Britain had so many amazing ideas with airframes and powerplants, I love learning more about their postwar technology. What a time to have been an engineer.
In St.Louis Missouri where I'm un lucky to be born , they built a 3 billion dollar huge run way yet never really use it for it's full potential . So yes hind sight is 20/20 to modern times today yes indeed in truth .
Same with the Cold War. So much innovation, so many rich people scared for their life and therefore willing to pay for it. Now we spend all our money on people who don't feel like working because they have no reason to work.
I saw her flying over Farnborough in about 1951 or 52 I guess, I was an aircraft mad little boy. Then went on to a lifelong career in the Air Force as an engineer.
@Gallant Zodiac my last job was designing and testing devices for destroying unexploded aircraft ordnance. Nothing so dull as working in an aircraft factory. But you are no so gallant as to use your real name.
i'M A BIG FAN OF dOCUMENTARY'S ,ESPECIALLY FROM THE BBC. 1987 ? M'MMM, I WAS AWAY THAT YEAR, MUST HAVE BEEN THEN, ALTHOUGH I KNOW OF NO REPEATS OF THIS.
A simply stunning machine of huge complexity that as enthusiasts we should be rightly proud of. It's rare that something so new is so beautiful in its design unless design takes precedent.
I saw the Brabazon flying over the family house in Cirenceseter, Glos., in about 1950. I had to call my dad to tell me what it was because I was only 10! A beautiful aircraft, with the same kind of lines as the Comet which came along a bit later and was one of the reasons why the Brabazon was never viable. Nobody who ever saw this in the air could fail to be impressed by its looks and its size. Of course it was slow by today's standards but everything else looked right.
The British aircraft industry was used to selling its products to one customer i.e. the British taxpayer (either through the Royal Air Force or Royal Nay or the nationalised airlines, BEA and BOAC). As a result, they had very poor experience in actually having to MARKET any of their products. Now and then, they would produce a world beater - and the economics of the aircraft would almost sell itself. Far more often however, the aircraft was designed, built and test flown BEFORE anybody really made any attempt to see if there was any genuine market for it beyond what the British government had already ordered. To be fair, what happened in Britain was also happening elsewhere, such as in France.
+EricIrl Interestingly, the French Sud-Aviation Caravelle--using some de Havilland Comet components of all things!--proved to be surprisingly successful because it showed a smaller, shorter-range jet airliner was actually quite viable. And that experience paved the way for the French leadership of Airbus Industrie, today's Airbus Group SE.
Sacto1654 the French entry into the jet passenger aircraft business was a beauty.however it was no competition to the very successful 707 and the Comet which was a short to medium range aircraft. No crossing the Atlantic the smaller number the Sud-Caravelle was prone to crashing.
Thanks for posting. An important part of British aviation history reflecting a time of different attitudes and lost opportunities. (If only the Comet had had oval windows!)
+atomage2006 The dislike button is too vague, and many people dislike for many reasons. Either the content is disliked, the subject matter, the documentary quality, the quality of the upload. RUclips and Google need to address this. I hope I made a coherent point.
Excellent documentary. Great myths of my boyhood - there were so many, the Flying Wing, the Gloster Meteor, the Flying Bedstead and so on. The Bristol Brabazon was a giant technical achievement and cost a fortune, but was out of date by the time it was ready to fly, a propeller-driven aircraft at the beginning of the jet age, superseded by the de Havilland Comet and Boeing 707.
An Airbus A380 weight, fully loaded at 630 tons, has capacity for up to 800 passengers. A slight advantage? The amount of fuel required must be enormous.
Micheal O Flaherty, I think it started out as a get rich quick scheme on invention breakthroughs. They kept funding & building it even when they figured it would be easier to stop then continue. People were betting on promises of profit. Then all bailed at once to be free of blame
Micheal O Flaherty, Brabazon on easterly to N.Y. would probably use 900 gallons an hour. Compared to 3,600 gph for 748-800. Brabazon was designed for convienence & Luxury. Then the bean counters started raving ranting on what fuel cost is going to be. Well DUH ! ! What was the Brabazon for to start with. There is enough affluent people in England France Germany America to make a profit for Brabazon. The aircraft had 8 very powerful engines. On westerlys to Europe from the United States probably would have made very good time. They didn't even try the endeavor. This is what makes me upset about it
@@davidvance6367 You need to look at seat-miles to get an idea of fuel efficiency. 747s today carry 400+ passengers vs 100 for the Brabazon. Then you need to factor time-of-flight: the 747 flies twice as fast therefore the time-of-flight would be about halved vs the Brabazon. So, you would need to multiply 900 by 4 (3600) and then double that to 7200 due to time-of-flight. You would need four Brabazons to do an equivalent task that a single 747 could do, but it would still take them twice the time. This doesn't account of the freight that the 747 carries in addition to the 400 passengers.
Still an impressive accomplishment and at least it actually flew. I live near the Hughes H-4 Hercules (spruce goose) , which is also impressive, but it never flew more than a few feet off the water and only once.
I have never seen this documentary before,despite it being so old. Thank you for the upload. I never saw this aircraft fly, but obviously it did, so it wasn't a 'failure' was it? It worked! It's just unfortunate that it wasn't commercially viable. Oh , the irony of demolishing a whole village to extend the runway to accommodate the take off and landing of the huge thing, only to learn that it could take off and land in half the length. What a p*sser! What a shame it is that they destroyed it, rather than keep it in a museum, if only as a reminder of the waste of time and effort developing it. I would like to have seen it.
The scene starting at 8:37 where it goes from black and white archival footage to current day with the color sweep on the instruments... fantastic touch.
Jack Frost - I once met an old school Aussie TV presenter who spoke much like these guys - when I commented on it he told me that in those days you couldn’t be a presenter on radio or television unless you spoke (or learned to speak) with a clipped “BBC accent”
Jack Frost - I once met an old school Aussie TV presenter who spoke much like these guys - when I commented on it he told me that in those days you couldn’t be a presenter on radio or television unless you spoke (or learned to speak) with a clipped “BBC accent” even in Australia!
Oh and one last thing, the runway built for the 'Brab' - one of the longest in the UK and well positioned near motorways has been closed and will be built on - 'you couldn't make it up'
My how things have changed. Could you imagine the furor if you tried demolishing a village now. Just look at the problems over a new runway at either Gatwick or Heathrow. While this aircraft is widely regarded as a White Elephant, a lot of very valuable and very useful lessons were learned that eventually made their way into other projects.
IN 1951, I WAS TEN YEARS OLD., AND ON HOLIDAY WITH MY FAMILY AT UPHILL, WESTON SUPER MARE. I AND MY BROTHER'S WERE WALKING IN A WOOD, WHEN SUDDENLY, OVER HEAD, WE HEARD A MASSIVE NOISE OF ENGINES ROARING. RUNNING TILL WE FOUND A CLEARING, AND LOOKING UP, THERE WAS A MASSIVE PLANE, ABOUT (GUESSING ), 10,000 FEET. IT NOT ONLY GLEAMED ALL SILVER IN THE SUNLIGHT, BUT MADE A COLOSSAL NOISE. AFTER WATCHING THIS DOCUMENTARY, AND HEARING THOSE ENGINES AGAIN, AS THEN, IT REMINDED ME OF A GRAF ZEPPELIN AIRSHIP.--AND, GOING ABOUT THE SAME SPEED TOO.
An excellent, honest Documentary . The grey areas are shown....and WE can make our own conclusions. Humans can be remarkable when it comes to making an effort...no?!
It was a beautiful colossal airplane and an engineering triumph, but as Bill Gunston said, "it was a non-starter" for commercial airline use. Gunston also said ministries are not customers, that is so true and it was the British government that lead Bristol down the wrong path, for commercial success. Otherwise I like this plane, it really looks good and it was an epic accomplishment, as big a jumbo jet.
