Saunders-Roe Princess
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| SR.45 Princess | |
|---|---|
 Saunders-Roe Princess G-ALUN |
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| Type | flying boat airliner |
| Manufacturer | Saunders-Roe |
| Maiden flight | 22 August 1952 |
| Number built | 3 |
The Saunders-Roe Princess was a very large British flying boat aircraft built by Saunders-Roe, based in Cowes on the Isle of Wight.
At the time, the Saunders-Roe Princess was one of the largest aircraft in existence; unfortunately, by the 1950s, the concept of a passenger carrying flying boat was obsolete. Better runways and airports meant that future long-range airliners would be land-based aircraft, without the weight and drag of a boat hull or the corrosion problem due to seawater. Like another failed British post-war aircraft project, the Bristol Brabazon, the Princess is an example of many in the British government and aircraft industry failing to anticipate the growth of mass air travel in the 1950s and 1960s.
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[edit] Design and development
The Princess was powered by ten Bristol Proteus turboprop engines, powering six propellers. The four inner propellers were double, contra-rotating propellers driven by a twin version of the Proteus, the Bristol Coupled Proteus; each engine drove one of the propellers. The two outer propellers were single and powered by single engines.
The rounded, bulbous, 'double-bubble' fuselage contained two passenger decks, with room for 105 passengers in great comfort.
The prototype, G-ALUN, first flew on 22 August 1952 and was flown by test pilot Geoffrey Tyson. It was the only one to fly - making 46 test flights in total, about 100 hours flying time. It appeared at the Farnborough Air Show[1]. Two others (G-ALUO and G-ALUP) were built, but they never flew. After spending a number of years in mothballs , two of them at Calshot Spit, awating further use, NASA considered using the fleet as heavy-duty freight aircraft for transporting Saturn V rocket components. The nascent Airbus consortium also thought of using two for transporting A300 fusealage sections, but opted to use Super Guppies instead. All three Princesses were broken up in 1967.
They were the last fixed-wing commercial aircraft produced by Saunders-Roe. The company built one more fixed-wing design, the Saunders-Roe SR.53 mixed powered (rocket and turbojet) fighter design; aside from that, the company concentrated on helicopters and hovercraft after this point.
Saunders-Roe developed the world's first practical fly-by-wire system for the Princess. Whilst the prototype aircraft had advanced (but conventional) hydraulic controls, S-R intended for production aircraft to use an analogue system based around electrical servos with hydraulic final control actuators. Such a system was built and ground-tested, but the Princess project was cancelled before any aircraft was fitted with the system. The knowledge gained from work on this system was fed into the development of the Avro Vulcan bomber, which became the first aircraft to be fitted with fly-by-wire.
[edit] Specifications
Data from British Aircraft Directory[2]
General characteristics
- Crew: 2 pilots, 2 flight engineers, radio operator and navigator
- Capacity: 105 passengers in tourist and first class cabins
- Length: 148 ft (42.1 m)
- Wingspan: 219 ft 6 in[3] (66.9 m)
- Height: 55 ft 9 in (17 m)
- Wing area: 5,019 sq ft (466 m²)
- Empty weight: 190,000 lb (86,184 kg)
- Max takeoff weight: 345,025 lb (156,500 kg)
- Powerplant: 10× Bristol Proteus turboprop, 3,200 hp (2,386 kW) each
- Propellers: 4 bladed propeller, 1 per engine
- Propeller diameter: 16 ft 6 in ()
Performance
- Maximum speed: 360 mph (579 km/h)
- Cruise speed: 380 mph
- Range: 5,720 miles (9,205 km)
- Service ceiling 39,000 ft (11,887 m)
- Rate of climb: 1,900 ft/min (579 m/min) at sea level
[edit] See also
Related lists
[edit] References
- ^ Flying Boats of the Solent. Norman Hull.ISBN 1-85794-161-6
- ^ British Aircraft Directory
- ^ With wingtip floats retracted ]http://www.aviastar.org/air/england/saunders_princess.php]
[edit] External links
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