Mutley's Hangar Forums

This last section features the primary reason that I made the trip. FoF has a Short Sunderland. I’ve always really liked this behemoth. I made an earlier post about this at…

http://forum.mutleyshangar.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1412&hilit=fa08

Wikipedia has an extensive article about the Sunderland, including some very interesting operational and technical details at…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Sunderland

This example was built as ML-814, a Mark 3, and was later upgraded to a Mark 5. It was converted in Australia during a long and varied post-war career to something closely resembling the civilian version, called Sandringham.

I note that it now has Pratt & Whitney engines. The original Sunderlands had Bristol Pegasus and later Bristol Hercules engines, but the Mark 5s were fitted with Pratt & Whitney R-1830 engines. Presumably this AC’s engines were changed from Bristols to the current P&Ws during the upgrade to Mark 5.

According to the FoF staff, this aircraft carried the Olympic torch from Miami to Atlanta for the 1996 Olympic Games held in Atlanta.

My brother (not the one who was with me for this trip) claims to have seen this AC perform a fly-over at a sports stadium.

Unfortunately, though the interior is accessible to visitors, the flight deck and lower hull are not. The interior is clearly fitted out of civil use, but is roughly done, not to the standards of air transport today. It also shows some of the ravages of use and time.

The FoF guide says that after being flown from England, the AC was kept moored in the adjacent lake, but eventually was pulled up on the ramp because of deterioration and some incidents of vandalism by people who approached it in boats.

After being displayed on the FoF ramp for a while, some degradation continued and it was finally decided to move the AC into the hangar where it could be better protected. It has the appearance of not having been flown for a long time, though certainly looks as if it could be with some working over.

ID
Not sure what happened to the focus on this shot.



EXTERIOR


INTERIOR
Forward cabin, looking aft. Didn’t we see this guy in the B-17 too. That’s Doug. You can tell who’s lingering behind and savoring the details, can’t you?

After cabin, looking aft. The steps go up to the bar on the deck above.

The bar, looking a little rough. I’ve been thrown out of better looking places than this.


ENGINES



BEACHING GEAR
For some reason I found myself fascinated with the beaching gear and took several photos of it. I studied this stuff in enough detail to have formed some idea how the equipment worked and how it was done. The Wikipedia article describes some facets of it too.

Bear in mind that these things had to be fitted (and un-fitted after launching) while the AC was afloat. The mental picture of the process is one of a very slow and laborious operation – bull-work, we’d have called it at the power plant. Add cold weather, cold water and a stiff wind and I’m pretty certain that this was not an evolution that the crews looked forward to. I’m sure there were plenty of times when they weren’t sure if they had it or it had them.

Main beaching gear – port side. The cushion blocks were color coded for port and starboard.

Tail beaching gear

The same view with some notes added

Main beaching gear – upper end

The same view with some notes added

Note in this photo the absence of a water rudder. The Wikipedia article referenced near the top of this thread contains some interesting detail about how the Sunderland had to be managed on the water. Some of it is quite surprising, including the manual deployment of drogues from the galley windows.

Main beaching gear – lower end

The same view with some notes added


This is the last of it. I hope everyone found something in all of this that they enjoyed. I certainly did.

John

B-R-I-L-L-I-A-N-T-!!!!!!

That's all I can say John!

Kieran

As Kieran said

She really does look her age but that doesn't detract from the beauty of this bird and to think that people would vandalise it .. grrrr.

Thanks for the inclusion of the bar you must have been thinking of me I can imagine ordering a Daiquiri for the flight!

I love these multi-prop golden age aircraft.

Very enjoyable John

Cheers