Development of The Belfast and Some Proposed Variants IOTL (Source Putnams Shorts Aircraft since 1900 by C H Barnes)
In 1953 Short & Harland designed a civil freighter called the P.D.15 which resembled the Fairchild C-119 Packet. It was powered by 4 Alvis Leonides engines and the possibility of installing turboprops later.
By this time the Air Staff had issued O.R.323 for a medium-range freighter for RAF Transport Command to carry 25,000lb over 400 miles or 10,000lbs over 2,000 miles. To meet this requirement Shorts submitted a new project, P.D.16, similar to P.D.15 but larger and with two Proteus 755 engines, although four Rolls Royce Darts were a possible alternative; the landing gear was to be mounted in sponson fairings on the pressurised fuselage, and all the fuel was to be carried externally in pylon-mounted streamlined tanks under the wing. None of the designs tendered by several firms was selected for a prototype, although Shorts began detailing the P.D.16 as the S.C.3, but later Armstrong Whitworth went ahead with their design as a private venture which became the Argosy; this was very similar to the S.C.3 in body and tail layout, but had four engines and an orthodox nacelle-mounted landing gear, and all the fuel was contained in the wing, which was derived from the Avro Shackleton's.
In July 1954 the Bristol Aeroplane Company became a shareholder in Short Brothers & Harland Ltd. Both companies explored the possibility of fully exploiting the Britannia wing and power plant in a high-wing freighter with either nose or tail loading by ramp from ground level; these projects were respectively the Bristol Type 195 and the Short P.D.18. Bristol and Shorts had already agreed to coordinate their planning of future projects so as to avoid wasteful competition, and in due course it was agreed that the P.D.18 should proceed in preference to the Bristol 195.
The initial P.D.18 studies were based on a circular cargo-hold cross-section circumscribing a 10 ft square, with the wing clear of the hold roof, a beaver-tail rear fuselage incorporating the rear loading ramp, the existing Britannia fight-deck and the existing landing-gear contained in sponsons as for the for the S.C.3. At first an optimised nil-dihedral thing wing with underslung Bristol Orion turboprops was proposed by Shorts, but their Chairman, Sir Matthew Slattery, ruled that this involved more development than they could undertake with existing resources, and a compromise was then evolved which used the existing Britannia wing and tail surfaces almost unchanged and still capable of being built on Britannia jigs; these features were to be combined with a larger fuselage having a hold cross-section circumscribing a 12 ft square and large enough to accommodate a Blue Streak missile. In August 1957 this was put to the Air Staff as a strategic freighter named Britannia 553, with a capacity payload of 60,000 and a range of 4,860 nautical miles when carrying 13,500lb, the engines being Orions. Since the all-up weight remained at 180,000lb, proof and fatigue tests already done for the Britannia were still considered feasible and to test the revised fuselage at Belfast. After careful examination the Air Staff approved the basic design and undertook to place an initial order with Shorts, the development costs being spread over 30 aircraft; this design was indexed as S.C.5, and in April 1958 named Britannic. By this time the Orion had been cancelled in favour of up-rated versions of the Rolls Royce Tyne, the latter having been adopted also for the CL-44D. Development of the Britannic was scheduled to proceed in four stages:
In March 1959 it was found possible to incorporate enough improvements in Britannic 3 to make it nearly comparable with Britannic 4, and this version was called Britannic 3A. It had a payload of 85,000lb and a gross weight of 218,000lb, secured mainly by increasing the wing area and installing Tyne 12 engines. It also had a completely new main landing-gear with eight-wheeled bogies saved weight and kept the LCN down to 44, and hinged forward and upward on a skewed axis and the way they folded enabled the sponson fairings to be shortened and their drag reduced. Due to these alterations (and others) from the original dimensions it was thought appropriate to drop the name Britannic and in April 1959 the definitive aeroplane offered to the Air Staff was described simply as the Short S.C.5/10. Late in 1960 a production contract, based on Specification C.203, was signed for ten aircraft of this type, serials XR362-371, these being the first ten of 12, c'ns SH.1816-1827, the last two being reservations for possible civil orders; concurrently with this contract the type name Belfast C.1 was chosen.
In addition to the S.C.5/21 submitted to O.R.351 the Company also proposed a civil version of the S.C.5/10 called the S.C.5/31. This was a two-deck variant with a side-hinged "swing-nose" for loading palleted cargo either on to both decks (when the maximum payload would have been 100,000lb) or on to the lower deck only (60,000lb) with 141 passengers on the upper deck.