One of the best books (although slightly out of date now) on the whole subject of Britain's aircraft industry post WW2 is PROJECT CANCELLED The Disaster of Britain's Abandoned Aircraft Projects - by Derek Wood which describes how (sometimes) world beating projects were cancelled through lack of money and/or political will. The amazing thing is that the Bristol company was ever given the Brabazon project in the first place as they had never built a large aircraft before and their reputation during WW2 for production failings was well known. Perhaps we should celebrate the successes of the UK aviation industry such as the 'V' bombers eg the Avro Vulcan - handled like a fighter; Vickers Viscount; Canberra - licence built by Martin in the USA; Hawker Hunter etc.
Nice documentary. I'm reminded of the Hughs Spruce Goose - another airplane ordered by a government agency (in the U.S. of course) that was a non-starter due to the long development cycle, but which was the test bed for many advances in large aircraft. It's too bad the Brabazon wasn't stored like the Hughes aircraft so it could be on display today.
I prefer old documentaries like this myself. Just the facts with the people who were there telling their stories with old movies and pictures from the time illustrating the narrative.
One of the factors that crippled some of these projects, including the Princess, was Rolls-Royce refusing to develop the excellent British turboshaft engines of the era. Early turboprops were treated like the Flying Wing , the circular wing planes, and on and on. When Government designs planes, you end up with this and the Helldiver.
Joe Stalin People did things differently in those days. It was just after the war, prior to which mainly wealthy people flew -- in luxurious flying boats like the Boeing 314 and the Short Empire class. Ocean liners still just about held sway in mass passenger transport.
No - they didn´t. The Tu 114 was a complete failure. They only built a handful due to noise issues. Nobody in the West would have risked leaving the plane deaf after a 15 hour flight.
"Had we known there would be only 16 production Concordes, I don't think it would have been started". Around the time of the Concorde's first flight, I read a book about Concorde, authored by someone at BAC. It stated with absolute confidence that the sales would be in the many hundreds.
+v8pilot Before the Yom Kippur War and the subsequent hike in oil prices that made the Concorde uneconomic airlines had taken out options. Flight International, as I recall, did a chart showing the airline insignia on Concorde fins. There were a lot! Perhaps after the airlines with the exception of Air France and BOAC cancelled their options the project should have been stopped but they went ahead and the rest is history, as they say.
Yes. But government projects have an inertia that makes stopping them difficult, as opposed to projects of commercial companies who don't wish to go broke. There was a strong element of suppressing reality with Concorde. For example, it came as a surprise that overland supersonic flight would not be allowed. In the 1980's in the evening sitting in my back garden in Bristol, with a beer in my hand, I'd hear a boom. A few minutes later, I'd look up and - - there was an incoming Concorde still in the light of the setting sun - a beautiful sight.
+v8pilot When Harold Wilson's government cancelled the TSR-2, HS681 and P1154 they had, I heard, wanted to scrap Concorde as well but the contract with the French was so well written that they couldn't. There were tests in seeing how people would react to sonic booms by flying Lightnings at supersonic speed over London in the 1960s. I used to rush into the garden but was too young to realise that the Lightning would have gone before I got out. The Yanks didn't want it to land in the USA - too noisy they said - NIH (not invented here) everyone else said. When Concorde was in service It used to come over SE London where I was living (mid 70s) en route to Heathrow. I would rush out with my landlord to see it fly over (subsonically, of course ) and Fred always remarked on how the noise dropped long before it disappeared over One Tree Hill.
At the time of concept,the suggestion of hundreds of sales would have appeared feasable, however,with hindsight, it is easy to jump to conclusions based on historical knowledge and then compare it with todays many fleeting ideas.
Harold Wilson was a fool, like many of his comrades, The later Fighter, the Lightning had the same political interference as did the Hunter. D Doubtlesly all other aircraft appear to have been anathema to those idiot British politicians who live in a fantasy land which lacks completely,the need for common sense and business acumen
I hadn't watched the video to the end when I posted my last. What a great documentary and thank you for uploading it. That loud multi-engined drone suddenly brings back vividly to me that day in Cirencester in 1950 when I was just an awed kid. A Brabazon with turboprops might just have worked. But at least the later Bristol Britannia was successful for the company. How much technology spinoff did this project produce? Sounds like quite a lot. The beginnings of the flight simulator?
The British make the best documentaries. Never heard of this aircraft before, it was an awesome prop driven liner for sure. Too bad they scrapped it though, that was a waste! Same thing happened to northrop's flying wing, nobody cared about historical relevance with aviation during those days.
Yes, from a historic point of view, it was a great pity it couldn't have been preserved. It was a huge financial loss, so they clawed some money back by scrapping it. It's also a pity, that nothing was kept for Bristol Museum.
This waste of time, energy and money seems to happen more than most folks realize. Check out the sad story of the Canadian Avro Arrow. Stupid politicians trashed that amazing project.
And at the same time as the Arrow, Britain's TSR-2 suffered the same fate - bullied out of existence by the Americans who wanted a monopoly in Civil and War planes.
The Arrow was not an amazing project, it was obsolete. It was designed to intercept high altitude/high speed bombers - problem was, bombers weren't doing high altitude missions anymore, they were doing low altitude penetration. Look up the XB-70 Valkyrie - the Americans had a bomber that flew at high altitude at mach 3, much faster than the Arrow. They cancelled it, never entered service. Why? Because high altitude bombing was dead, because of the advent of high performance SAMs that could shoot down a plane no matter how high a plane flew. This was proven by the Soviet shoot-down of Gary Powers' U2. No one was flying high speed/high altitude missions anymore, low altitude penetration was the way forward, and the Arrow wasn't built for that. The Arrow no longer had a mission, that's why we didn't buy them. That's also why the Americans cancelled their high speed/high altitude interceptor, the XF-108 Rapier, which could also fly much faster than the Arrow - the mission simply wasn't required anymore.
Actually the Smithsonian tried in vain to obtain one of the YB49's but were turned down by Secretary of the Air Force Stewart Symington who ordered that all copies of the XB35 and YB49's be destroyed. Symington ordered that portable smelters be brought in to Northrop's facility and the Flying Wings smelted down on location. Another work of art destroyed.
A very good and informative Documentary, my thanks for posting it Had the Aircraft arrived on scene sooner after the War it could have done well, given the comparatively primitive Boeing Stratocruiser of 1947 was catered to an essentially identical clientele as the Brabazon was intended (ironically) Does beg the question though what might have been had Frank Whittle's innovations been snapped up by the Government & RAF when first proposed in 1928, and gives an idea of just how large an technological lead the country lost as a result (even as it was we were in 1945 the only country in the world with Turboprop technology)
Don't forget that Boeing had already built and flown the B-47 in 1947 and that the B-52 was coming on line as well before the Brabazon I took to the air. Development of the Boeing "Dash - 80" (367-80) was heavily subsidized by the US government not primarily as a commercial airliner but as the "concept" jet transport that first went into production in the early fifties as 250 KC-135 Stratotankers for the USAF. The 707 and 720 were easy conversions. Further the Canberra was already in service, the V-bombers and the Comet were also in various stages of final development at the time. Had the British aviation industry had the Barbazon's funding directed towards turbine powered transports the VC-10 and the Trident might have appeared years earlier and might have been commercial successes.
The Dash 80 was NOT "heavily subsidized". The air force "brass" (as opposed to the lower ranks) were completely uninterested in a jet tanker at the time (for mostly political reasons). Boeing literally "bet the company" when it took loans equivalent to almost the entire value of itself to develop the prototype. It was originally marketed (and intended) as a tanker, but got virtually no support from the government until it was actually flying, after which (finally) the Air Force got on board. The only "subsidies" involved were the profits earned on the B-47 & B-52. In the same manner, the 747 was almost entirely a company venture. It was projected to have a relatively short production run, mostly as a freighter and expected to be soon superseded by SSTs for passenger transport. Additionally, the Dash 80 fuselage had to be redesigned not once but twice; the first time to widen it for the production KC-135, and then later to widen it further for the actual 707. Each time, Boeing had to take out more loans. It was NOT an "easy conversion"; both the wings and fuselage were completely re-engineered for the 707/720 (MORE loans). That little quibble aside, your last paragraph is undoubtedly correct.
