Mitchell Holman[_9_]
March 5th 20, 07:59 PM
Miloch > wrote in
:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_Traders_Carvair
>
> The Aviation Traders ATL-98 Carvair was a large transport aircraft
> powered by four radial engines. It was a Douglas DC-4-based air ferry
> conversion developed by Freddie Laker's Aviation Traders (Engineering)
> Limited (ATL), with a capacity generally of 22 passengers in a rear
> cabin, and five cars loaded in at the front.
>
> Design and development
>
> Freddie Laker's idea to convert surplus examples of the Douglas DC-4
> and its military counterpart the C-54 Skymaster to carry cars was a
> relatively inexpensive solution to develop a successor to the rapidly
> aging and increasingly inadequate Bristol 170 Freighter, the car ferry
> airlines' mainstay since the late 1940s.
>
> The Bristol Freighter's main drawback was its limited payload, in
> terms of the number of cars that fitted into a single aircraft. Even
> the "long-nosed" Mark 32 was able to accommodate only three cars (in
> addition to 20 passengers). This made carrying cars by air a very
> tricky business. If a booked car failed to turn up, the flight
> instantly became unprofitable as a result of the one-third cut in
> payload. This situation was made worse by the increasing average
> length of British cars during the 1950s. The average UK car in 1959
> was 25 centimetres (9.8 in) longer than in 1950. The extreme
> seasonality of the car ferry business furthermore resulted in poor
> aircraft utilization outside peak periods. Moreover, repeated takeoffs
> and landings on short cross-Channel flights, in turbulent air at lower
> altitudes with tight turnarounds of as little as 20 minutes, made the
> aircraft prone to structural fatigue problems. These necessitated
> rigorous and costly modification programmes, thereby further
> increasing the type's operating costs on what were essentially
> low-yield routes.
>
> When the major airlines replaced their obsolete piston airliners with
> new Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 jets on their prestige long-haul
> routes, the unit price of second-hand DC-4s dropped to as little as
> £50,000 (equivalent to £1.2 million today). The conversion of each of
> these airframes into car-passenger carriers cost about £80,000 (£1.9
> million today). This was easily affordable by smaller airlines, such
> as the car ferry companies. Freddie Laker's cardboard model of a
> converted DC-4 featuring a door in the nose and a flight deck raised
> above the fuselage had shown that its payload was superior to the
> Bristol Freighter/Superfreighter. The aircraft was designed to
> accommodate five average-sized British cars plus 25 passengers as a
> result of the DC-4's longer and wider fuselage. British Air Ferries
> (BAF), for example, operated its Carvairs in a flexible configuration,
> either accommodating five cars and 22 passengers or two-three cars and
> 55 passengers, permitting it to change over from one configuration to
> the other in about 40 minutes. In addition, the DC-4's lack of
> pressurisation made it ideal for low-altitude cross-Channel flights
> that did not go high enough to require a pressurised cabin. This made
> the proposed structural conversion straightforward. The result was a
> new aircraft christened Carvair (derived from car-via-air).
>
> Initially, it was thought that second-hand, pressurised Douglas DC-6
> and Douglas DC-7 airframes could be converted into larger, "second
> generation" Carvairs within 15 years of the original DC-4-based
> Carvair's entry into service.
>
> The conversion of the original aircraft entailed replacing the forward
> fuselage with one 8 feet 8 inches (2.64 m) longer, with a raised
> flightdeck in a bulbous "hump" (akin to the later Boeing 747) to allow
> a sideways hinged nose door. It also entailed more powerful wheel
> brakes and an enlarged tail, often thought to be a Douglas DC-7 unit,
> but actually a completely new design. The engines, four Pratt &
> Whitney R-2000 Twin Wasps, were unchanged.
>
>
> Role
> Transport
>
> Manufacturer
> Aviation Traders
>
> First flight
> 21 June 1961
>
> Introduction
> 16 February 1962 with Channel Air Bridge
>
> Status
> Retired from service
>
> Number built
> 21 conversions
>
> Developed from
> Douglas DC-4
>
> The Carvair was used by Aer Lingus, BUAF and BAF among others, and was
> used in Congo-Kinshasa during 1960–1964, under contract to the United
> Nations. Aircraft for Aer Lingus were quickly convertible between 55
> seats and 22 seats with five cars. Some aircraft were pure freighters
> with only nine seats. One aircraft had 55 high-density seats and room
> for three cars. BAF was the last operator in Europe of the aircraft,
> keeping them flying into the 1970s.
