Bristol Freighter

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Bristol Type 170 Freighter

Bristol Freighter, Liverpool 1961.
Type	Cargo aircraft
Manufacturer	Bristol Aeroplane Company
Designed by	Taffy Powel
Maiden flight	1948-07-07
Primary user	Silver City

The Bristol Type 170 Freighter was a twin-engined propeller cargo aircraft designed and built by Bristol Aeroplane Company as an air ferry to carry cars and their passengers over relatively short distances.

1 History
2 Civil Operators
3 Military Operators
4 Specifications (Mk 21E)
5 External links
6 Related content

[edit] History

The design was conceived by Wing Commander Taffy Powel who opened a fascinating and innovative chapter in British aviation. A keen and impatient traveller himself, Powel realised that by adapting the design of the Bristol Bombay bomber, he could fly passengers with their cars from Britain to continental Europe. The aircraft he conceived was the Bristol Freighter and it allowed motorists to take their cars abroad from Britain. On the July 7, 1948, Powel's Silver City airline made the first ever British flight with a car, from Lympne in Kent to Le Touquet on the northern coast of France. A service was also started from Lydd Ferryfield airport, also in Kent. Both services were resounding successes and a larger derivative, the Bristol Superfreighter, was soon developed. In turn that was replaced by a British conversion of some Douglas DC-4 airliners known as the ATL-98 Carvair, (with raised cockpit and nose door reminiscent of the Freighter).

As ferries became faster and were supplemented by hovercraft and hydrofoils, capable of carrying civilian vehicles, the economics of carrying small numbers of cars by air became uncompetitive so the Carvairs were not replaced and the airlines based around that concept faded from the scene, being taken over by others mainly focused on passenger traffic rather than cargo.

[edit] Description

The Freighter is a somewhat bulbous and cumbersome-looking aircraft. Like the more slender prewar Bombay it is a high-wing monoplane with fixed undercarriage (landing gear), the main gear legs supported by substantial vertical struts beneath the Bristol Hercules radial engines and horizontally from the lower edge of the (slab-sided) fuselage. The cockpit sits atop the forward fuselage with two large clam shell doors at the nose, making the unpressurised fuselage somewhat breezy; one Kiwi pilot claimed his charge was "40 thousand rivets flying in close formation".

[edit] Other civil uses

In New Zealand SAFE Air (Straits Air Freight Express) moved rail freight from Wellington (the North Island) to Blenheim (the South Island) and back, using Bristol Freighters reconfigured to accept palletised cargo loaded on patented cargons. This was a first anywhere in the aviation world.

Cargons were loaded near the rail yards and their load was calculated and arranged to remain within the aircraft's load and Centre of Gravity limits. They were then trucked to the airport and mechanically loaded as a unit from devices that were electric-motor powered via screw-jacks. The loader accepted pallets from horizontal-tray road vehicles and then raised them to allow loading into the nose of the tail-wheeled aircraft. Other adaptations allowed the carrying of horses and other high-value large animals.

Freighters were the major link between the Chatham Islands and the rest of the world until Armstrong Whitworth Argosys replaced them. SAFE Air developed a pressurised 'container' for the half of the aircraft given over to passengers on these flights.

[edit] Military users

In military service Bristol Freighters were operated by the air forces of Argentina, Australia, Burma, Canada, Iraq, Pakistan and New Zealand. Bristol Freighters were operated briefly by the Pakistan Air Force. Some of their aircraft were bought by SAFE Air and used in New Zealand.

The Royal New Zealand Air Force ordered 12 Freighters in the late 1940s. RNZAF Freighters ranged as far as supplying the New Zealand Army in Malaya, the British High Commissioners (and others) in the Maldives, Ceylon, India and Nepal, performing FEAF tasks in Malaya (often when other aircraft types were unservicable due to maintenance problems) and Hong Kong. They ran a highly reliable military shuttle service for allies in Thailand during the Vietnam War and served several other roles, being adapted for—amongst other things—aerial top dressing, although to avoid competition with private enterprise the NZ government did not to use them in that role.

[edit] Final days

The Freighters were retired from military use when replaced by Hawker Siddeley Andovers in the 1970s. After retirement a number of smaller local operators briefly flew Freighters. Some were exported to Canada. A SAFE Air Freighter is preserved at Blenheim and another at the Royal New Zealand Air Force Museum in Christchurch. A third is being restored at Ardmore near Auckland. Other Freighter airframes around New Zealand now serve as novelty tea-rooms and backpacker hostels.

One Freighter was in service in turn with British Ministry of Supply (G-AIMI), the RAF (WB482), the RAAF (A81-1) and subsequently went into commercial use in Australia until 1978 after which it went on to become a museum exhibit and was given over to the RAAF museum at Point Cook, Victoria, Australia in 1988.

The last Freighter in service, bought from surplus in New Zealand, was owned by Hawkair in Terrace, British Columbia, Canada. In 2004 this took its final flight to the Reynolds-Alberta Museum in Wetaskiwin, Alberta.

Bristol freighter Mk 3 31M G-BISU was operated by Instone Airline at Stansted, Essex, UK, for a number of years. This was an ex-RNZAF aircraft and left Ardmore on 2 March 1981 for its 86 hour ferry flight to the UK, it subsequently flew its first charter flight on 3 August 1981 delivering two racehorses to Deauville. This role of flying livestock was to take up half a year while other work included carriage of oil drilling machinery, car parts, newspapers and mail. Instone operated a second example which later returned to New Zealand but this was then sold to a company in Canada. It was donated to the Reynolds-Alberta Aviation Museum at Wetaskiwin, Alberta.

Sadly C-FDFC (cn 13218) crashed on take off with the crew escaping but was essentially a write-off.

[edit] Civil Operators

Air Charter
Air Express
Air Vietnam
Airwork
Aviation Traders
British Air Ferries (BAF)
British United Air Ferries (BUAF)
Channel Air Bridge
Channel Island Airways
Dalmia Jain Airways
Dan Air
Hawkair
Hawker Air Aviation Services
Hunting Air Surveys
Iberia
Indian National Airways
Norcanair
SAFE Air (Straits Air Freight Express)
Shell
Silver City Airways
Skytravel
Trans Provincial Airlines
Wardair

[edit] Military Operators

[edit] Specifications (Mk 21E)

General characteristics

Crew: 3 (Pilot, Co-pilot and signaller/loadmaster)
Length: 68 ft 4 in (20.82 m)
Wingspan: 98 ft 0 in (29.87 m)
Height: 21 ft 8 in (6.60 m)
Wing area: 1,405 sq ft (130.53 m²)
Empty weight: 24,000 lb (11,780 kg)
Loaded weight: 36,500 lb (16,556 kg)
Powerplant: 2× Bristol Hercules 672 14-cylinder radial engines, 3,380 hp (2,518 kW) each