Back in April 1958 there were also the jet powered Britannic 5 and 6 proposals with VC10 type swept wings, but the book gives details on the weights, engines to be used or possible first flight dates. In 1964 there was a proposal to revive the Britannic 6 concept, with a swept-wing based on the Lockheed C-141A Starlifter, a high T-tail and four Rolls Royce R.B.178 turbofans of 25,000lb static thrust each; this was the S.C.5/41 (originally P.D.53) designed to cruise at Mach 0.75 with a payload of 123,000lb and a gross weight of 420,000lb; it could have been in service by 1970.
The S.C.5/45 was designed in response to AST.364 issued in April 1964 for an aircraft to replace the Britannia in 1975. According to Wood it called for an aircraft capable of carrying a 100,000lb (45,360kg) payload over 5,000nm (9,265km). Either freight or mixed freight and passengers were to be carried, with total seating for 200. A speed of 500 knots (926km/h) was called for, a balanced field length of 7,000ft (2,134m) at ISA + 20⁰C and a cargo hold 12ft x 13ft (3.66 x 3.96m) with rear loading.
According to Wood the S.C.5/45 had an all-up-weight of 420,000lb (190,512kg) and was powered by four RB.178 high-bypass ratio engines originally known as the Super Conway producing 25,000lb (11,340kg) thrust. A payload of 123,000lb (55,793kg) could be carried across the North Atlantic at an optimum cruising speed of 440 knots (815km/h). In the mixed cargo/passenger role it could carry 140 passengers on the upper deck and 70,000lb (31,752kg) of cargo on the lower deck. In civil form, with full fuel reserves, it could carry 100,000lb (45,360kg) of payload over 3,750 statute miles (6,035km) which was only about two-thirds of the range required with a payload of that weight in AST.364.
According to some documents I saw at the National Archives the RAF wanted to buy the C-5A Galaxy but it never happened.
In 1953 Short & Harland designed a civil freighter called the P.D.15 which resembled the Fairchild C-119 Packet. It was powered by 4 Alvis Leonides engines and the possibility of installing turboprops later.
By this time the Air Staff had issued O.R.323 for a medium-range freighter for RAF Transport Command to carry 25,000lb over 400 miles or 10,000lbs over 2,000 miles. To meet this requirement Shorts submitted a new project, P.D.16, similar to P.D.15 but larger and with two Proteus 755 engines, although four Rolls Royce Darts were a possible alternative; the landing gear was to be mounted in sponson fairings on the pressurised fuselage, and all the fuel was to be carried externally in pylon-mounted streamlined tanks under the wing. None of the designs tendered by several firms was selected for a prototype, although Shorts began detailing the P.D.16 as the S.C.3, but later Armstrong Whitworth went ahead with their design as a private venture which became the Argosy; this was very similar to the S.C.3 in body and tail layout, but had four engines and an orthodox nacelle-mounted landing gear, and all the fuel was contained in the wing, which was derived from the Avro Shackleton's.
In July 1954 the Bristol Aeroplane Company became a shareholder in Short Brothers & Harland Ltd. Both companies explored the possibility of fully exploiting the Britannia wing and power plant in a high-wing freighter with either nose or tail loading by ramp from ground level; these projects were respectively the Bristol Type 195 and the Short P.D.18. Bristol and Shorts had already agreed to coordinate their planning of future projects so as to avoid wasteful competition, and in due course it was agreed that the P.D.18 should proceed in preference to the Bristol 195.
