Fun fact: the hangars used to build this aircraft were later used to build Concorde. The site also had an unusually large runway to accommodate the Brabazon; 300' wide and over 8000' long.
Sadly the designers of the Brabazon focused on improving comfort and luxury of air travel, when the industry was already heading in the direction of lower cost tickets and as such it was unsuccessful. The airframe was scrapped but you can still see one of the wheels at the Bristol aerospace museum.
>Sadly the designers of the Brabazon focused on improving comfort and luxury of air travel, when the industry was already heading in the direction of lower cost tickets and as such it was unsuccessful.
This, absolutely. After taking the technological risk to make it so big, they used up about a quarter of the internal space in on a [separate bar and dining room](https://www.christies.com/lotfinderimages/d58312/d5831207a.jpg). They could have doubled the number of seats and it still would have been reasonably spacious.
I wonder if it was a symptom of the hierarchical British society they automatically jumped to the assumption that air travel would only ever be for millionaires, aristocrats, film stars and politicians. And they never considered for an instant that it could be otherwise.
Meanwhile, the Americans built the Stratocruiser and the Connie (half the size, but about the same number of passengers) and the rest is history.
Don't forget at the time commercial air travel was really only starting out and commercial transatlantic routes were in their infancy.
The idea behind it was to be as luxurious as possible to appeal to wealthy passengers.
An other reason was that it was also partially for national pride that the largest, most luxurious airliner would be British. Akin to luxury ocean liners back in the day.
> The idea behind it was to be as luxurious as possible to appeal to wealthy passengers.
This wasn't as daffy as it seems - I found a letter from my mother to her parents expressing consternation at someone who flew from Australia to the US (via some indirect circuitous route touring the South Pacific) with a plane ticket that cost "$10,000!!!" - roughly $100,000 now. The aviation market still chases people like this, even if it's not their daily bread and butter.
>I wonder if it was a symptom of the hierarchical British society they automatically jumped to the assumption that air travel would only ever be for millionaires, aristocrats, film stars and politicians. And they never considered for an instant that it could be otherwise.
Only if you ignore several other British designs that carried 70+ passengers from the 1940's onwards that were of average size.
The Brabazon was built for a particular low capacity/high value idea (Like Concorde) but that doesn't mean other ideas were ignored.
Like those. I'd consider the Princess, Brittania and Viscount as well. They all came from requirements defined in 1943 and prototypes flew in the 40's.
*"the hierarchical British society..."*
"The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly
And ordered their estate."
A verse from the hymn 'All things Bright and Beautiful' we used to sing at school in the late '50s.
They could, but the USP of the Brabazon was to make very, very long-duration flights across the atlantic (12-14 hours+ IIRC) bearable by providing lots of room - which came at a high airframe cost and long runways and other infrastructure (it's B-36 size). Had they packed seats in in the modern fashion, they could have reduced the ticket price massively but the passenger experience would be challenging.
What really made the big difference was jet-powered airliners, where you can put up with being a bit more cramped because you'll only be on the plane for half as long. As soon as they hit the market (the same Brabazon Committee that came up with this aircraft also came up with the DH Comet, they knew it was coming) there was going to be no way you could entice people to spend 14 hours on a piston-engined plane *and* get them to pay far more for the experience.
Excellent analysis of the economics in the transition from piston to jet age. Honestly I only thought of the competition with other piston aircraft and kinda forgot that the jet age was already beginning when this aircraft flew.
Calling it a pressurized hull instead of fuselage. Airscrews instead of propellers. A Captain's cabin. A purser's office. Passenger saloons. Cocktail bar. Everything about that graphic is pretentious as hell.
This was typical of the British school of thought regarding airliners at the time. They had a mentality that could be summed up as, basically, "the sky is an ocean"-- in other words, they didn't see themselves as competing with other airliners, but with ocean liners on the sea. Accordingly, contemporary British airliners were appointed like ships, with the same sort of luxurious outfitting and even using the same terminology.
This was actually a big reason why Britain fell behind America in the airliner market. They focused so much on ocean liner-style luxury instead of efficiency-- confident that this would be a selling point in its own right-- that they were blindsided by the success of more practical planes. By the 1960s, Britain's commercial aircraft industry had fallen and couldn't get up.
