An Engine With A Bomber Attached To It | Avro 549 Aldershot [Aircraft Overview #75]

Today we’re taking a look at the Avro 549 Aldershot. This was Avro’s first entirely new post-war military aircraft, and it was built as a long-range, single-engine heavy bomber. Following the end of the first world war, the idea of single engine bombers had become quite popular with the British Air Ministy, and the Aldershot was one result of this thinking.
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Sources:
Jackson A.J. (1965), Avro Aircraft Since 1908.
Mason F.K. (1994), The British Bomber Since 1914
Flight Magazine, January 1927.
Aeroplane Monthly 1993-04 / O.Thetford - By day and by night /The classic inter-war RAF biplane bombers.
www.enginehist...
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Producing these videos is a hobby of mine - and apparently its now a full-time job too! I have a passion for history, and personally own a large collection of books, journals and other texts, and endeavor to do as much research as possible. However if there are any mistakes, please don't hesitate to reach out and correct anything :)

[@RexsHangar]

F.A.Q Section Q: Do you take aircraft requests? A: I have a list of aircraft I plan to cover, but feel free to add to it with suggestions:) Q: Why do you use imperial measurements for some videos, and metric for others? A: I do this based on country of manufacture. Imperial measurements for Britain and the U.S, metric for the rest of the world, but I include text in my videos that convert it for both. Q: Will you include video footage in your videos, or just photos? A: Video footage is very expensive to licence, if I can find footage in the public domain I will try to use it, but a lot of it is hoarded by licencing studies (British Pathe, Periscope films etc). In the future I may be able to afford clips :) Q: Why do you sometimes feature images/screenshots from flight simulators? A: Sometimes there are not a lot of photos available for certain aircraft, so I substitute this with digital images that are as accurate as possible. Feel free to leave you questions below - I may not be able to answer all of them, but I will keep my eyes open :)

[@derrickstorm6976]

Q: How long is the pre-existing list? ;P

[@bias0437]

Suggestion: Lockheed CL-1201 or Convair NB-36H. If they arent already on the list, also, great video as always.

[@Dreadnought33]

I don't know if it's on the list, but I very much would love to see a video about the Tupolev SB (Antonov ANT-40)

[@MattVF]

Blackburn Botha? Dog of an aircraft!

[@RexsHangar]

@@derrickstorm6976 combining the "aircraft" and "video topic" lists its approximately 600 potential videos, not including multi-part specials...I wont run out of material any time soon! 🤣

[@richardnicklin654]

Crikey, did I hear correctly? A 1920s monster that flew with experimental engines which didn’t crash? Impressive work from Avro.

[@Director_Orson_Krennic]

Seriously, that's impressive work from *anyone* in that era

[@derrickstorm6976]

​@@Director_Orson_Krennic he did refer to all the exp. aircraft of the time, and just gave special credit to Avro for obvious reasons

[@Manco65]

Coming from a USA perspective. Avro was one of the most underrated and under credited producers of military aircraft. I pretty much knew of their contribution to aviation from being a student of "modern" military history. The aviation part in particular.

[@SephirothRyu]

@@Manco65 Even after the USA basically gutted them during the whole Arrow debacle, a lot of the people at Avro just went and joined NASA. So in a sense, they never really went away. They merely decided they didn't want to be on the planet anymore.

[@scottstewart9584]

Crikey?

[@Ensign_Cthulhu]

They built their single-engine airplanes BIG in those days.

[@oldesertguy9616]

I can't believe how big those things were.

[@Farweasel]

@@oldesertguy9616 Oh they were *much* bigger than you can't believe how big (And quite possibly even larger than that ............. The Aldershot was clearly the sort of large aeroplane which other big aeroplanes said 'Well now, *that's what I call big* about).

[@reynaldoandannieangnged6434]

"Go big or go broke" as the saying goes?

[@XemawthEvo2]

Wow, that experimental Napier Cub engine has some ridiculous specs for the 1920s. At 60L with 16 pistons, each cylinder was roughly the volume of a gallon of air. The rotating inertia of that thing must have been insane, no wonder they had to strengthen basically the entire airframe lol

[@dougstubbs9637]

Rex, you could do an entire episode on Bert Hinkler. What a character, what a legend.

