Bristol Brabazon

Found the following statements in what must be an early to mid 1950's book entitled " Marvels of Modern Science " by Odhams Press Ltd, Long Acre London.

This aircraft is designed specifically as a trans-oceanic air-liner to provide fast travel for a large number of passengers at one time.

It is fully pressurized, high altitude, long-range monoplane with a wing span of 230 ft.

Power is provided by eight Bristol Centaurus 18-cylinder air cooled engines.

As the engines are totally enclosed in the inner wing, it will be possible for inspection and servicing to be carried out while the aircraft is in flight.

Passenger and crew accommodation is arranged mainly on one deck with a half-deck rise over the wing for a dining saloon, lounge bar, kitchen and servery.

In the main cabin aft, provision will be made for a cinema projector and radio for passengers entertainment.

My Father took me to see it and all that I can remember was being impressed with the size of it and if I've remembered it correctly it had been one of the first aircraft with all powered controls however however I don't recall the statement about in flight inspection and servicing ?

Didn't they turn the prototype into firewood?

My uncle took me to Farnborough in 1950, I think, where the prototype flew in the display. Very impressionable at age ten it was the sheer size of it that I remember and the noise of all those engines. Much later as I went into aviation I looked back using such books as were then available to try and understand the engine arrangement but never found anything detailed enough. The chord thickness of the wing was sufficient to give enough height to enable physical access by a man but, apart from replenishing oil tanks I can't what other tasks might be accomplished in-flight. The Centarus engine was a fairly conventional piston radial and air cooled so being 'buried' in the wing would have required ram air cooling arrangements. Presumably the engines, in pairs, were side by side coupled through a common gearbox to drive contra-rotating props.

My somewhat latent memory of Brabazon associations was going past Filton airfield and seeing what looked like a ginormous shed on the end of one of the hangers. Apparently, the Brabazon was so big that it wouldn't fit in the hanger and the extension was there to cover the tailplane.

I wasn't around at the time, but a few decades later, I found old, I think, "Eagle" annuals, or something similar, that showed cutaways of an engineer working deep into a wing root in something akin to a wind tunnel 'doing in-flight maintenance'. It has just occurred to me that the intake/cooling inlets must have had closeable doors to make this possible, and fly below oxygen height etc.

I just found a copy of the Flight article on the Centaurus engine commenting particularly on the cooling arrangements on the engine itself although not the Brabazon installation. There was a crankshaft driven forced air fan pushing air through individual cylinder shrouds and the front cylinder bank ran slightly hotter than the rear.

Kevin

Thanks for some of those details and picture.

However, the 'garden shed' attachment was on the runway side of the hanger I was referring to and I imagine was way before Concorde was even a twinkle in a designers' eye! So goodness knows what it was or what it was for. After all, it was early/mid-50's and [apply Zummerset accent] I were but a lad [accent]!

Anyone remember that attachment and the reason?

The covered weighbridge (Note it is NOT a Hangar) at Boscombe Down is of the same type as the Filton Hangars, which is not surprising as it was built for the Brabazon project. Its size only really struck home with me when I saw it containing a dh106 Comet, a TriStar, Canberra Mk 9, Havard and an Airship 500 - and it didn't appear cramped.