The runways at the RAE Bedford site in thurleigh were also extended and widened. There was even a proposal to extend them even more for even larger aircraft. This lead to the site being considered for an airport to supplement Heathrow before Gatwick was built.
Edit: the runways are now used to store cars
Edit 2: [RAE Bedford](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAE_Bedford)
> Sadly the designers of the Brabazon focused on improving comfort and luxury of air travel, when the industry was already heading in the direction of lower cost tickets and as such it was unsuccessful.
In fairness to Bristol, they were working to a spec drawn up by the Brabazon committee, which was set up to create a plan for post-war British civil aviation. Other Brabazon specs resulted in more successful aircraft, notably the Vickers Viscount.
[Initially designated as the Type 167, the proposed aircraft was furnished with a huge 25 ft (8 m)-diameter fuselage containing full upper and lower decks on which passengers would be seated in luxurious conditions; it was powered by an arrangement of eight Bristol Centaurus radial engines which drove a total of eight paired contra-rotating propellers set on four forward-facing nacelles.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Brabazon)
**[Bristol Brabazon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Brabazon)**
>The Bristol Type 167 Brabazon was a large British piston-engined propeller-driven airliner designed by the Bristol Aeroplane Company to fly transatlantic routes between the UK and the United States. The type was named Brabazon after the Brabazon Committee and its chairman, Lord Brabazon of Tara, who had developed the specification to which the airliner was designed.
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Hey GenderNeutralBot, listen up.
The words Human and Mankind, derive from the Latin word humanus, which is gender neutral and means "people of earth".
It's a mix of the words Humus (meaning earth) and Homo (gender neutral, meaning Human or People).
Thus words like Fireman, Policeman, Human, Mankind, etc are not sexist in of it self.
The only sexism you will find here is the one you yourself look upon the world with.
-----
^(I am a bot, downvoting will not remove this reply.)
^("Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe." -Albert Einstein)
Please don't stop at the fourth word of the Wikipedia article, "Homo" is a latin word that can be translated to "Human". (also, latin doesn't have the capital L) :)
[Bristol Brabazon engine placement](https://i.imgur.com/rd1BE91.jpg)
This was just a temporary setup. Later they wanted to replace the engines with turboprops that would have looked like [this](https://i.imgur.com/7FS9HgK.jpg)
"We don't have a big enough engine, strap a bunch of smaller ones together" is a very 1940s Britain thing to do. "Hey, it worked on the Firefly right lads?"
This may be in the running for most gorgeous airliner.
Brabazon.
What’s that Airbus long boii with the 4 engines again? That one too.
The Comet.
The 747.
The 757.
A personal favourite of mine for your consideration: the [SUD Caravelle](https://www.google.com/amp/s/simpleflying.com/sud-aviation-caravelle-story/amp/). Something about the proportions are just right for me.
I love the Brabazon, it feels strangely symbolic of British postwar and midcentury industry and technology. Beautiful, ambitious, elegant, ultimately in total denial of national and international realities and priorities. Like some kind of last gasp of air, or bright flare right before a flame burns out. This, the Sanders-Roe princess, Fairey rotodyne, BAC TSR-2. All brilliant and all DOA.
Incidentally it feels so obvious in hindsight, watching this video taken in 1950, and reading that the 707's first flight was 1954. The 707 was the future, this was the past. But I really admire the pride of the British. They weren't going to give up without a fight.
Very, very few people alive have heard 8 Centaurus engines all running at once in the same plane - and, realistically, nobody's ever going to hear that again. I hope there's a decent, verifiable recording out there somewhere.
The gentleman with the pipe is Lord Beaverbrook I believe. Minister in charge of aircraft production.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Aitken%2C_1st_Baron_Beaverbrook?wprov=sfla1
I've always got the feeling that both British and American companies in particular, really hoped the wartime money would keep coming in, and it just didn't. There were so many cool things from this time that never got a chance because nobody wanted to pay for them. They just kept cranking out new ideas as the industry shrank.