[@LukeBunyip]

Seconded

[@mark_delfino]

Thirded 👍👍👍

[@michaelmcginley4887]

I was going to suggest an series on test pilots, the planes they flew & or died in. I'm all for your idea too.

[@marclagalle1486]

And his connection to Bundaberg QLD.

That 1000hp engine was a beast!

[@derrickstorm6976]

Would a 1hp/kg have been a great power-to-weight ratio for an aircraft engine back in the 1910-20's?

[@mpetersen6]

There a number of large 1000+hp engines envisioned at that time including the Allison X-4520.

[@CardinalAsh]

@@derrickstorm6976 For a single engine, absolutely. Most of the production planes of the period had a ratio of something more like 0.2-0.5 hp/kg (including the Lockheed Vega, used to set a number of world records including Earhart’s famous flight), so 1hp/1kg was an absolute monster of an engine.

[@XemawthEvo2]

@@derrickstorm6976 Great question; I suspect nothing existed before the Cub in England, made that much power, and was able to be reliably mounted in a vehicle. The Germans probably had some competitive engines based on their Formula 1 racing dominance at the time, but those would have obviously been unobtainable by the British government haha

[@gunnermurphy6632]

What do you guys think about using that new 600 something cu chevy big block that makes supposedly around 1000hp in a plane... How does an aggressive cam affect aircraft ?

[@timgosling6189]

I enjoyed the profile drawing showing the internal bomb configuration, ie suspended by the nose. One, in fact the only, advantage of this was to make it easy to arm the bombs. The considerable downside was that the bombs would topple in the airflow after release and thus have a very significant dispersion. In other words they could go anywhere, especially if released at more than a couple of hundred feet. The Aldershot, like the similarly designed He111 a decade later, could not have been considered a precision bomber! It's slightly less important nowadays since aerial bombing is generally combined with laser guidance but there was a time when making sure that stores left the aircraft in a predictable and consistent fashion was a real headache!

[@Shaun_Jones]

In those days, a wide spread pattern was considered a good thing, under the theory that it spread out the damage over a wider area. “Precision” bombing was considered the sole domain of dive bombers, everything else was supposed to cause widespread destruction.

[@alexsis1778]

The Italian SM 79 did the same. In those days though you were aiming at huge static targets though. Many people were looking back at WW1 and thinking about bombing the trenches, troop formations or even cities. The concept of striking an individual target was still far in the future.

[@trooperdgb9722]

And yet when you look at films of other aircraft dropping bombs..they bounce off each other.. and wobble around significantly too!

[@timgosling6189]

@@trooperdgb9722 it was a serious problem. Aircraft have been destroyed by bombs fuzing on other bombs. A similar issue was 'store capture' where one bomb would get into the slipstream of another, overtake it and detonate. Nowadays less of an issue as we tend to drop single weapons because with the guidance package you generally only need the one.

[@rolanddutton]

I was wondering if the Cubaroo'd get a mention. That 68l 6cyl is crazy though. Like a marine engine. Maybe that's why it has portholes 🤣

[@mpersad]

A machine designed by the legendary Roy Chadwick at AVRO! Thank you, again, for introducing me to another type I knew nothing about!

[@adrianrutterford762]

Whoopie!! More content from The Hanger. Thanks Rex!

[@fnorgen]

I can't get over that they named a 60L, 16 cylinder, 1000hp monster of an engine, "Cub".

[@kevinpeters6709]

No different than the Germans naming their honka chonk of a tank the mouse

[@gamerjay6624]

Rex, Ed Nash and Drach, guys that really excel in their YT channels

[@Zoydian]

I'm fascinated by pre WW2 aircraft designs; tey look so interesting and 'outer worldish!' So sad so very few of them survive today; I'd love to see them in the air, even if it was a replica!

[@ronaldharris6569]

Avro definitely had design courage that behemoth was a brave attempt

[@benhooper1956]

This one has always stood out for me, it has a really graceful look to it I find

[@simong9067]

Hooray for bonkers Napier power plants!

[@Lord.Kiltridge]

With 20/20 hindsight, I keep seeing this aircraft, with significant modifications, to be what could have been a Fairy Battle equivalent except nearly 20 years earlier.

