The poor old stirling did receive a bad press but much of it was not the aircrafts fault – ie following the first test flight the angle of incidence on the wing was considered too low – but tooling for production was too far advanced for it to be changed on service aircraft – the solution was to create an amazingly complicated U/C – its achilles heel throughout its career- if you get the chance to see ‘Speed up on Stirlings’ a wartime production film recently re-released by IWM it shows a U/C retraction sequence – an amazing feat of engineering! And of course the wingspan was also clipped which limited the aircraft’s ceiling but also lead to the phenomenal roll rate mentioned above.
What people forget is that it was conceived pre-war and the concept of a four engined monoplane ‘heavy’ was revolutionary – the lanc, halifax et all benefited from lessons learned by Shorts.
The Stirling is and always has been my favourite aeroplane mainly because of its unjust treatment.
TT
i totally agree with you there TT. the Stirling has always been my favorite, out of the RAFs heavys. with that massive U/C and huge size. if there wings had never been clipped and the bomb bay designed better.. it would have been a world beater…still a awesome looking bomber…i never knew they where so agile.. well you learn something everyday..
i wonder if enyone has “or attempted” to roll a B-52…..
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