Jolly good! (The flying Shak, not your de-roofed house!)

DS

I’ll be there on friday, as – yet again – I have booked my holiday over the Legends weekend.

I assume there will be some aeroplanes up for a practice at some point on friday? 😉

DS

Almost right – if you read Jonathan Falconers recently re-released ‘Stirling – The Operational Record’ the stirling did have a phenomenal roll rate – due in part to the reduced wingspan (to fit inside the then current hangars) and large ailerons – it could quote ‘ handle like a fighter in some respects including roll rate – in fact the stirling could out turn most allied fighters at that time with the exception of the hurricane…’

TT

I sit corrected. My copy of JF’s latest Stirling book is creeping slowly toward me from the Amazon. I could walk up there and get it quicker. 🙁

DS

I believe the Stirling was highly rollable, too?

Just can’t picture the things going inverted, can you?!

We got in at the same time there! Yes, it could out-turn a Hurricane, apparently.

DS

Surely you’ve heard of the legendary Chinese Stirling before? Actually don’t think I know how the joke started off come to think of it, anyone?

Well, it kinda does exist – or used to. See K’unming thread ealier this week.

By now it is a lot of Woks.

Didn’t stop someone suggesting it might be at Legends though. 😀

Not me.

DS

DocStirling – many thanks – didn’t realise that it was postwar.
Remember seeing it when I was going through some old Hong kong newspaper files but this one was in one piece [at that stage anyway]
Wonder what Wg Cdr Morrison was doing in Kunming at that time?
Would have been an ‘interesting’ place at that time as most of the 14th AAF would have left by then with the Nationalists still in ‘control’…

The impression I got from reading the article was that he was flying the charter flight of nuns and priests. There was another piece in the article about a similar flight that had to rest overnight in Hanoi, with fighting 3 miles from the aerodrome.

Alex: please try to find those Eygyptian photos. I find this period of the Stirlings service quite fascinating.

DS

Hi,

Stirling OO-XAC was ex-RAF Mark V PK172, which never saw active service. It came on charge at Pocklington 3.11.45, went to 273 MU 8.4.46 and was SOC 11.4.47 (Ref 1), when it was bought as a lot of 10 Mark V’s by Geoffrey Alington, along with spares, for £2000.00!!

It was test flown (Ref 2) at RAF Polebrook 12.4.47, delivered to Brussels June 18 and registered to Trans-Air on 25.6.47. It was registered to Air Transport on 27 October.

Geoffrey Alington kept OO-XAC as his personal aircraft, but lent it out once to Wg Cdr Morrison for the fatal flight to K’un-ming in China. With a full load of passengers, it crashed into a cemetery just after take-off. The cemetery was a mass of 4′-high mounds, which ‘tore the poor Stirling to pieces’. The cockpit was destroyed and the second pilot was killed. The engineer was one ‘Caggy’ Morgan, who was Geoffrey Alington’s war-time flight engineer, and he suffered hip and arm fractures. The passengers were all priests or nuns, and they all survived.

I’ve attached a scan of the pictures of the crash as it appeared in Aeroplane Monthly, but no other copyright is given.

I do recall this mentioned once before on the forum, when a link to more pictures of the crash were given – ?someones collection, or even ebay.

I will post an update if I find it.

Cheers,

DocStirling

(1) Michael Bowyer ‘The Stirling Story’.

(2) Stirling Civil Servant – G. Alington, Aeroplane Monthly Nov 1982 p578-82

Edit: Other sites seem to imply that 25/30 passengers died. More photos of OO-XAC:

http://www.skystef.be/airlines/trans-air.htm

http://www.baha.be/Webpages/Navigator/Photos/CivilPics/civil_pics_ootaa_oozzz/shorts_stirling_ooxac.htm

http://www.asa-be.com/photogallery_BCR_X.htm