Scrapping of Short Sperrin

They’re Gyron Juniors – 45% scaled and an entirely different beast, although still not particularly good. That’s probably not entirely fair, they weren’t really powerful enough for the Buccaneer.

The Gyron was a monster, the most powerful engine in the world by some margin in the early fifties.

Ref Gyron engines the Preserved Buccaneer S1 at gatwick was still having one engine run up, the other u/s, not that long ago.

I am pretty sure that the the “Lancaster with an extra engine” is Napier’s Lincoln Nomad engine test bed, which was at the Farnborough display in 1951. By elimination I would suggest that the most likely candidate airframe is SX973 since I think the oft repeated date of this installation being done in 1953 is probably secondary circular reporting of an original slip.

Thanks for the info on Strathallan!

The 1951 footage is interesting. At one point the camera pans along a row of aircraft, including what looks like a Lancaster with an extra engine incorporated into the nose. Might this be ND784, which was a testbed for the Mamba engine?

What paint scheme/finish is the Hatfield example?, there’s very little of the Sperrin on film but this Pathe short gives a good angle of it with a close up of one of the engines, finish is a two tone affair which I guess was dropped or stripped off later? see https://www.britishpathe.com/video/worlds-best-in-the-air

If my memory serves me correctly, it was a Gyron. Probably the Science Museum example as Strathallan had some items loaned to them mid-80s in an attempt to broaden the appeal of the museum. The Flying Bedstead was there for a while.

Delete

I guess an Avon. AFAIK there are only 2 Gyrons left – out of not many to start with – one with the Science Museum and one at the DH Museum.

I’d never heard of the engine at Strathallan before. Was it a Gyron or an Avon?

There is definitely an Aston and a Hastings (with the cargo door open) in the background.

John

Iain43: It could indeed be a Hermes prototype. Some interesting stuff at Hatfield in those days.

Why was the Ashton at Hatfield? I can find no reference to it being used as a test bed for DH engines, although it was certainly used for others. I remember the Sperrin flying around the St. Albans area, but have no recollection of seeing the Ashton.
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Got it. At 8.17 , what I thought was a Comet to the left of the Ashton does, indeed, look like the Sperrin. What put me off was the dihedral tailplane and what looked like the lowered flaps of a Comet. Well spotted. Could the Hastings/Tudor at 8:13 possibly be Hermes VX234 ?

Iain43: I think in fact that at 8:17 you see the Sperrin AND the Ashton. Look like a Hastings (or Tudor?)and a Lightning at 8:13.

But, it could have been useful as an engine test aircraft. With the spars running between the engines, there was nothing in the way so literally anything could be made to fit.
As it turned out, AFAIK, it was only used for the Gyron, which probably couldn’t have been fitted to any other airframe of the era.
That ended up as a waste of resources. Despite being hugely powerful by the standards of the day, it wasn’t a very good engine.

Perhaps closer to say that the Sperrin was an interim attempt at a jet heavy bomber because it was recognised that the V-bombers would take a long time. It was always intended to precede them however successful they turned out to be, but Edwards at Vickers offered the superior (to the Sperrin) Valiant in a shorter timescale than the two V-bomber candidates.

Thank you all for the comments received so far, for someone who is not as expert aviation educated or involved as some members I am surprised I started this highly interesting thread!

There was an engine from a Sperrin at Strathallan late 70s or early 80s. First I’d ever heard of the type.

Do any relics of the Sperrin exist? Google has not returned any information.

Following on from Ericmunk, structural test specimens were rarely completed as aeroplanes, I don’t believe. So, whilst they resembled the aircraft in question they usually had a lot of additional ironwork to carry the loads into the structure under test. Examples of this where you can see the ‘add-ons’ can be seen, for example, on the TSR2 fuselage at Brooklands.

The Sperrin was designed as a back-stop in the event of the other V-bombers not making the grade. Shorts, I believe, built the prototypes in production jigs, i.e. anticipating a follow-on order that never transpired. By all accounts it did was it was meant to do, but with the straight wing would have been slower than the others. So although the two aircraft were around in the late 50s, by that time the decision not to put it into production had been taken a while back, so there was no longer any need for structural fatigue testing to validate a long in-service life. So hence the structural test specimen would have been scrapped earlier.