English Electric Canberra

Ah, yes she would have been in old age by then. As I recall, the floor in that area was stressed across frames and rivetted but I should have thought the leg restraint floor brackets would have been rivetted or bolted through the floor skin onto a frame so if that flange gave way it was seriously weakened. Presumably a priority STI went out to examine the attachment points on other like aircraft?

PETERTHEEATER wrote:

Ah, yes she would have been in old age by then. As I recall, the floor in that area was stressed across frames and rivetted but I should have thought the leg restraint floor brackets would have been rivetted or bolted through the floor skin onto a frame so if that flange gave way it was seriously weakened. Presumably a priority STI went out to examine the attachment points on other like aircraft?

From memory Peter - the canberra had a 'false' or secondary floor and may have only just been strong enough when new,the floor could have been age weakened,the shear pins might have been on the topside of manufacturing tolerance (or could have been wrong pins as you previously suggested LOL).
I do not know for sure - it was a long time ago and find my technical memory is patchy (some things I remember clearly - others not).

Yes, my memory struggles too! I recall the false floor at the pilot position but thought the nav station was skinned. If false floored then yes, age weakening more likely. Presumably the frangible hatch disintegrated as intended when the seat went through it.

We only had metal hatches Peter - if time permitted the hatch would have been blown before ejection by using the hatch switch,if not the hatch would have blown due to the seat being actuated.
The preferred option during a premeditated ejection was to blow the hatch first and then eject but in this case I am not sure which method 'Slim' used.

Canberra PR7 WH773 is at RAF Laarbruch Museum in Germany almost a year now.
Still a lot of work to be done, but from the top she is looking quite nice already.

You can even find her on Google Earth.

Im reading Canberra boys at the moment. The Russian overflights get almost no mention, Im guessing because they are in fact still classified. Apparently the reason for the aircrafts withdrawl was down to a problem with the pressure bulkheads, and also due to the T4 having been withdrawn from sevice the year before. Of course with no training aircraft, they couldnt train any new pilots!

And I forgot to mention that after the Lightnings was withdrawn from service the PR9 was the fastest climbing aircraft in service until the Typhoon entered service.

There has been some talk on this site about light and medium bombers, and the Canberra was described as a light bomber. According to the book "canberra boys" its a USAF term and it in fact refers to range not payload. The USAF defined a light bomber as one having a range of less than 1000 nautical miles.

And apparently the picture at the beginning of "eastenders" was taken by a Canberra.

N76764 at the Arizona Commemorative Air Force Museum, Mesa, AZ, USA, in 2014