In this video, the point is made that government-designed aircraft almost certainly will lose to privately designed aircraft- certainly a valid point. ... but consider the byproducts. The US had our space program, which resulted in plenty of research, plenty of infrastructure that still is used, and sparking youths' imaginations and interest in engineering. Cool video, thanks for posting!
And then the first flight. My word. What is the big wonder. With that huge thick wing. Of course this thing flies, slow as continental drift, but it flies.
It surely is apparent everyone has strong airplane opinions and there is some serious amount of chest pounding about aircraft production with a heavy mix of national sovereignty. I do not think this is the point of the Brabozon project. Sure the Brabozon project failed. So did Howard Hughes "Spruce Goose." Theodore Roosevelt once said: "With every effort, there is failure."
History repeating itself with Airbus and the A380. The first one flown to Ireland for scrapping recently just ten years old. A vanity project to compete with the 747 which itself was becoming uneconomic to operate with passengers.
I'm amazed - my original comment on the Vicker V1000 etc has sparked 96 replies - never knew there was so such emotion and interest about! George Edwards the Vickers MD whose quote I used was of course right up to a point - we (the UK) did '... hand to the Americans.....the entire world market for big jet airliners' but only in the 60s and 70s for then along came Airbus who I think even the most ardent fans of our North American friends would have to concede have given Boeing a good run for their money over the last 30 years or so . As for the jet engine market...well Rolls Royce are still there as one of the market leaders. As for the future....that's another crystal ball game!
You have to remember the USA had the market DC3, DC4, DC6, Lockheed Constellation Boeing Stratocruiser, etc. Britain was trying to get a part of that market by trying to technologically leapfrog the USA, despite huge expenditure it failed, probably because it had failed to rationalise it's aircraft industry in the war and had too many manufacturers with individual projects that spread expertise too thinly, lots of brilliant ideas, but not enough expertise to assess their worth or to carry them through.quickly enough.
Peter Toth absolutely true! It was up to factories like Bristol that made England great or other countries as well. Nowadays I don't see anything like this: everything is done by the book and doesn't dare to deviate from it. It is very sad as I see almost no love or passion to any great projects, sad indeed....
Its too bad that the bird wasn't preserved in a museum. I love older aircraft and the history around them. If you're ever in the PNW, make your way to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, McMinnville, Oregon. Edit: The reason being is that the Spruce Goose is in the building along with other aircraft of the day.
Daniel O Carey The artist was Terence Cuneo a very prolific commercially focused artist who became best known for his paintings of steam railways/locomotives - he did quite a bit of work for British Railways for use as posters - but (usually through commissions) also painted a huge range of industrial and military subjects all of which are collectible The Brabazon painting was commissioned by the Bristol Aeroplane Company and was used for a brochure - which we had at home - my father cut it up and framed the print. I think the whole brochure would now be rather more collectible! See terencecuneo.co.uk/
It was an interesting video, the pusher and puller design looked amazing. Had this been available during the war it would have been a bomber or troop transport. In the late 50's though it was woefully incapable of competing against the Boeing 707.
While the Brabazon was a failure as an airliner, the technology learned from building it proved vital in building jet airliners--especially the widebody jets developed from the middle 1960's on. Even what was learned trying to operate the Brabazon on the ground proved useful in the development of operating widebody jets on taxiways and runways.
Yeah, the Brits learned so much from the "Brabazon" that they lead the world in airliner technology. But I thought Boeing was American. I may be wrong.
The real thrill of engineering is the money they pay you to watch things fail. And you learn the most the bigger the failure. Salute! I kind of thing of it as an attempt to repurpose improving WW2 aviation skills into something civilians could use. But my, 8 2500hp pistons, 4 props. 45,000 lb payload w/full fuel. For 22 hours (ugh!) Fascinating engineering comments here, too.
It doesn't matter what the content is there is always an argument going on in the comments of every you tube.....I find many quite entertaining.. Some good argument going on between corisco tupiand soaringtractor .....entertainment a plenty
An engineering work of art that should have been put in a museum for all to admire like a Picasso. They sold the Brabazon for ₤10,000 in scrap value ... such a shame.
To retain one of these mammoth creations for posterity would indeed be an enormous project in cost and allocated space however the spectacle and public interest would be equally as enormous, I'm sure.
It's an insult to the engineering community to compare such an intellect-intensive endeavor like the "Brabazon" to a crappy artist like Picasso, who didn't have one millionth of the brains of the engineers who designed and built that plane.
Fascinating, it tells of the comet being built around the same time, which was a wonderful aircraft, but of course it had problems of its own regarding the design of the windows.
Very interesting documentary. Putting so much effort into something that was already behind its time What a waste. Sacrificing that village too. Makes me wonder about "those in authority" having any real clue and as well, their vested interests. Bit like today really.
Where I live they flattened a large Farm to build a Fighter repair Station during WW2 an during that time a brand new B17 thinking it was Prestwick put down on it , it crashed due to a short runway .
"London to New York, counting the headwinds, is 5,000 miles." I'm a private pilot and I'm having trouble understanding how headwinds can change the distance between London and New York. It will change the FLIGHT TIME and therefore the fuel needed, sure, but the distance? Great Circle navigation doesn't take ground speed into consideration. Unless the starting and stopping locations are exactly opposite each other on the globe, there will only be ONE shortest route via air regardless of the head/tailwinds encountered.
There's another post about this. In commercial aviation, they think in terms of "air miles," which accounts for adverse or favorable winds. The aircraft performance charts often include charts depicting "Nautical Air Miles per thousand pounds of fuel," which are consulted using assumed headwinds or tailwinds to determine how long the airplane can stay aloft, and then with the assumed ground speed achieve an estimate of geographic mileage.
ProjectFlashlight612 Sadly, that's what happens when the taxpayer picks up the bill instead of the shareholders. One of the people working on on it admitted that normally the layout of toilets and so forth was just roughed out and you thought about designing the compartment when the plane was almost complete. He said on the Brabazon mock up the toilets were finished as you would see them in a showroom.
Building a mockup at full scale usually saves you money. Especially if it's an unusual project. You can see a lot of things in 3 dimensions that are hard to visualize on blueprints and anticipate a lot of problems. Mistakes rare readily fixed. A lot cheaper than doing it with metal --which was not superabundant in Britain at the time. If it should not have been built at all, that's another mater but the mockup was not the problem. It was not a mere "model". Today we do this with computers....
@@lloydirland7006 I can understand the purpose of a mockup but the interviewee I heard some years ago, gave the washrooms as an examples. They didn't just mockup the washrooms they were the beautifully fitted out finished article. OT but I get the impression that the aircraft industry generally ripped off the taxpayer in style. The designer of the Nene engine whose name I should remember said the integrity of the Ministry was beyond question, but companies would get funding for prototypes and use them like cash machines for a couple of years before abandoning them. I worked with a man who'd been an electrician building Vulcan's and he said the unions had the place stitched up. They were allowed six weeks to do two weeks work. He spent most of the day playing cards and you'd find people asleep in parts of the factory.
Seems the ministry was listening to the airlines when they set the specifications. Similarly, Kelly Johnson at Lockheed listened to USAF pilots recently back from Korea. The wanted a fighter with speed, high climb rare and high service ceiling. The F-104 fit those requirements exactly. But, in the long run...
