Short Belfast Military Cargo Plane

What happened to the British Short Belfast cargo plane? , well i think i seen a few at Manchester Airport when i was a kid back about 1994 owned by the firm 'Heavy Lift'. They were also used by the RAF and civilian Air Freight firms too.

www.nwan.co.uk...

www.saunalahti.fi...

airlines.afriqonline.com...

One of these sites say the Belfasts were ex RAF planes, they were most probably phased out in the early eighties.

Looks like a beefed up C-130 Hercules , This classic should have stayed longer in British service.



[edit on 5-11-2005 by Browno]

Mod Edit: Fixed Links.

[edit on 5/11/2005 by Mirthful Me]

IIRC they were all RAF aircraft apparantly only of them were 10 ordered and supplied.

They had a greater size of loading area and could carry heavier weights than the Hercules bought to replace them and the RAF certainly missed them in the following years.

IIRC they were caught up in the fashion to buy American.
Europe was getting all worried about the lask of 'our' standardisation compared to WARPAC's and apparantly the (far more numerous) Lockheed aircraft would be cheaper and easier to operater (and had a far cheaper 'stretch' potential that the Belfast probably didn't what with there only being the 10 of them, the difficulty of spares for such small numbers etc etc).

Have a look, wikipedia mentions one operating and one being restored......

en.wikipedia.org...

Sminkey is right, 10 Belfasts (based on the design of the Bristol Britannia airliner) were built for the RAF entering service in 1966. The cause of its early retirement in 1976 was the UK's withdrawal 'east of suez' and so it was no longer required. They went into storage until bought by Transmeridian Air Cargo in 1980 who operated 5 of them under the title of 'TAC Heavylift' while keeping the other five for spares. TAC later changed their name to simply 'HeavyLift'.

Im pretty sure that two of those aircraft are working as cargo aircraft out of Brisbane. Making trips to the pacific islands during the night and sitting on the apron during the day. They operate out of the old international airport and Im pretty sure their internationally registered to get around the fact that their not up to Australian mech. standards.

Im pretty sure these are the types ur talking about.

I'll do some more research.

Browno, if you drive down the A41 from scouseland to the museum at Cosford you will see the Belfast "Encelardus" on static display

There are quite a few transport A/C on display as well as your favorite the Bristol 188!

Sv Out......!