>
> British United Carvairs made an appearance in the 1964 James Bond
> movie Goldfinger as Auric Goldfinger and bodyguard Oddjob boarded
> G-ASDC bound for Switzerland while Goldfinger's Rolls-Royce car was
> being loaded through the Carvair nose. In the 1967 TV series The
> Prisoner in the episode "The Chimes of Big Ben", the plane is seen
> being loaded through the nose, then taking off and landing again.
>
> Accidents and incidents
>
> Of the 21 airframes, eight were destroyed in crashes:
> Rotterdam, Netherlands 1962
> Karachi, Pakistan 1967
> Twin Falls, Canada 1968
> Miami, Florida, United States 1969
> Le Touquet, France 1971
> Venetie, Alaska, United States 1997
> Griffin, Georgia, United States 1997
> McGrath, Alaska, United States 2007
>
> The first of two catastrophic incidents occurred at Karachi on 8 March
> 1967 when F-BMHU of Compagnie Air Transport (the fourth produced)
> suffered a double engine failure on take-off and, as a result of the
> large cargo carried and the rarified atmosphere, the aircraft lost
> height rapidly and the pilot was forced to make a landing on the
> National Highway near the airport but struck the Drigh Road railway
> bridge and several vehicles, killing four of the crew of six plus
> seven others on the ground. The second catastrophic incident was near
> Miami, Florida on 23 June 1969 when HI-168 of Dominicana Aviation (the
> sixteenth produced), after three aborted taxi-outs due to the crew
> being unhappy with engine performance, finally took off grossly
> overloaded but suffered again a double engine failure and in trying to
> return to the airport crashed into a main street east of the airport.
> When the entire fuel load exploded and caught fire it set fire to many
> buildings despite the efforts of the 14 fire trucks that attended and
> took 45 minutes to quell the fire. The four crew and six on the ground
> were killed, with another 12 on the ground injured.
>
> The accident at Griffin in the United States in April 1997 involved
> the fifth production Carvair which suffered catastrophic engine
> failure during the takeoff run and failed to become properly airborne.
> The aircraft crashed into a vacant Piggly Wiggly supermarket past the
> airport perimeter, killing both pilots.
>
Who else remembers the most famous
Carvair, the one used by...Auric Goldfinger?
:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_Traders_Carvair
>
> The Aviation Traders ATL-98 Carvair was a large transport aircraft
> powered by four radial engines. It was a Douglas DC-4-based air ferry
> conversion developed by Freddie Laker's Aviation Traders (Engineering)
> Limited (ATL), with a capacity generally of 22 passengers in a rear
> cabin, and five cars loaded in at the front.
>
> Design and development
>
> Freddie Laker's idea to convert surplus examples of the Douglas DC-4
> and its military counterpart the C-54 Skymaster to carry cars was a
> relatively inexpensive solution to develop a successor to the rapidly
> aging and increasingly inadequate Bristol 170 Freighter, the car ferry
> airlines' mainstay since the late 1940s.
>
> The Bristol Freighter's main drawback was its limited payload, in
> terms of the number of cars that fitted into a single aircraft. Even
> the "long-nosed" Mark 32 was able to accommodate only three cars (in
> addition to 20 passengers). This made carrying cars by air a very
> tricky business. If a booked car failed to turn up, the flight
> instantly became unprofitable as a result of the one-third cut in
> payload. This situation was made worse by the increasing average
> length of British cars during the 1950s. The average UK car in 1959
> was 25 centimetres (9.8 in) longer than in 1950. The extreme
> seasonality of the car ferry business furthermore resulted in poor
> aircraft utilization outside peak periods. Moreover, repeated takeoffs
> and landings on short cross-Channel flights, in turbulent air at lower
> altitudes with tight turnarounds of as little as 20 minutes, made the
> aircraft prone to structural fatigue problems. These necessitated
> rigorous and costly modification programmes, thereby further
> increasing the type's operating costs on what were essentially
> low-yield routes.