@@scootergeorge9576; if the Brabazon Committee was just responding to the wants of the British Airline industry, why is it no British Airline ever ordered even one? The Brabazon was an ill-conceived White Elephant that no one wanted, just like the Impress Flying boat. Like the Concord, both of these airliners could never have made a profit for their operators without Government substitutes for every flight. And what has the F-104 got to do with the Bristol Brabazon?
@@oldgysgt - When development of the Brabazon began, that was what the airlines believed they wanted. But by the time it was ready, technology had left it in the proverbial dust. But it was what the airlines had, originally asked for. Similarly, the F-104 was what combat pilots wanted in an air superiority fighter.
@@scootergeorge9576; the Brabazon Committee was set up in 1942 by the British government to investigate the future needs of the British Empire's civilian airliner market following World War II, but no British airline ever requested an airliner with the specifications of the Bristol Brabazon. It was assumed by the British upper class leaders that only rich people would be flying in the 1950's, and they were VERY wrong. But that was in line with the long held British idea that the wants and needs of the Upper Classes were all that mattered, and the "working class" was only there to serve the needs of their "betters". In 1900, only 42 years before the Brabazon Committee first met, domestic service was the number one employer of workers in the UK! And the name of this video is, "The Bristol Brabazon", not, "The Bristol Brabazon And The Lockheed Starfighter". Let's stick to the subject.
wonderfull ,but what a shame they were all scrapped,if only one had been saved for future ,for people to admire the engineering that went into this monster,what a museum piece except i doubt if there would have been anywhere you could have kept it, a good few years ago i had the fortune to meet bill pegg and talk to him about his life as a test pilot at westlands and for bristol, a fasinating couple of hours
Wayne Moyer I think there's a few bit's, but one piece that definitely survives is the piece of riveted skin that has the 'Bristol Brabazon' name painted on, taken from one side of the front fuselage. It's pretty roughly cut out and consists of a few pieces of skin riveted together. I think there may be a wheel too, like you said. The engines probably got recycled - Bristol Centaurus were used on other aircraft.
Its the inverse concorde of its day , extremely slow , and so heavy no public airport in the world had runways that could handle this , engine setup that was destined for disaster
The real story is the one of the Vickers V1000/VC7 that was cancelled just before it flew in 1955 and let Boeing hog the market with the 707. For that blame the Govt of the time and BOAC who of course also mucked up the Trident. We have handed to the Americans, without a struggle, the entire world market for big jet airliners. ” - George Edwards, Vickers managing director
Helga Schmidlap The Trident was little to do with the then Government but more with BEAs attitude to the design. Also just like to mention the Douglas DC10 with its outward opening cargo door - remember the Paris crash - and the current traumas of the F-35 II Lightning Strike Fighter. There was also the poor safety record of the F104 Starfighter especially in German Air Force service. The F-104 was also at the centre of the Lockheed bribery scandals, in which Lockheed had given bribes to a considerable number of political and military figures in various nations in order to influence their judgment and secure several purchase contracts; this caused considerable political controversy in Europe and Japan.
Helga Schmidlap Free-market ideologues/nihilists often forget that "socialized" governments actually won World War II -- this includes the United States. I can't imagine that free enterprise acting in its own self interest could have achieved such a feat. The short cuts employed by McDonnell Douglas on the DC-10 and the maintenance "time savings" employed by companies like American Airlines in the 1970s that led directly to hundreds of deaths (flights 981 and 192) were the results of non-socialized business practices where companies chased the bottom line above all else. Lemons are not always the result of bureaucracy.
Helga Schmidlap All the data about the little understood science of metal fatigue that caused the crashes was freely handed to the Americans, the 707 was a fine aircraft, but so was the Comet. Boeing had huge resources from their military contracts, a good management and some superb designers, but that doesn't mean the British were not as good, the British aircraft industry got almost no Government assistance.
Bristol Brabazon compared to Boeing B-29: About twice the weight, twice the horsepower, but slower at 220 vs 252 kn. Wikipedia pegged the development cost of the B-29 at $3.0 billion and the Manhattan Project at $1.9 billion. The Brabazon development cost must have been enormous.
***** Interesting, I don't recall if the aircraft was fully pressurized or not.. do you? I would suspect that the 99s' cruising speed would have also been less attractive as a commercial passenger transport.. the concept of flying higher and faster seemed to be the direction that the airlines were drawn to. As a military cargo transport it lacked a key feature, the ability to end-load vehicles
The wooden one probably had at least a hundred times longer fatigue life than the tin Brabazon, and wound up carrying just as many fare paying passengers for just as many miles. It may have cost more though.
For your information, the consumption per passenger/to NM from a piston engine+ propeller aircraft was i that times less than the half from the enormous consumption from a 707, and comparable at the liter/ passenger/NM efficiency from a Airbus A380...
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Britain had so many amazing ideas with airframes and powerplants, I love learning more about their postwar technology. What a time to have been an engineer.
In St.Louis Missouri where I'm un lucky to be born , they built a 3 billion dollar huge run way yet never really use it for it's full potential . So yes hind sight is 20/20 to modern times today yes indeed in truth .
Same with the Cold War. So much innovation, so many rich people scared for their life and therefore willing to pay for it. Now we spend all our money on people who don't feel like working because they have no reason to work.
Every ounce must be saved?? How's that cinema fit out going?😂...lunatics in hindsite maybe....but inspired and an enjoyable watch
My grandad was involved in the designing of this plane. So happy to see this documentary
I saw her flying over Farnborough in about 1951 or 52 I guess, I was an aircraft mad little boy. Then went on to a lifelong career in the Air Force as an engineer.
@Gallant Zodiac my last job was designing and testing devices for destroying unexploded aircraft ordnance. Nothing so dull as working in an aircraft factory. But you are no so gallant as to use your real name.
Great to see the legendary Bill Gunston here looking quite stylish! Thank you for the books Bill.
When I was a boy I wrote to him and he very kindly replied. A nice guy.
A very heart warming doc. The commentary as the plane takes off was a hoot ! This all happened 4 years before I was born. Thanks
This a true gem of documentary....Thank you very much for sharing it!
i'M A BIG FAN OF dOCUMENTARY'S ,ESPECIALLY FROM THE BBC. 1987 ? M'MMM, I WAS AWAY THAT YEAR, MUST HAVE BEEN THEN, ALTHOUGH I KNOW OF NO REPEATS OF THIS.
Brilliant look into the history of an under appreciated piece of aviation history. Those angled piston engines are wild 👀
A simply stunning machine of huge complexity that as enthusiasts we should be rightly proud of. It's rare that something so new is so beautiful in its design unless design takes precedent.
I wish they kept one in a museum today. Would love to see it!
I saw the Brabazon flying over the family house in Cirenceseter, Glos., in about 1950. I had to call my dad to tell me what it was because I was only 10! A beautiful aircraft, with the same kind of lines as the Comet which came along a bit later and was one of the reasons why the Brabazon was never viable. Nobody who ever saw this in the air could fail to be impressed by its looks and its size. Of course it was slow by today's standards but everything else looked right.
My dad was born in 1940. I'll have to ask him if he remembers seeing it.
Such a great documentary...
Thank you very much.
How I wish that I was in that era.
The British aircraft industry was used to selling its products to one customer i.e. the British taxpayer (either through the Royal Air Force or Royal Nay or the nationalised airlines, BEA and BOAC). As a result, they had very poor experience in actually having to MARKET any of their products. Now and then, they would produce a world beater - and the economics of the aircraft would almost sell itself. Far more often however, the aircraft was designed, built and test flown BEFORE anybody really made any attempt to see if there was any genuine market for it beyond what the British government had already ordered.
To be fair, what happened in Britain was also happening elsewhere, such as in France.
+EricIrl Interestingly, the French Sud-Aviation Caravelle--using some de Havilland Comet components of all things!--proved to be surprisingly successful because it showed a smaller, shorter-range jet airliner was actually quite viable. And that experience paved the way for the French leadership of Airbus Industrie, today's Airbus Group SE.