The initial P.D.18 studies were based on a circular cargo-hold cross-section circumscribing a 10 ft square, with the wing clear of the hold roof, a beaver-tail rear fuselage incorporating the rear loading ramp, the existing Britannia fight-deck and the existing landing-gear contained in sponsons as for the for the S.C.3. At first an optimised nil-dihedral thing wing with underslung Bristol Orion turboprops was proposed by Shorts, but their Chairman, Sir Matthew Slattery, ruled that this involved more development than they could undertake with existing resources, and a compromise was then evolved which used the existing Britannia wing and tail surfaces almost unchanged and still capable of being built on Britannia jigs; these features were to be combined with a larger fuselage having a hold cross-section circumscribing a 12 ft square and large enough to accommodate a Blue Streak missile. In August 1957 this was put to the Air Staff as a strategic freighter named Britannia 553, with a capacity payload of 60,000 and a range of 4,860 nautical miles when carrying 13,500lb, the engines being Orions. Since the all-up weight remained at 180,000lb, proof and fatigue tests already done for the Britannia were still considered feasible and to test the revised fuselage at Belfast. After careful examination the Air Staff approved the basic design and undertook to place an initial order with Shorts, the development costs being spread over 30 aircraft; this design was indexed as S.C.5, and in April 1958 named Britannic. By this time the Orion had been cancelled in favour of up-rated versions of the Rolls Royce Tyne, the latter having been adopted also for the CL-44D. Development of the Britannic was scheduled to proceed in four stages:
- Britannic 1 - to fly 1961 - gross weight 180,000lb - payload 60,000lb - Proteus 755 of 765 engines - standard Britannia wing and nacelles
- Britannic 2 - to fly 1962 - gross weight 183,500lb - no payload details - Proteus 770 engines with higher activity airscrews, a revised landing-gear with lower runway loading (LCN 40), leading edge wing fillets at the rood and nacelles to raise the Mach limit.
- Britannic 3 - to fly 1964 - gross weight 195,000lb - payload 75,000lb - Tyne 11 engines in new slim underslung nacelles
- Britannic 4 - to fly 1966 - gross weight 220,000lb - payload 100,000lb - fully-developed Tyne engines
In March 1959 it was found possible to incorporate enough improvements in Britannic 3 to make it nearly comparable with Britannic 4, and this version was called Britannic 3A. It had a payload of 85,000lb and a gross weight of 218,000lb, secured mainly by increasing the wing area and installing Tyne 12 engines. It also had a completely new main landing-gear with eight-wheeled bogies saved weight and kept the LCN down to 44, and hinged forward and upward on a skewed axis and the way they folded enabled the sponson fairings to be shortened and their drag reduced. Due to these alterations (and others) from the original dimensions it was thought appropriate to drop the name Britannic and in April 1959 the definitive aeroplane offered to the Air Staff was described simply as the Short S.C.5/10. Late in 1960 a production contract, based on Specification C.203, was signed for ten aircraft of this type, serials XR362-371, these being the first ten of 12, c'ns SH.1816-1827, the last two being reservations for possible civil orders; concurrently with this contract the type name Belfast C.1 was chosen.
In addition to the S.C.5/21 submitted to O.R.351 the Company also proposed a civil version of the S.C.5/10 called the S.C.5/31. This was a two-deck variant with a side-hinged "swing-nose" for loading palleted cargo either on to both decks (when the maximum payload would have been 100,000lb) or on to the lower deck only (60,000lb) with 141 passengers on the upper deck.
Back in April 1958 there were also the jet powered Britannic 5 and 6 proposals with VC10 type swept wings, but the book gives details on the weights, engines to be used or possible first flight dates. In 1964 there was a proposal to revive the Britannic 6 concept, with a swept-wing based on the Lockheed C-141A Starlifter, a high T-tail and four Rolls Royce R.B.178 turbofans of 25,000lb static thrust each; this was the S.C.5/41 (originally P.D.53) designed to cruise at Mach 0.75 with a payload of 123,000lb and a gross weight of 420,000lb; it could have been in service by 1970.
The S.C.5/45 was designed in response to AST.364 issued in April 1964 for an aircraft to replace the Britannia in 1975. According to Wood it called for an aircraft capable of carrying a 100,000lb (45,360kg) payload over 5,000nm (9,265km). Either freight or mixed freight and passengers were to be carried, with total seating for 200. A speed of 500 knots (926km/h) was called for, a balanced field length of 7,000ft (2,134m) at ISA + 20⁰C and a cargo hold 12ft x 13ft (3.66 x 3.96m) with rear loading.
According to Wood the S.C.5/45 had an all-up-weight of 420,000lb (190,512kg) and was powered by four RB.178 high-bypass ratio engines originally known as the Super Conway producing 25,000lb (11,340kg) thrust. A payload of 123,000lb (55,793kg) could be carried across the North Atlantic at an optimum cruising speed of 440 knots (815km/h). In the mixed cargo/passenger role it could carry 140 passengers on the upper deck and 70,000lb (31,752kg) of cargo on the lower deck. In civil form, with full fuel reserves, it could carry 100,000lb (45,360kg) of payload over 3,750 statute miles (6,035km) which was only about two-thirds of the range required with a payload of that weight in AST.364.
According to some documents I saw at the National Archives the RAF wanted to buy the C-5A Galaxy but it never happened.
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