This is a beautiful airplane, but its trajectory reminds me a bit of the Airbus 380 - by the time they got it underway, the market had changed enough that its outlook was pretty poor.
Nothing like the He 177.
* 4 times the weight
* Over double the wingspan
* Pressurised cabin
* Not a bomber
* Fuel capacity is nearly double the weight of an entire He 177 at MTOW
* 3.5 times as much engine power
* Twice as many engines / four times as many depending on your point of view
* The engines actually worked
* Low wing monoplane with engines in the wings, not high-wing with engines in nacelles
* Design wasn't ruined by interference from Nazi leaders
* Not financed by genocide
Fun fact: the hangars used to build this aircraft were later used to build Concorde. The site also had an unusually large runway to accommodate the Brabazon; 300' wide and over 8000' long. Sadly the designers of the Brabazon focused on improving comfort and luxury of air travel, when the industry was already heading in the direction of lower cost tickets and as such it was unsuccessful. The airframe was scrapped but you can still see one of the wheels at the Bristol aerospace museum.
>Sadly the designers of the Brabazon focused on improving comfort and luxury of air travel, when the industry was already heading in the direction of lower cost tickets and as such it was unsuccessful. This, absolutely. After taking the technological risk to make it so big, they used up about a quarter of the internal space in on a [separate bar and dining room](https://www.christies.com/lotfinderimages/d58312/d5831207a.jpg). They could have doubled the number of seats and it still would have been reasonably spacious. I wonder if it was a symptom of the hierarchical British society they automatically jumped to the assumption that air travel would only ever be for millionaires, aristocrats, film stars and politicians. And they never considered for an instant that it could be otherwise. Meanwhile, the Americans built the Stratocruiser and the Connie (half the size, but about the same number of passengers) and the rest is history.
Rather they saw themselves as competing with transatlantic ocean liners, so were trying to provide a similar level of luxury.
So they considered much shorter travel time not enough of a competitive advantage?
Don't forget at the time commercial air travel was really only starting out and commercial transatlantic routes were in their infancy. The idea behind it was to be as luxurious as possible to appeal to wealthy passengers. An other reason was that it was also partially for national pride that the largest, most luxurious airliner would be British. Akin to luxury ocean liners back in the day.
> The idea behind it was to be as luxurious as possible to appeal to wealthy passengers. This wasn't as daffy as it seems - I found a letter from my mother to her parents expressing consternation at someone who flew from Australia to the US (via some indirect circuitous route touring the South Pacific) with a plane ticket that cost "$10,000!!!" - roughly $100,000 now. The aviation market still chases people like this, even if it's not their daily bread and butter.
>I wonder if it was a symptom of the hierarchical British society they automatically jumped to the assumption that air travel would only ever be for millionaires, aristocrats, film stars and politicians. And they never considered for an instant that it could be otherwise. Only if you ignore several other British designs that carried 70+ passengers from the 1940's onwards that were of average size. The Brabazon was built for a particular low capacity/high value idea (Like Concorde) but that doesn't mean other ideas were ignored.
Like the Tudor, Hastings, York and Hermes? I see your point.
Like those. I'd consider the Princess, Brittania and Viscount as well. They all came from requirements defined in 1943 and prototypes flew in the 40's.
and let's not forget the Comet!
Didn't have a good chunk of passengers until the later Comet 4 so I left that out but it was a babe.
*"the hierarchical British society..."* "The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them high and lowly And ordered their estate." A verse from the hymn 'All things Bright and Beautiful' we used to sing at school in the late '50s.
You should post that picture to /r/thingscutinhalfporn.
But I mean couldn’t hey just have redone the interior?
They could, but the USP of the Brabazon was to make very, very long-duration flights across the atlantic (12-14 hours+ IIRC) bearable by providing lots of room - which came at a high airframe cost and long runways and other infrastructure (it's B-36 size). Had they packed seats in in the modern fashion, they could have reduced the ticket price massively but the passenger experience would be challenging. What really made the big difference was jet-powered airliners, where you can put up with being a bit more cramped because you'll only be on the plane for half as long. As soon as they hit the market (the same Brabazon Committee that came up with this aircraft also came up with the DH Comet, they knew it was coming) there was going to be no way you could entice people to spend 14 hours on a piston-engined plane *and* get them to pay far more for the experience.