+Sacto1654 It did indeed. I was always a fan of the Caravelle - with its very "chic" French styling.
Sacto1654 the French entry into the jet passenger aircraft business was a beauty.however it was no competition to the very successful 707 and the Comet which was a short to medium range aircraft. No crossing the Atlantic the smaller number the Sud-Caravelle was prone to crashing.
Most of the US airliners of the time were developed in much the same way, as military transports ordered by the US government.
US carriers were heavily subsidized by Federal treasury back in the 60'S
Thanks for posting.
An important part of British aviation history reflecting a time of different attitudes and lost opportunities.
(If only the Comet had had oval windows!)
Excellent documentary! Thank you! My father was there at the test flight!
And another thing why do 13 people 'dislike' the Documentary? - it's really rather good
+atomage2006 The dislike button is too vague, and many people dislike for many reasons. Either the content is disliked, the subject matter, the documentary quality, the quality of the upload. RUclips and Google need to address this. I hope I made a coherent point.
+matt mammone Good point - I tend to save the 'dislike' for bad language and abuse!
it's too long and boring
Because opinions.
cos they were rooting for the germans?
"why do 13 people 'dislike' the Documentary?"
Excellent documentary. Great myths of my boyhood - there were so many, the Flying Wing, the Gloster Meteor, the Flying Bedstead and so on. The Bristol Brabazon was a giant technical achievement and cost a fortune, but was out of date by the time it was ready to fly, a propeller-driven aircraft at the beginning of the jet age, superseded by the de Havilland Comet and Boeing 707.
This is wonderful stuff, great historical aviation history film footage.
Very interesting! I didn’t know there were two piston engines driving each set of propellers, which explains why those engines looked tiny.
Pegg had it pegged!
Great post Ricoberto, beauty Mate.
I love the continuous reach to what is out of reach. Thanks be to Britain for keeping the dream of humanity.
Great doc. The Brabazon weighed 130 tons and carried 100 people. Somehow I don't think the maths would ever work for this beautiful aircraft.
An Airbus A380 weight, fully loaded at 630 tons, has capacity for up to 800 passengers. A slight advantage? The amount of fuel required must be enormous.
Turbofans vs. reactors. Nowadays the engine are far more efficient.
Micheal O Flaherty, I think it started out as a get rich quick scheme on invention breakthroughs. They kept funding & building it even when they figured it would be easier to stop then continue. People were betting on promises of profit. Then all bailed at once to be free of blame
Micheal O Flaherty, Brabazon on easterly to N.Y. would probably use 900 gallons an hour. Compared to 3,600 gph for 748-800. Brabazon was designed for convienence & Luxury. Then the bean counters started raving ranting on what fuel cost is going to be. Well DUH ! ! What was the Brabazon for to start with. There is enough affluent people in England France Germany America to make a profit for Brabazon. The aircraft had 8 very powerful engines. On westerlys to Europe from the United States probably would have made very good time. They didn't even try the endeavor. This is what makes me upset about it
@@davidvance6367 You need to look at seat-miles to get an idea of fuel efficiency. 747s today carry 400+ passengers vs 100 for the Brabazon. Then you need to factor time-of-flight: the 747 flies twice as fast therefore the time-of-flight would be about halved vs the Brabazon. So, you would need to multiply 900 by 4 (3600) and then double that to 7200 due to time-of-flight. You would need four Brabazons to do an equivalent task that a single 747 could do, but it would still take them twice the time.
This doesn't account of the freight that the 747 carries in addition to the 400 passengers.
What an amazing documentary
You built the A 380 fifty years before it was needed
If it only had jet engines that were reliable and fuel efficient
Still an impressive accomplishment and at least it actually flew. I live near the Hughes H-4 Hercules (spruce goose) , which is also impressive, but it never flew more than a few feet off the water and only once.
No customers.
I have never seen this documentary before,despite it being so old. Thank you for the upload.
I never saw this aircraft fly, but obviously it did, so it wasn't a 'failure' was it? It worked! It's just unfortunate that it wasn't commercially viable.
Oh , the irony of demolishing a whole village to extend the runway to accommodate the take off and landing of the huge thing, only to learn that it could take off and land in half the length. What a p*sser!
What a shame it is that they destroyed it, rather than keep it in a museum, if only as a reminder of the waste of time and effort developing it. I would like to have seen it.
What an amazing aircraft!! Wish I could have seen it!!
I have this documentary on VHS somehwere - taped off the TV in 1987. Nice to see Bill Gunston again. Sadly, he passed away only a few months ago.
Very nice video, thanks for sharing!
The scene starting at 8:37 where it goes from black and white archival footage to current day with the color sweep on the instruments... fantastic touch.
Beautiful aircraft. It's a shame that they were scrapped.
Love those posh sounding BBC documentary narrators from the 1940s.
Strangely, the early Australian documentaries had the same posh sounding narrators.
Jack Frost - I once met an old school Aussie TV presenter who spoke much like these guys - when I commented on it he told me that in those days you couldn’t be a presenter on radio or television unless you spoke (or learned to speak) with a clipped “BBC accent”
Jack Frost - I once met an old school Aussie TV presenter who spoke much like these guys - when I commented on it he told me that in those days you couldn’t be a presenter on radio or television unless you spoke (or learned to speak) with a clipped “BBC accent” even in Australia!
1930's holdover. ever see american horror story where a character asks a 1930's ghost why he talks like that? the hotel series.
Good old public school clipped accent 🥂🥂🥂🙌🙏🙏🙏🍷
Oh and one last thing, the runway built for the 'Brab' - one of the longest in the UK and well positioned near motorways has been closed and will be built on - 'you couldn't make it up'
My how things have changed. Could you imagine the furor if you tried demolishing a village now. Just look at the problems over a new runway at either Gatwick or Heathrow. While this aircraft is widely regarded as a White Elephant, a lot of very valuable and very useful lessons were learned that eventually made their way into other projects.
Bill Gunston...I read a lot of his books in my youth...great aviation historian
Beautiful documentary
IN 1951, I WAS TEN YEARS OLD., AND ON HOLIDAY WITH MY FAMILY AT UPHILL, WESTON SUPER MARE. I AND MY BROTHER'S WERE WALKING IN A WOOD, WHEN SUDDENLY, OVER HEAD, WE HEARD A MASSIVE NOISE OF ENGINES ROARING. RUNNING TILL WE FOUND A CLEARING, AND LOOKING UP, THERE WAS A MASSIVE PLANE, ABOUT (GUESSING ), 10,000 FEET. IT NOT ONLY GLEAMED ALL SILVER IN THE SUNLIGHT, BUT MADE A COLOSSAL NOISE. AFTER WATCHING THIS DOCUMENTARY, AND HEARING THOSE ENGINES AGAIN, AS THEN, IT REMINDED ME OF A GRAF ZEPPELIN AIRSHIP.--AND, GOING ABOUT THE SAME SPEED TOO.
An excellent, honest Documentary . The grey areas are shown....and WE can make our own conclusions. Humans can be remarkable when it comes to making an effort...no?!
It was a beautiful colossal airplane and an engineering triumph, but as Bill Gunston said, "it was a non-starter" for commercial airline use. Gunston also said ministries are not customers, that is so true and it was the British government that lead Bristol down the wrong path, for commercial success. Otherwise I like this plane, it really looks good and it was an epic accomplishment, as big a jumbo jet.
@Brian Roome
Tryhard much? Lol
One of the best books (although slightly out of date now) on the whole subject of Britain's aircraft industry post WW2 is
PROJECT CANCELLED The Disaster of Britain's Abandoned Aircraft Projects - by Derek Wood which describes how (sometimes) world beating projects were cancelled through lack of money and/or political will.
