.

** OK, I just looked through and found it.

The article "Record breaking Britannias - El Al's small yet very efficient Britannia operation" is in Propliner issue 30 dated Spring 1987.

The captain's name on the nonstop was Zwi Tohar. The article has various notes on how they managed routing and altitude. The non-stop flight was Dec 18/19 1957 by 4X-AGC, 6100 miles, 14h46m, average of 401 mph

[brakedwell]

I believe El Al used to shut down an engine to conserve fuel once the weight justified it and it was dark!. The longest time I flew a Britannia 312 was Gatwick - Muscat on August 7th 1976. Flight time 11.45 with 17 tonnes of payload.

[parabellum]

As a pax, (military), I went from Stansted to Aden in a BUA Britannia. They told us before we left that we might be stopping in Khartoum but that wasn't necessary, felt like a very long flight though, (early Oct. 1963).

[411A]

Absolutely correct, Sir Richard

Radar Altimeters were different from today's Radio Altimeters and were used at cruising altitudes to refine a technique known as "Pressure Pattern Flying".....I think.

These radio altimeters were known as 'high range radio altimeters' and were thus used to refine pressure pattern navigation.

This is a professionals Navigator's specialty, and I have used PPN in the Pacific on Lockheed L1649 Constallations, years ago.
Works just fine....but not of course with the fixed tracks in use today, in many areas.

Longer track miles (usually), shorter time enroute.
Superb.

[Dan Winterland]

The V bombers used to have Rad Alts which worled up to 50,000'. maybe the same gadget.

[GK430]

Can anyone explain this EL AL flight LOD-TEHRAN. I was surprised when I took another look at one of my father's logbooks. Was this a regular service all those years ago?


Excuse the quick photoshopping in the one below but the times are genuine entries. 14+ hour non-stop Britannia flights I could not find, however 12+, especially Entebbe-LGW were common and sometimes tech stops were obviously made at Nice or Le Bourget. 13:15 on the bottom and many entries were wheels off : on.

[WHBM]

Yes, very regular. El Al had services to Tehran until the 1978 revolution when the Shah of Iran was replaced by Khomeini. However it was a long way round to avoid Arabic airspace (presumably north over Turkey then east).

Bear in mind that while Iran may be a Moslem country, it is not an Arabic country.

Looking at that logbook I'm guessing that Captain Tohar is the same one as on the record New York - Tel Aviv nonstop.

[doubleu-anker]

Not quiet the same aircraft but I believe a cargo operator flew a CL44, empty, Hong Kong to London direct. Shutting down engines as decreasing fuel load would allow.

[bean]

The Davison mentioned in the El-Al page must be Derek Davison before he left for Euravia/Britannia

[bean]

Link to contemporary article written my J M Ramsden from Flight archives:


http://www.flightglobal.com/PDFArchi...0-%200013.html

[WHBM]

Fascinating article, thank you.

Is there an index to those old articles ?

[bean]

Here is a link to the archive home page

http://www.flightglobal.com/staticpages/archive.html

i think it's a fantastic facility but, the search engine isn't that great.

I knew the El Al article existed because I used to own a lot of 1950s volumes of flight & remembered it