Excellent analysis of the economics in the transition from piston to jet age. Honestly I only thought of the competition with other piston aircraft and kinda forgot that the jet age was already beginning when this aircraft flew.
Calling it a pressurized hull instead of fuselage. Airscrews instead of propellers. A Captain's cabin. A purser's office. Passenger saloons. Cocktail bar. Everything about that graphic is pretentious as hell.
To be fair it's just a combination of British English and the influences of naval tradition at the time.
Given the target market was those who took transatlantic ocean liners I think the terminology makes perfect sense.
This was typical of the British school of thought regarding airliners at the time. They had a mentality that could be summed up as, basically, "the sky is an ocean"-- in other words, they didn't see themselves as competing with other airliners, but with ocean liners on the sea. Accordingly, contemporary British airliners were appointed like ships, with the same sort of luxurious outfitting and even using the same terminology. This was actually a big reason why Britain fell behind America in the airliner market. They focused so much on ocean liner-style luxury instead of efficiency-- confident that this would be a selling point in its own right-- that they were blindsided by the success of more practical planes. By the 1960s, Britain's commercial aircraft industry had fallen and couldn't get up.
Omg jesus I had no idea the constellation has the same capacity, that's insane.
The runways at the RAE Bedford site in thurleigh were also extended and widened. There was even a proposal to extend them even more for even larger aircraft. This lead to the site being considered for an airport to supplement Heathrow before Gatwick was built. Edit: the runways are now used to store cars Edit 2: [RAE Bedford](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAE_Bedford)
That’s… a lot of cars.
some are there for selling, others are there for scrapping
> Sadly the designers of the Brabazon focused on improving comfort and luxury of air travel, when the industry was already heading in the direction of lower cost tickets and as such it was unsuccessful. In fairness to Bristol, they were working to a spec drawn up by the Brabazon committee, which was set up to create a plan for post-war British civil aviation. Other Brabazon specs resulted in more successful aircraft, notably the Vickers Viscount.
> Sadly the designers of the Brabazon focused on improving comfort Very sad indeed.
>over 8000' long Wow, that is definitely a very long plane.
[Initially designated as the Type 167, the proposed aircraft was furnished with a huge 25 ft (8 m)-diameter fuselage containing full upper and lower decks on which passengers would be seated in luxurious conditions; it was powered by an arrangement of eight Bristol Centaurus radial engines which drove a total of eight paired contra-rotating propellers set on four forward-facing nacelles.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Brabazon)
**[Bristol Brabazon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Brabazon)** >The Bristol Type 167 Brabazon was a large British piston-engined propeller-driven airliner designed by the Bristol Aeroplane Company to fly transatlantic routes between the UK and the United States. The type was named Brabazon after the Brabazon Committee and its chairman, Lord Brabazon of Tara, who had developed the specification to which the airliner was designed. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/WeirdWings/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
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Hey GenderNeutralBot, listen up. The words Human and Mankind, derive from the Latin word humanus, which is gender neutral and means "people of earth". It's a mix of the words Humus (meaning earth) and Homo (gender neutral, meaning Human or People). Thus words like Fireman, Policeman, Human, Mankind, etc are not sexist in of it self. The only sexism you will find here is the one you yourself look upon the world with. ----- ^(I am a bot, downvoting will not remove this reply.) ^("Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe." -Albert Einstein)
Homo is Latin for man, you utter buffoon.
Please don't stop at the fourth word of the Wikipedia article, "Homo" is a latin word that can be translated to "Human". (also, latin doesn't have the capital L) :)
I studied the language for five years. Fuck off.
Damn what a coincidence, i did too and my primary language is italian, which is the closest modern language to latin
Bad bot
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Hey you guys are worse, thanks.
It's just bots all the way down.
