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Bristol Brabazon


leon21

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Some called her an engineering masterpiece, others called her a Great White Elephant. But she was an

awesome looking Airliner in her day, I'm sure we've all seen a Boeing 747 and how huge they are, well

the Brabazon was twice as big four times as heavy and able to fly three times as far. She had a 177ft

Fuselage with a 230ft wingspan, it was powered by 8 Bristol Centaurus 18-cylinder radial engines rested

in pairs in the wings, these drove 8 paired counter-rotating She had a longer wingspan than any modern

Ailiner has today, from tip-to-tip her wings were the length of London Bridge so they say. She made her

maiden flight on 4th Sept 1949. After only 164 flights totaling 382 hours flying time, she was broken up

along with the uncompleted Mk 2 Prototype when it became clear no airline wanted to purchace it in Oct

1953.

 

photo 1.............on her maiden flight.

 

photo 2.............on G1025 type 167-Brabazon Mk 1.

 

photo 3.............on display at Farnborough 8th Sept 1949.

 

 

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thing is not only huge but look at the wing span, you'd have to specially design airports just to accept her. Similar issue when the Airbus A380 was released recently, it is such a massive aircraft they had to be careful that the airports it would fly into could accept the beast.

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In the end It was the Launching of the first commercial Jet Airliner, the De Havilland DH 106 Comet also

in 1949. Although smaller it could only carry 26-32 passengers, were the Brabazon could carry 100 it was

a lot faster at 400-500 mph, to the Brabazons speed of 230-340 mph. The Airline Companys believed that

passengers would not spend 12 hours in the Brabazon when they could reach their destination in a smaller,

faster Aircraft in seven hours to America.

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The thing was massive. Much larger than the wee Flybe thing I'm travelling to France in tomorrow.

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seeing it in scale like that it is seriously huge... maybe they should bring it back (the real thing) it would revive the aerospace industry.

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The Brabazon Airliner was viewed in the same light as the Luxury Ocean Liner. It had an interior layout housing

a forward saloon with 6 compartments, each for 6 passengers, and another one for just 3. A midships section at

higher level above the wing with 38 seats arranged around tables in groups of 4, plus a pantry and gallery, and

a rear saloon with 23 seats in an aftfacing cinema, plus cocktail bar and lounge.

here's a picture of the lounge.

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  • 8 years later...

Definitely an Aviation topic

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