The amazing thing is that the Bristol company was ever given the Brabazon project in the first place as they had never built a large aircraft before and their reputation during WW2 for production failings was well known. Perhaps we should celebrate the successes of the UK aviation industry such as the 'V' bombers eg the Avro Vulcan - handled like a fighter; Vickers Viscount; Canberra - licence built by Martin in the USA; Hawker Hunter etc.
atomage2006 1
Such a interesting aircraft. I would love to have seen it.
Nice documentary. I'm reminded of the Hughs Spruce Goose - another airplane ordered by a government agency (in the U.S. of course) that was a non-starter due to the long development cycle, but which was the test bed for many advances in large aircraft. It's too bad the Brabazon wasn't stored like the Hughes aircraft so it could be on display today.
Ron D'Eau Claire I'm glad it isn't. Britain has become one big museum for its past manufacturing - cars, motorbikes, planes you name it.
I prefer old documentaries like this myself. Just the facts with the people who were there telling their stories with old movies and pictures from the time illustrating the narrative.
One of the factors that crippled some of these projects, including the Princess, was Rolls-Royce refusing to develop the excellent British turboshaft engines of the era. Early turboprops were treated like the Flying Wing , the circular wing planes, and on and on. When Government designs planes, you end up with this and the Helldiver.
I saw it flying, awesome, very quiet and sedate!
Joe Stalin People did things differently in those days. It was just after the war, prior to which mainly wealthy people flew -- in luxurious flying boats like the Boeing 314 and the Short Empire class. Ocean liners still just about held sway in mass passenger transport.
Tupolev was smart enough to see the potential.
No - they didn´t. The Tu 114 was a complete failure. They only built a handful due to noise issues. Nobody in the West would have risked leaving the plane deaf after a 15 hour flight.
"Had we known there would be only 16 production Concordes, I don't think it would have been started". Around the time of the Concorde's first flight, I read a book about Concorde, authored by someone at BAC. It stated with absolute confidence that the sales would be in the many hundreds.
+v8pilot Before the Yom Kippur War and the subsequent hike in oil prices that made the Concorde uneconomic airlines had taken out options. Flight International, as I recall, did a chart showing the airline insignia on Concorde fins. There were a lot! Perhaps after the airlines with the exception of Air France and BOAC cancelled their options the project should have been stopped but they went ahead and the rest is history, as they say.
Yes.
But government projects have an inertia that makes stopping them difficult, as opposed to projects of commercial companies who don't wish to go broke.
There was a strong element of suppressing reality with Concorde. For example, it came as a surprise that overland supersonic flight would not be allowed.
In the 1980's in the evening sitting in my back garden in Bristol, with a beer in my hand, I'd hear a boom. A few minutes later, I'd look up and - - there was an incoming Concorde still in the light of the setting sun - a beautiful sight.
+v8pilot When Harold Wilson's government cancelled the TSR-2, HS681 and P1154 they had, I heard, wanted to scrap Concorde as well but the contract with the French was so well written that they couldn't.
There were tests in seeing how people would react to sonic booms by flying Lightnings at supersonic speed over London in the 1960s. I used to rush into the garden but was too young to realise that the Lightning would have gone before I got out. The Yanks didn't want it to land in the USA - too noisy they said - NIH (not invented here) everyone else said.
When Concorde was in service It used to come over SE London where I was living (mid 70s) en route to Heathrow. I would rush out with my landlord to see it fly over (subsonically, of course ) and Fred always remarked on how the noise dropped long before it disappeared over One Tree Hill.
At the time of concept,the suggestion of hundreds of sales would have appeared feasable, however,with hindsight, it is easy to jump to conclusions based on historical knowledge and then compare it with todays many fleeting ideas.
Harold Wilson was a fool, like many of his comrades, The later Fighter, the Lightning had the same political interference as did the Hunter. D
Doubtlesly all other aircraft appear to have been anathema to those idiot British politicians who live in a fantasy land which lacks completely,the need for common sense and business acumen
I hadn't watched the video to the end when I posted my last. What a great documentary and thank you for uploading it. That loud multi-engined drone suddenly brings back vividly to me that day in Cirencester in 1950 when I was just an awed kid. A Brabazon with turboprops might just have worked. But at least the later Bristol Britannia was successful for the company.
How much technology spinoff did this project produce? Sounds like quite a lot. The beginnings of the flight simulator?
The British make the best documentaries. Never heard of this aircraft before, it was an awesome prop driven liner for sure. Too bad they scrapped it though, that was a waste! Same thing happened to northrop's flying wing, nobody cared about historical relevance with aviation during those days.
Yes, from a historic point of view, it was a great pity it couldn't have been preserved. It was a huge financial loss, so they clawed some money back by scrapping it. It's also a pity, that nothing was kept for Bristol Museum.
This waste of time, energy and money seems to happen more than most folks realize. Check out the sad story of the Canadian Avro Arrow. Stupid politicians trashed that amazing project.
And at the same time as the Arrow, Britain's TSR-2 suffered the same fate - bullied out of existence by the Americans who wanted a monopoly in Civil and War planes.
The Arrow was not an amazing project, it was obsolete. It was designed to intercept high altitude/high speed bombers - problem was, bombers weren't doing high altitude missions anymore, they were doing low altitude penetration.
Look up the XB-70 Valkyrie - the Americans had a bomber that flew at high altitude at mach 3, much faster than the Arrow. They cancelled it, never entered service. Why? Because high altitude bombing was dead, because of the advent of high performance SAMs that could shoot down a plane no matter how high a plane flew. This was proven by the Soviet shoot-down of Gary Powers' U2.
No one was flying high speed/high altitude missions anymore, low altitude penetration was the way forward, and the Arrow wasn't built for that. The Arrow no longer had a mission, that's why we didn't buy them. That's also why the Americans cancelled their high speed/high altitude interceptor, the XF-108 Rapier, which could also fly much faster than the Arrow - the mission simply wasn't required anymore.
Actually the Smithsonian tried in vain to obtain one of the YB49's but were turned down by Secretary of the Air Force Stewart Symington who ordered that all copies of the XB35 and YB49's be destroyed. Symington ordered that portable smelters be brought in to Northrop's facility and the Flying Wings smelted down on location. Another work of art destroyed.
This was rivetting. I had not even heard of this aircraft!
WOW ! It would have been a great museum piece today. It really is a shame that they chopped it up. Thnx for the vid.
Yes. I have gone to see the Hughes H-4 Hercules (spruce goose) 3 times. It still impresses me. I would love to see the Bristol Brabazon up close.
A very good and informative Documentary, my thanks for posting it
Had the Aircraft arrived on scene sooner after the War it could have done well, given the comparatively primitive Boeing Stratocruiser of 1947 was catered to an essentially identical clientele as the Brabazon was intended (ironically)
Does beg the question though what might have been had Frank Whittle's innovations been snapped up by the Government & RAF when first proposed in 1928, and gives an idea of just how large an technological lead the country lost as a result (even as it was we were in 1945 the only country in the world with Turboprop technology)
Don't forget that Boeing had already built and flown the B-47 in 1947 and that the B-52 was coming on line as well before the Brabazon I took to the air. Development of the Boeing "Dash - 80" (367-80) was heavily subsidized by the US government not primarily as a commercial airliner but as the "concept" jet transport that first went into production in the early fifties as 250 KC-135 Stratotankers for the USAF. The 707 and 720 were easy conversions.
Further the Canberra was already in service, the V-bombers and the Comet were also in various stages of final development at the time. Had the British aviation industry had the Barbazon's funding directed towards turbine powered transports the VC-10 and the Trident might have appeared years earlier and might have been commercial successes.
The Dash 80 was NOT "heavily subsidized". The air force "brass" (as opposed to the lower ranks) were completely uninterested in a jet tanker at the time (for mostly political reasons). Boeing literally "bet the company" when it took loans equivalent to almost the entire value of itself to develop the prototype. It was originally marketed (and intended) as a tanker, but got virtually no support from the government until it was actually flying, after which (finally) the Air Force got on board. The only "subsidies" involved were the profits earned on the B-47 & B-52. In the same manner, the 747 was almost entirely a company venture. It was projected to have a relatively short production run, mostly as a freighter and expected to be soon superseded by SSTs for passenger transport.