>
> When the major airlines replaced their obsolete piston airliners with
> new Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 jets on their prestige long-haul
> routes, the unit price of second-hand DC-4s dropped to as little as
> £50,000 (equivalent to £1.2 million today). The conversion of each of
> these airframes into car-passenger carriers cost about £80,000 (£1.9
> million today). This was easily affordable by smaller airlines, such
> as the car ferry companies. Freddie Laker's cardboard model of a
> converted DC-4 featuring a door in the nose and a flight deck raised
> above the fuselage had shown that its payload was superior to the
> Bristol Freighter/Superfreighter. The aircraft was designed to
> accommodate five average-sized British cars plus 25 passengers as a
> result of the DC-4's longer and wider fuselage. British Air Ferries
> (BAF), for example, operated its Carvairs in a flexible configuration,
> either accommodating five cars and 22 passengers or two-three cars and
> 55 passengers, permitting it to change over from one configuration to
> the other in about 40 minutes. In addition, the DC-4's lack of
> pressurisation made it ideal for low-altitude cross-Channel flights
> that did not go high enough to require a pressurised cabin. This made
> the proposed structural conversion straightforward. The result was a
> new aircraft christened Carvair (derived from car-via-air).
>
> Initially, it was thought that second-hand, pressurised Douglas DC-6
> and Douglas DC-7 airframes could be converted into larger, "second
> generation" Carvairs within 15 years of the original DC-4-based
> Carvair's entry into service.
>
> The conversion of the original aircraft entailed replacing the forward
> fuselage with one 8 feet 8 inches (2.64 m) longer, with a raised
> flightdeck in a bulbous "hump" (akin to the later Boeing 747) to allow
> a sideways hinged nose door. It also entailed more powerful wheel
> brakes and an enlarged tail, often thought to be a Douglas DC-7 unit,
> but actually a completely new design. The engines, four Pratt &
> Whitney R-2000 Twin Wasps, were unchanged.
>
>
> Role
> Transport
>
> Manufacturer
> Aviation Traders
>
> First flight
> 21 June 1961
>
> Introduction
> 16 February 1962 with Channel Air Bridge
>
> Status
> Retired from service
>
> Number built
> 21 conversions
>
> Developed from
> Douglas DC-4
>
> The Carvair was used by Aer Lingus, BUAF and BAF among others, and was
> used in Congo-Kinshasa during 1960–1964, under contract to the United
> Nations. Aircraft for Aer Lingus were quickly convertible between 55
> seats and 22 seats with five cars. Some aircraft were pure freighters
> with only nine seats. One aircraft had 55 high-density seats and room
> for three cars. BAF was the last operator in Europe of the aircraft,
> keeping them flying into the 1970s.
>
> British United Carvairs made an appearance in the 1964 James Bond
> movie Goldfinger as Auric Goldfinger and bodyguard Oddjob boarded
> G-ASDC bound for Switzerland while Goldfinger's Rolls-Royce car was
> being loaded through the Carvair nose. In the 1967 TV series The
> Prisoner in the episode "The Chimes of Big Ben", the plane is seen
> being loaded through the nose, then taking off and landing again.
>
> Accidents and incidents
>
> Of the 21 airframes, eight were destroyed in crashes:
> Rotterdam, Netherlands 1962
> Karachi, Pakistan 1967
> Twin Falls, Canada 1968
> Miami, Florida, United States 1969
> Le Touquet, France 1971
> Venetie, Alaska, United States 1997
> Griffin, Georgia, United States 1997
> McGrath, Alaska, United States 2007
>
> The first of two catastrophic incidents occurred at Karachi on 8 March
> 1967 when F-BMHU of Compagnie Air Transport (the fourth produced)
> suffered a double engine failure on take-off and, as a result of the
> large cargo carried and the rarified atmosphere, the aircraft lost
> height rapidly and the pilot was forced to make a landing on the
> National Highway near the airport but struck the Drigh Road railway
> bridge and several vehicles, killing four of the crew of six plus
> seven others on the ground. The second catastrophic incident was near
> Miami, Florida on 23 June 1969 when HI-168 of Dominicana Aviation (the
> sixteenth produced), after three aborted taxi-outs due to the crew
> being unhappy with engine performance, finally took off grossly
> overloaded but suffered again a double engine failure and in trying to
> return to the airport crashed into a main street east of the airport.
> When the entire fuel load exploded and caught fire it set fire to many
> buildings despite the efforts of the 14 fire trucks that attended and
> took 45 minutes to quell the fire. The four crew and six on the ground
> were killed, with another 12 on the ground injured.
>
> The accident at Griffin in the United States in April 1997 involved
> the fifth production Carvair which suffered catastrophic engine
> failure during the takeoff run and failed to become properly airborne.
> The aircraft crashed into a vacant Piggly Wiggly supermarket past the
> airport perimeter, killing both pilots.
>
Who else remembers the most famous
Carvair, the one used by...Auric Goldfinger?