Smooth As Silk
To answer the original query on this thread, she was as smooth as silk.
As a young lad, I witnessed the Princess flying over a few times when I lived near Shoreham Airport. That was back in the early 1950s.
I can confirm that she ran very smoothly. As she had Proteus engines, she sounded – of course – like a Britannia!
Also saw the Brabazon and many other interesting planes flying over.
For a BIG engineer’s panel, you should have seen the one in the piston-powered Globemaster! I counted around 80 instruments, plus all the switches and controls. A full time job looking after that lot!
And, by the way, I asked the flight engineer how a big thing like that flew with just four engines. He said “Man, they aint jest four engines – they’se got four rows o seven in each one!”
Those engines were four-row radials with 28 cylinders and two spark plugs for each pot. Fancy doing a spark plug change anyone?
That was a big plane in all respects. Looked like a block of flats coming in at night.
Bri 😉
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