Additionally, the Dash 80 fuselage had to be redesigned not once but twice; the first time to widen it for the production KC-135, and then later to widen it further for the actual 707. Each time, Boeing had to take out more loans. It was NOT an "easy conversion"; both the wings and fuselage were completely re-engineered for the 707/720 (MORE loans).
That little quibble aside, your last paragraph is undoubtedly correct.
I checked it out, and you're right. Thanks.
Cheers!
David, was it not a similar story with the 747 which in concept was in competition with the C5?
In this video, the point is made that government-designed aircraft almost certainly will lose to privately designed aircraft- certainly a valid point.
... but consider the byproducts. The US had our space program, which resulted in plenty of research, plenty of infrastructure that still is used, and sparking youths' imaginations and interest in engineering.
Cool video, thanks for posting!
I saw her fly past from our back garden in Littlehampton.
Good video, I learned something.
My Great Gran father was one of the main designers Stanley Harper when my Granddad seen it recently he shed a tear..magically
And then the first flight. My word. What is the big wonder. With that huge thick wing. Of course this thing flies, slow as continental drift, but it flies.
1:40 Bill Gunston...I remember reading many of his aviation books as a younger man...
Now you are 60+. "Younger", sure.
It surely is apparent everyone has strong airplane opinions and there is some serious amount of chest pounding about aircraft production with a heavy mix of national sovereignty. I do not think this is the point of the Brabozon project.
Sure the Brabozon project failed. So did Howard Hughes "Spruce Goose."
Theodore Roosevelt once said: "With every effort, there is failure."
Great story, I'd love to see more about Britannia, but haven't found many videos.
History repeating itself with Airbus and the A380. The first one flown to Ireland for scrapping recently just ten years old.
A vanity project to compete with the 747 which itself was becoming uneconomic to operate with passengers.
I'm amazed - my original comment on the Vicker V1000 etc has sparked 96 replies - never knew there was so such emotion and interest about! George Edwards the Vickers MD whose quote I used was of course right up to a point - we (the UK) did '... hand to the Americans.....the entire world market for big jet airliners' but only in the 60s and 70s for then along came Airbus who I think even the most ardent fans of our North American friends would have to concede have given Boeing a good run for their money over the last 30 years or so . As for the jet engine market...well Rolls Royce are still there as one of the market leaders. As for the future....that's another crystal ball game!
You have to remember the USA had the market DC3, DC4, DC6, Lockheed Constellation Boeing Stratocruiser, etc. Britain was trying to get a part of that market by trying to technologically leapfrog the USA, despite huge expenditure it failed, probably because it had failed to rationalise it's aircraft industry in the war and had too many manufacturers with individual projects that spread expertise too thinly, lots of brilliant ideas, but not enough expertise to assess their worth or to carry them through.quickly enough.
ABSOLUTELY OLD CHAP--WHAT?
Oom
OOO R A Get that wheelbarrow off the runway there's a million and a half rivets trying to take off.
From "mistakes" much is still gained!
An amazing piece of engineering.
Those who claim proudly to have never failed, have also never invented anything or taken a chance.
Peter Toth absolutely true! It was up to factories like Bristol that made England great or other countries as well. Nowadays I don't see anything like this: everything is done by the book and doesn't dare to deviate from it. It is very sad as I see almost no love or passion to any great projects, sad indeed....
Well said x
Necessity is the mother of invention ?
Its too bad that the bird wasn't preserved in a museum.
I love older aircraft and the history around them. If you're ever in the PNW, make your way to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, McMinnville, Oregon.
Edit: The reason being is that the Spruce Goose is in the building along with other aircraft of the day.
Great painting at the end.
Daniel O Carey The artist was Terence Cuneo a very prolific commercially focused artist who became best known for his paintings of steam railways/locomotives - he did quite a bit of work for British Railways for use as posters - but (usually through commissions) also painted a huge range of industrial and military subjects all of which are collectible The Brabazon painting was commissioned by the Bristol Aeroplane Company and was used for a brochure - which we had at home - my father cut it up and framed the print. I think the whole brochure would now be rather more collectible! See terencecuneo.co.uk/
atomage2006 Excellent report. Thank you very much!
Amazing!
The Dove, the Heron and the Viscount were also specified by the Brabazon Commission.
It was an interesting video, the pusher and puller design looked amazing. Had this been available during the war it would have been a bomber or troop transport. In the late 50's though it was woefully incapable of competing against the Boeing 707.
The Brabazon flew in 1949, and scrapped in 1953. Boeing 707 flew in 1957. Different generations!
Fascinating!!!
While the Brabazon was a failure as an airliner, the technology learned from building it proved vital in building jet airliners--especially the widebody jets developed from the middle 1960's on. Even what was learned trying to operate the Brabazon on the ground proved useful in the development of operating widebody jets on taxiways and runways.
Yeah, the Brits learned so much from the "Brabazon" that they lead the world in airliner technology. But I thought Boeing was American. I may be wrong.
@@alphonsozorro7952
Yes indeed. America has done very well with it's stolen or nazi developed technology.
America! Fuck yeah!
I may one of the few people living today who actually saw this aircraft fly. In the air , it looked so slow. It must have been it's huge size.
I believe it was the airspeed . . .
The real thrill of engineering is the money they pay you to watch things fail. And you learn the most the bigger the failure. Salute!
I kind of thing of it as an attempt to repurpose improving WW2 aviation skills into something civilians could use. But my, 8 2500hp pistons, 4 props. 45,000 lb payload w/full fuel. For 22 hours (ugh!)
Fascinating engineering comments here, too.
It doesn't matter what the content is there is always an argument going on in the comments of every you tube.....I find many quite entertaining..
Some good argument going on between corisco tupiand soaringtractor .....entertainment a plenty
What a beautiful aeroplane. I've never seen her before.
An engineering work of art that should have been put in a museum for all to admire like a Picasso. They sold the Brabazon for ₤10,000 in scrap value ... such a shame.
To retain one of these mammoth creations for posterity would indeed be an enormous project in cost and allocated space however the spectacle and public interest would be equally as enormous, I'm sure.
It's an insult to the engineering community to compare such an intellect-intensive endeavor like the "Brabazon" to a crappy artist like Picasso, who didn't have one millionth of the brains of the engineers who designed and built that plane.
Fascinating, it tells of the comet being built around the same time, which was a wonderful aircraft, but of course it had problems of its own regarding the design of the windows.
Wrong sort of putty
Very interesting documentary. Putting so much effort into something that was already behind its time What a waste. Sacrificing that village too. Makes me wonder about "those in authority" having any real clue and as well, their vested interests. Bit like today really.
Where I live they flattened a large Farm to build a Fighter repair Station during WW2 an during that time a brand new B17 thinking it was Prestwick put down on it , it crashed due to a short runway .
This was a monumental undertaking. I always thought Britain was skint after the war....
for the time, an extreme interesting concept... if it only had jets ;-)
What were the black objects in front of the control surfaces on the prototype? Travel stops maybe?
Ironic so much foresight and good intention produced such a futile effort.
Interesting vid!
"London to New York, counting the headwinds, is 5,000 miles." I'm a private pilot and I'm having trouble understanding how headwinds can change the distance between London and New York. It will change the FLIGHT TIME and therefore the fuel needed, sure, but the distance? Great Circle navigation doesn't take ground speed into consideration. Unless the starting and stopping locations are exactly opposite each other on the globe, there will only be ONE shortest route via air regardless of the head/tailwinds encountered.
