Coolest Large Planes?

[KieronGSi]

Ayahuasca said:

davepoth said:

Talking of giant Bristols...

Looks a bit under-engined.

May look under engined but it has eight, 4 sets of contra rotating props.

[hammo19]

The most beautiful Connie ever

[davepoth]

Ginetta G15 Girl said:

I remember when they did the tanker conversions on the VC10s for the RAF at Filton.

IIRC there were 3 or 4 VC10s in each of the Brabzxon hangars.

It was a large aircraft, certainly.



I can't imagine what it must have been like to see it flying.

[motomk]

hammo19 said:

Oh Eric you have so got the cool thing now.....love these and Britannias, and CL44s

https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-16.8789726,145.7470038,184m/data=!3m1!1e3

http://www.cairnspost.com.au/news/cairns/cairns-ai...

[hammo19]

motomk said:

https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-16.8789726,145.74...

http://www.cairnspost.com.au/news/cairns/cairns-ai...

What a sad position....it wasn't there when I flew to Cairns, mind you that was a few years ago now.

[Ayahuasca]

[Eric Mc]

Even more impressive in bare metal -

[Equilibrium25]

Eric Mc said:

I go with what the manufacturer decided.

It's a bit like the Boeing 707 and 720 - superficially very similar but under the skin quite different.

I thought the 720 was very much a 707, optimised for short-haul, and was only launched as the 720 as one of the launch customer US carriers had vowed not to buy 707s?

[Eric Mc]

They are related no doubt - but the wings, undercarriage and fuselage structures had been beefed up considerably to allow more take offs and landings as they were intended for mid range internal US routes.

The KC-135 is another quite different aeroplane from the same generic family - the daddy of which was the 367-80.

Boeing labelled the types -

707
717 (C-135/KC-135 etc)
720

The customer you might be thinking of is probably United, which was one of the launch customers of the rival Douglas DC-8 - but I wasn't aware that they had vowed not to operate 707s. They did fly 720s until the early 1970s. A number of airlines operated 707s and DC-8s at the same time

[Equilibrium25]

Eric Mc said:

They are related no doubt - but the wings, undercarriage and fuselage structures had been beefed up considerably to allow more take offs and landings as they were intended for mid range internal US routes.

The KC-135 is another quite different aeroplane from the same generic family - the daddy of which was the 367-80.

Boeing labelled the types -

707
717 (C-135/KC-135 etc)
720

The customer you might be thinking of is probably United, which was one of the launch customers of the rival Douglas DC-8 - but I wasn't aware that they had vowed not to operate 707s. They did fly 720s until the early 1970s. A number of airlines operated 707s and DC-8s at the same time

Thanks Eric, yes, it was United I think. There was an article about 720s in Aviation(?) magazine a few months back, which is where my recollection came from. It was exactly that, they had ordered DC-8s and the president of United stated they wouldn't operate 707s, presumably as the DC-8 was being marketed as superior. So when they wanted the new type of 707 they requested Boeing rebranded the model.

[Eric Mc]

Boeing had thought of calling the 720 the Boeing 707-720 - which was in line with the various subvariants of the 707 they were planning i.e. 707-120, 320 and 420. But I had always read that they decided to drop the 707 prefix on the 720s because it was significantly different to the basic 707 structure. That is precisely why they allocated 717 to the C-135 family - although there never were civil variants of the 717.

Decades later, because the "717" designation was not well known outside of Boeing, they used it again to rename the McDonnell Douglas DC-9/MD-80/90 family when they took over McDonnell Douglas in 1997.

[lufbramatt]

Ayahuasca said:

What's this? Looks like a Shorts design?

[Ayahuasca]

lufbramatt said:

Ayahuasca said:

What's this? Looks like a Shorts design?

Armstrong Whitworth Ensign

[Eric Mc]

They were designed to replace the HP42 biplanes - but war intervened and they never really were used as intended.

[Ayahuasca]

Eric Mc said:

They were designed to replace the HP42 biplanes - but war intervened and they never really were used as intended.

Yes, they were not much cop against the Luftwaffe.

[maffski]

Ayahuasca said:

Not quite as pretty as Eric's Connie...

I prefer the original engines


(The Gigant was designed as a glider)

[LotusOmega375D]

That Heinkel must have been diificult to operate. A bit like running a 3-legged race.

Must have been easy to shoot down too. I wonder if it counted as 2 "kills" or just 1?

[RacingPete]

Now if you take an airliner and make it into a big tanker and make it refuel a Blackbird... The KC-747

[16v_paddy]

RacingPete said:

Now if you take an airliner and make it into a big tanker and make it refuel a Blackbird... The KC-747

Here's an interesting article about it http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-worlds-only-k...

[bakerstreet]

RacingPete said:

Now if you take an airliner and make it into a big tanker and make it refuel a Blackbird... The KC-747

First thing that strikes me about that photo is how small the engines are on that 747 compared to say the giant lumps on modern aaircraft such as the Dreamliner and A380.