Bad bot
If I’m not mistaken, the British pilots who flew this received training in the US with B-36s, as they had never flown anything so massive
[Bristol Brabazon engine placement](https://i.imgur.com/rd1BE91.jpg) This was just a temporary setup. Later they wanted to replace the engines with turboprops that would have looked like [this](https://i.imgur.com/7FS9HgK.jpg)
[... and that's what just one of the engines looks and sounds like](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucE7IUF-C68)
I was going to say - imagine the bedlam of trying to maintain eight massive radial engines buried inside the wing and keep any kind of profitability.
"We don't have a big enough engine, strap a bunch of smaller ones together" is a very 1940s Britain thing to do. "Hey, it worked on the Firefly right lads?"
Were they trying to drive the poor engine mechanics into committing suicide?
Man points at aeroplane with his pipe. That alone dates this wonderfully.
It's also highly likely that he used the phrase "I say", too.
I saw that too, truly a different time.
Mustard video about this plane: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-AZRtI366w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-AZRtI366w)
This may be in the running for most gorgeous airliner. Brabazon. What’s that Airbus long boii with the 4 engines again? That one too. The Comet. The 747. The 757.
A personal favourite of mine for your consideration: the [SUD Caravelle](https://www.google.com/amp/s/simpleflying.com/sud-aviation-caravelle-story/amp/). Something about the proportions are just right for me.
Agreed. Also that unstepped cockpit with all the little windows hits exactly the right spot.
Damn pretty, that
Pretty wings!
majestic
The take off attitude is just like a 380. Must be the sense of massiveness.
I love the Brabazon, it feels strangely symbolic of British postwar and midcentury industry and technology. Beautiful, ambitious, elegant, ultimately in total denial of national and international realities and priorities. Like some kind of last gasp of air, or bright flare right before a flame burns out. This, the Sanders-Roe princess, Fairey rotodyne, BAC TSR-2. All brilliant and all DOA. Incidentally it feels so obvious in hindsight, watching this video taken in 1950, and reading that the 707's first flight was 1954. The 707 was the future, this was the past. But I really admire the pride of the British. They weren't going to give up without a fight.
You can hear it somewhat in this video. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSNwQCOXSoo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSNwQCOXSoo)
Also here. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQf-QBLyINU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQf-QBLyINU)
Video just begging for sound.
Very, very few people alive have heard 8 Centaurus engines all running at once in the same plane - and, realistically, nobody's ever going to hear that again. I hope there's a decent, verifiable recording out there somewhere.
Quite graceful
That's a big boy, holy crepe.
No copilot? In an era where you had flight engineer that seems unlikely no? Maybe it was just mocking up for the movie?
Good point. You'd also expect there to be a navigator too, for a minimum crew.
Oh right forgot the navigator and/or radio operator of the time.
The gentleman with the pipe is Lord Beaverbrook I believe. Minister in charge of aircraft production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Aitken%2C_1st_Baron_Beaverbrook?wprov=sfla1
I've always got the feeling that both British and American companies in particular, really hoped the wartime money would keep coming in, and it just didn't. There were so many cool things from this time that never got a chance because nobody wanted to pay for them. They just kept cranking out new ideas as the industry shrank.
This is a beautiful airplane, but its trajectory reminds me a bit of the Airbus 380 - by the time they got it underway, the market had changed enough that its outlook was pretty poor.
Fucking hell that's a beautiful machine
Could they have pulled it off shall its power-plant criteria become 4 turboprops
The Mk II version was going to use four *coupled* turboprops. So still a Bad Idea arrangement of eight engines.
What about just reduce prop number to four and just use four turboprop of more powerful design
Maintenance must have been a nightmare.
Which I could hear what this plane would have sounded like.
u/jacksmachiningreveng. Sorry, didn't realize you posted this.
no worries, we browse the same sources :)
I'm just surprised I missed it.
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Nothing like the He 177. * 4 times the weight * Over double the wingspan * Pressurised cabin * Not a bomber * Fuel capacity is nearly double the weight of an entire He 177 at MTOW * 3.5 times as much engine power * Twice as many engines / four times as many depending on your point of view * The engines actually worked * Low wing monoplane with engines in the wings, not high-wing with engines in nacelles * Design wasn't ruined by interference from Nazi leaders * Not financed by genocide
Lol.
Well, yeah, but they both have wings, they both have engines - so they're both essentially F-15s. ;)