There's another post about this. In commercial aviation, they think in terms of "air miles," which accounts for adverse or favorable winds. The aircraft performance charts often include charts depicting "Nautical Air Miles per thousand pounds of fuel," which are consulted using assumed headwinds or tailwinds to determine how long the airplane can stay aloft, and then with the assumed ground speed achieve an estimate of geographic mileage.
Building a 1:1 scale model out of paper and wood. Oh my God. And they said Howard Hughes wasted money on his giant plane.
ProjectFlashlight612
Sadly, that's what happens when the taxpayer picks up the bill instead of the shareholders. One of the people working on on it admitted that normally the layout of toilets and so forth was just roughed out and you thought about designing the compartment when the plane was almost complete. He said on the Brabazon mock up the toilets were finished as you would see them in a showroom.
Building a mockup at full scale usually saves you money. Especially if it's an unusual project. You can see a lot of things in 3 dimensions that are hard to visualize on blueprints and anticipate a lot of problems. Mistakes rare readily fixed. A lot cheaper than doing it with metal --which was not superabundant in Britain at the time. If it should not have been built at all, that's another mater but the mockup was not the problem. It was not a mere "model". Today we do this with computers....
@@lloydirland7006 I can understand the purpose of a mockup but the interviewee I heard some years ago, gave the washrooms as an examples. They didn't just mockup the washrooms they were the beautifully fitted out finished article.
OT but I get the impression that the aircraft industry generally ripped off the taxpayer in style. The designer of the Nene engine whose name I should remember said the integrity of the Ministry was beyond question, but companies would get funding for prototypes and use them like cash machines for a couple of years before abandoning them.
I worked with a man who'd been an electrician building Vulcan's and he said the unions had the place stitched up. They were allowed six weeks to do two weeks work. He spent most of the day playing cards and you'd find people asleep in parts of the factory.
This is what happens when a ministry designs anything.
Seems the ministry was listening to the airlines when they set the specifications. Similarly, Kelly Johnson at Lockheed listened to USAF pilots recently back from Korea. The wanted a fighter with speed, high climb rare and high service ceiling. The F-104 fit those requirements exactly. But, in the long run...
@@scootergeorge9576; if the Brabazon Committee was just responding to the wants of the British Airline industry, why is it no British Airline ever ordered even one? The Brabazon was an ill-conceived White Elephant that no one wanted, just like the Impress Flying boat. Like the Concord, both of these airliners could never have made a profit for their operators without Government substitutes for every flight. And what has the F-104 got to do with the Bristol Brabazon?
@@oldgysgt - When development of the Brabazon began, that was what the airlines believed they wanted. But by the time it was ready, technology had left it in the proverbial dust. But it was what the airlines had, originally asked for. Similarly, the F-104 was what combat pilots wanted in an air superiority fighter.
@@scootergeorge9576; the Brabazon Committee was set up in 1942 by the British government to investigate the future needs of the British Empire's civilian airliner market following World War II, but no British airline ever requested an airliner with the specifications of the Bristol Brabazon. It was assumed by the British upper class leaders that only rich people would be flying in the 1950's, and they were VERY wrong. But that was in line with the long held British idea that the wants and needs of the Upper Classes were all that mattered, and the "working class" was only there to serve the needs of their "betters". In 1900, only 42 years before the Brabazon Committee first met, domestic service was the number one employer of workers in the UK! And the name of this video is, "The Bristol Brabazon", not, "The Bristol Brabazon And The Lockheed Starfighter". Let's stick to the subject.
@@oldgysgt - My analogy escaped you.
wonderfull ,but what a shame they were all scrapped,if only one had been saved for future ,for people to admire the engineering that went into this monster,what a museum piece except i doubt if there would have been anywhere you could have kept it,
a good few years ago i had the fortune to meet bill pegg and talk to him about his life as a test pilot at westlands and for bristol, a fasinating couple of hours
Or the military could of bought it at that price-it would be perfect for them
There is one small piece left. I believe it is a tire or something weird.
Wayne Moyer I think there's a few bit's, but one piece that definitely survives is the piece of riveted skin that has the 'Bristol Brabazon' name painted on, taken from one side of the front fuselage. It's pretty roughly cut out and consists of a few pieces of skin riveted together.
I think there may be a wheel too, like you said. The engines probably got recycled - Bristol Centaurus were used on other aircraft.
A beautiful Airplane
This machine was a triumph of engineering excellence over common sense.
Its the inverse concorde of its day , extremely slow , and so heavy no public airport in the world had runways that could handle this , engine setup that was destined for disaster
What a beautiful plane. 😊
Perhaps some efficiency adjustments could revive this stunning monstrosity?
The real story is the one of the Vickers V1000/VC7 that was cancelled just before it flew in 1955 and let Boeing hog the market with the 707. For that blame the Govt of the time and BOAC who of course also mucked up the Trident.
We have handed to the Americans, without a struggle, the entire world market for big jet airliners. ” - George Edwards, Vickers managing director
Helga Schmidlap The Trident was little to do with the then Government but more with BEAs attitude to the design. Also just like to mention the Douglas DC10 with its outward opening cargo door - remember the Paris crash - and the current traumas of the F-35 II Lightning Strike Fighter. There was also the poor safety record of the F104 Starfighter especially in German Air Force service. The F-104 was also at the centre of the Lockheed bribery scandals, in which Lockheed had given bribes to a considerable number of political and military figures in various nations in order to influence their judgment and secure several purchase contracts; this caused considerable political controversy in Europe and Japan.
Helga Schmidlap Free-market ideologues/nihilists often forget that "socialized" governments actually won World War II -- this includes the United States. I can't imagine that free enterprise acting in its own self interest could have achieved such a feat. The short cuts employed by McDonnell Douglas on the DC-10 and the maintenance "time savings" employed by companies like American Airlines in the 1970s that led directly to hundreds of deaths (flights 981 and 192) were the results of non-socialized business practices where companies chased the bottom line above all else. Lemons are not always the result of bureaucracy.
phillyslasher You are too harsh on them :)Check this place out: www.flightglobal.com/blogs/learmount/2014/12/learn-fly-a350/
Helga Schmidlap *Vickers* Trident??
Helga Schmidlap
All the data about the little understood science of metal fatigue that caused the crashes was freely handed to the Americans, the 707 was a fine aircraft, but so was the Comet. Boeing had huge resources from their military contracts, a good management and some superb designers, but that doesn't mean the British were not as good, the British aircraft industry got almost no Government assistance.
Bristol Brabazon compared to Boeing B-29: About twice the weight, twice the horsepower, but slower at 220 vs 252 kn. Wikipedia pegged the development cost of the B-29 at $3.0 billion and the Manhattan Project at $1.9 billion. The Brabazon development cost must have been enormous.
The largest land plane at the time was the Convair XC-99
The real doktorbimmer True, a derivative of the venerable B36 Peacemaker.
***** Interesting, I don't recall if the aircraft was fully pressurized or not.. do you? I would suspect that the 99s' cruising speed would have also been less attractive as a commercial passenger transport.. the concept of flying higher and faster seemed to be the direction that the airlines were drawn to.
As a military cargo transport it lacked a key feature, the ability to end-load vehicles
what happened to both the wood model and the production template?
inkblot131 Probably scrapped.
The wooden one probably had at least a hundred times longer fatigue life than the tin Brabazon, and wound up carrying just as many fare paying passengers for just as many miles. It may have cost more though.
Was the 380 the contemporary Brabason?
wow that was so good thanks!
Good Flick. Sad, dig the counter-rotating props, so much power, but so much fuel too.
For your information, the consumption per passenger/to NM from a piston engine+ propeller aircraft was i that times less than the half from the enormous consumption from a 707, and comparable at the liter/ passenger/NM efficiency from a Airbus A380...
Wow, cool to know. I dig CounterRotating Props. They look Wicked Mean.
RIP Charlton Village. Hopefully your history has been documented.
It's pretty ironic because now thy are destroying the runway to build houses.