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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Nov 4, 2014 12:57:25 GMT 12
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Nov 4, 2014 13:36:18 GMT 12
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Post by Bruce on Nov 4, 2014 14:35:40 GMT 12
Forward facing passenger seats? I though RAF Hastings (and I guess RNZAF machines too) had rearward facing pax seats...
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Nov 4, 2014 14:47:10 GMT 12
I wondered about that too.
Could it be a Handley Page Hermes of BOAC in those first two photographs?
Aren't the Hastings and Hermes the same airframe?
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Post by phil82 on Nov 4, 2014 14:52:30 GMT 12
Forward facing passenger seats? I though RAF Hastings (and I guess RNZAF machines too) had rearward facing pax seats... Correct,all RAF TRANSPORT COMMAND as it was had rearward facing seats. I spent a bit of time in the back of Hastings aircraft and as I recall that first photo isn't a Hastings at all, though it could be the early Hermes prototype.....which crashed!
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Post by phil82 on Nov 4, 2014 14:54:29 GMT 12
I wondered about that too. Could it be a Handley Page Hermes of BOAC in those first two photographs? Aren't the Hastings and Hermes the same airframe? Similar but not the same: the Hermes was a nosewheel configuration.
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Post by nuuumannn on Nov 4, 2014 16:14:25 GMT 12
It's definitely a Hastings (Hermes - see further on) interior. The aircraft is in fact C.1 TG503, the fifth production aircraft on a promotional tour of Australia and New Zealand, leaving RAF Lyneham on 18 March 1948 and arriving in Sydney on the 18th. It was in New Zealand for a month. The tour was a promotional excursion in the hope of sales as a military and civilian transport. This explains the different interior configuration to Transport Copmmand aircraft. In order for the aircraft to be approved to fly as a civilian passenger aircraft in NZ and Australian airspace both countries' aviation departments gave it an unrestricted C of A listed as a Hermes 1A with a new type record. Aside from the pax configuration, it carried aboard a section of air portable loading ramp, which it demonstrated loading through its large cargo doors. There is a photo of it at Whenuapai in the Putnam Handley Page book, where I got this info from.
Later that year, TG503 was engaged in Operation Plainfare, the RAF resupply effort during the Berlin airlift. It survives and is on display in the Allied Museum in Berlin, I recognised the serial from the Stalkbook image as I have photos of it in Berlin.
The Hermes I and II were taildraggers with longer fuselages than the Hastings. The Hermes IV introduced the nose gear.
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Nov 4, 2014 16:22:20 GMT 12
That's what I love about this group....the vast pool of knowledge about aeroplanes and aviation.
I discovered those photographs while I was trawling through a Facebook page looking at historic photographs of Hastings (where I was born and grew up), but something didn't quite ring true about them, which is why I posted links to the photos to this group.
Without this group, I would have been left wondering. But now I know a lot more about the aeroplane depicted in the photographs.
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Post by nuuumannn on Nov 4, 2014 16:25:34 GMT 12
I have a bit of a fetish for old British dungers...
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Nov 4, 2014 17:00:52 GMT 12
So have I....especially British dungers powered by engines with oscillating sleeves in the cylinders.
I've always been fascinated by Bristol sleeve-valve engines, ever since my Mum's cousin explained to me how the engines in SAFE's Bristol Freighters worked differently from the engines in NAC's DC-3s when I was a kid and staying at his place during school holidays in the early-1960s.
My Mum's cousin owned Aviation Radio, based at Wellington Airport. He used to install and maintain radar and avionics systems all around the country, as well as carry out repair work on the avionics of aeroplanes operated by SAFE, NAC, TEAL, QANTAS and the RNZAF if they had problems while in Wellington.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Nov 4, 2014 18:41:55 GMT 12
That explains the civilian crew.
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Post by isc on Nov 4, 2014 20:29:44 GMT 12
My first flight was in a Hastings, Dunedin to Wigram, to Woodbourne and return. 3 or 4 months before we joined up with 21 course Boy Entrant School, the RNZAF flew us up for a weekend look around. That Hermes is rather sparse compared to the Mk 3 Hastings of the RNZAF. I'v always been taken by the rearward facing seating, but can see the civilian point of view of the extra weight of seating affecting the economics. isc
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Post by camtech on Sept 8, 2017 16:14:58 GMT 12
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Post by camtech on Sept 8, 2017 16:52:35 GMT 12
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Post by isc on Sept 8, 2017 22:23:26 GMT 12
Some people in Darwin reckoned NZ5804 did about as much damage as the Japs during the war, I think it wiped out the main road, the water supply, and something else, was it the railway line. And it was a good reason for having rear facing seats, no injuries. The engines failed on take off, and it was put down on the runway at 130kts. isc
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Post by planewriting on Sept 8, 2017 22:27:18 GMT 12
Yes, I believe it was the railway line.
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Post by camtech on Sept 8, 2017 23:21:10 GMT 12
Look back earlier in this post and you can see the railway line. Rearward facing seats certainly minimised the injuries and were fitted to most British military transports - Andover, Beverley, Hastings, etc. Apparently it was tried on commercial flights, but paying customers weren't keen on seeing where they had been, rather than where they were going. Military passengers didn't get that choice, or was it a case of making sure the natives weren't still chasing them, demanding payment for services rendered.
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Post by isc on Sept 9, 2017 21:23:06 GMT 12
In modern aircraft, flying at altitude, often in the dark, it wouldn't matter to the passengers which way they sat, the main objection to rear facing seats is that they are heavier for strength reasons. If I were designing a passenger aircraft today, even the windows would go, replaced with flat screen tv panels, sorry going OT. isc
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Post by camtech on Sept 10, 2017 15:42:32 GMT 12
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Post by camtech on Sept 29, 2017 12:24:21 GMT 12
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