Avro Tudor

Tudor IV


To meet a BSAA requirement, some Tudor Is were lengthened by 5 ft 9 in (1.75 m), powered by 1,770 hp (1,320 kW) Rolls-Royce Merlin 621s and 1,760 hp (1,310 kW) Rolls-Royce Merlin 623s.

With 32 seats and no flight engineer position, these were known as Tudor IVs, and when fitted with a flight engineer's position and 28 seats, as Tudor IVBs.

BSAA's new flagships received mixed reviews from pilots. Some greeted it with enthusiasm, such as Captain Geoffrey Womersley, who described it as "the best civil airliner flying." Others rejected it as an unsound design.

BSAA's chief pilot and manager of operations, Gordon Store, was unimpressed:

The Tudor was built like a battleship.
It was noisy, I had no confidence in its engines and its systems were hopeless.
The Americans were fifty years ahead of us in systems engineering.

All the hydraulics, the air conditioning equipment and the recircling [sic] fans were crammed together underneath the floor without any thought.
There were fuel-burning heaters that would never work; we had the floorboards up in flight again and again.

The first example, G-AHNJ "Star Panther", flew on 9 April 1947.

The Tudor IV received its [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] on 18 July 1947, and on 29 September, BSAA took delivery of G-AHNK "Star Lion", the first of its six Tudor 4s to be delivered.

It departed the next day from Heathrow on a flight to South America, and on 31 October began flights from London to Havana via Lisbon, the Azores, Bermuda and Nassau.

On the night of 29 January - 30 January 1948, Tudor IV [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], with 31 people on board, disappeared without trace between [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] in the Azores and Bermuda.

Tudors were temporarily grounded and while the cause of the accident was never determined, the type returned to service on 3 December 1948, when a weekly service was begun from London to Buenos Aires via Gander, Bermuda, and other stops, returning via the Azores.

Disaster struck again on 17 January 1949, when Tudor IV [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] also disappeared, this time between Bermuda and [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], with the loss of 20 people, and the Tudor IVs were once more grounded.

The subsequent fleet shortage led to BSAA being taken over by BOAC.

Pressurisation problems were suspected to be the cause of the two accidents, and the remaining aircraft were flown as unpressurised freighters under the designations Tudor Freighter IV and IVB.

British Berlin Airlift Association :

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After storage for some years at [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], four ex-BSAAC Tudor IVs were bought by[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] in late 1953.

They were fitted with 6 ft 10 in (2.08 m) by 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m) cargo doors aft by Aviation Traders and designated Super Traders IV or IVB, receiving their Certificate of Airworthiness in March 1955.

These were operated by Air Charter Ltd on long distance freight flights as far as [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien].

Some remained in service until 1959, until[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] crashed in Turkey on 23 April 1959.

Tudor V

The Tudor V was a modified version of the Tudor II with 44 seats.

BSAA acquired five which never entered passenger service with the airline.

They were instead stripped of their fittings and used as fuel tankers on the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien].

They completed a total of 2,562 supply sorties in 6,973 hours, carrying 22,125 tons (20,071 tonnes) of fuel into Berlin.

On 12 March 1950, [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], which had been returned to passenger service with Airflight Ltd, on a charter flight from Ireland, crashed at [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], South Wales, with the resulting death of 80 of its passengers and crew.

In 1953, Lome Airways leased an ex BSAA Tudor 5 from Surrey Flying Services as CF-FCY for freight operations in Canada.

It was retired at Stansted and scrapped in 1959.

Tudor VI


The Tudor VI was to be built for the Argentinian airline [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] for South Atlantic service, with 32–38 seats or 22 [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], but none were built.

Un clip "Tudor"

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Et Farnborough 1950

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Tudor VII


The Tudor VII was the first production Tudor II fitted with Bristol Hercules air-cooled radial engines in an attempt to give better performance.

The sole example built, G-AGRX, made its first flight on 17 April 1946, and was later fitted in June 1948 with shorter landing gear with the engines repositioned (inclined) to give better ground clearance.

G-AGRX was used for cabin temperature experiments, and was finally sold for spares in March 1954.

Tudor 8

The second prototype Tudor I was rebuilt to Tudor IV standards.

It was later fitted with four [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] 5 turbojets in under-wing paired nacelles.

Given the military identification VX195, The Tudor 8 carried out its first flight at Woodford on 6 September 1948, and a few days later, it was demonstrated at the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] Show at Farnborough.

Later, the Tudor 8 was used for high-altitude experiments tests at [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] and [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] before being broken up in 1951.

Avro Tudor 8 with Nene jet engines at RAF Farnborough

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Tudor 9


Following tests of the Tudor 8, the Ministry of Supply ordered six Tudor 9s, based on the Tudor II but powered by four [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] and utilizing a [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien].

The original design was then modified and the type was produced as the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] with the first Ashton flying on 1 September 1950.

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Le Ashton

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Variants


All built by Avro at [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien].


688 Tudor 1

Production variant, 12 built, later conversion to other variants.

689 Tudor 2

Stretched version, five built.

688 Tudor 3

Tudor 1 modified by Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft as executive transport aircraft. It could seat up to nine passengers, two built.

688 Tudor 4

Stretched version of the Tudor 1 (but not the same as the Tudor 2 with the fuselage lengthened by only 6 ft/1.83 m). It could seat up to 32 passengers, 11 built.