[@misterbacon4933]

Congrats with your 100k subscribers!

[@guitarmangames]

Always a good day when Rex uploads

[@christopher5723]

I think it would be interesting if at some point you were to do a video on the Scarff Ring mount, perhaps going into some of the observers sights of the period like the Norman Vane Sight.

[@davidclare4983]

Thanks!

[@dyerwulf5459]

Yes!!! He's back!

[@MattyFielding6]

Yesssssss he is back!

[@silentsurvivor2197]

Always excited to have a new video from you!

[@JGCR59]

I'm pretty certain the gunner was also the Radio Operator. Dedicated air gunners were pretty rare in such planes. While the Bomb aimer would have just one job per flight so it is possible the Navigator doubled as him. I mean when it was time to visually acquire the target with a bomb sight, he'd have no more navigating to do until bombs away ;)

[@maryclarafjare]

This is amazing..... so much bigger than other planes of the time, and so heavy, and yet it flew so well. I am not familiar with aerodynamics and I've never been a pilot, and I know nothing about planes and jets compared to most of the viewers, but even I can appreciate how unusual this plane was in its time.

[@Dagreatestwaffle]

Why am I so happy to hear this did so well. I guess I just like people doing good work lol. Great video

[@jasonz7788]

Great work Sir thank you

[@DavidBrown-cp2vm]

I hope that some of these "also ran" aircraft types may live again as reasonably accurate computer simulations in the future. Thank you for your excellent documentaries. I thought I knew a bit about aircraft for many years but I have come to realise that it was a little bit indeed !!

[@kenjackson5685]

1st class Rex. Thankyou for sharing

[@duncangrainge]

Excellent production 👍

[@bigblue6917]

Given the number of aircraft built at this time which did not live up to expectation I suppose sometimes they got it right. Although even Avro seem to have been as surprised as the rest of us.

[@koolkiop]

Your videos are so good and so addictive!

[@5peciesunkn0wn]

A shame none survive today, seeing one of those monsters fly would be a treat!

[@lzappa9109]

Please remember to take care of your health. Thank you for all the effort, really appreciated.

[@6rimR3ap3r]

A 68litre six-cylinder engine? O_O What a rollercoaster of development on this plane over the several variants.

[@allandavis8201]

It must be an optical illusion but in the photographs of the Aldershot it appears to show the two upper blades of the propeller being in a feathered position and the two lower blades in a flight position, and as I don’t believe that any aircraft during the early post WWI period had variable pitch propellers it has to be an optical illusion, it just looks so strange. Thanks for another splendid episode delving into the lesser known aircraft types, I live virtually halfway between Aldershot and Farnborough and over the years have seen some huge changes and improvements to Farnborough Airport (as it is now known) and I am glad to say that the development of the site has retained some of the old RAE/ETPS facilities, unfortunately an awful lot has been lost as well, the newer parts of the development has increased the footprint of the site with lots of Aerospace related companies having premises here, but my personal favourite is the F.A.S.T (Farnborough Air Sciences Trust) Museum, it is very compact but does have some very interesting and unique pieces on display, run totally by volunteers it isn’t open every day but if you happen to be in Farnborough at the weekend it is worth a visit for a couple of hours. (Sorry, had to get a plug in for my local aerospace museum). P.S, if, like me, you are wheelchair bound it is a little difficult to navigate the interior displays but if you get stuck the staff are very helpful, but it might be an advantage to have a companion to help you out.

[@paulmanuse2353]

Great Work!!

[@malcolmcarter1726]

As usual, brilliant! Fun Fact; The original Junkers Ju 52 used a version of the humungous Condor before sense prevailed and three American designed radials made it legendary. Aldershots were based in Renfrew for a while I believe.

[@13stalag13]

Great job young man, I'm a bit of an aviation buff, but I had never heard of this plane before. Thank You.

[@lewiswestfall2687]

thanks

[@Krosis_]

What an absolute unit of an airplane

[@ianmcguinness5029]

Portholes? Check. Ladder? Check. I love the Avro Aldershot.

[@RexsHangar]

The checklist for interwar bombers is not unlike those of a submarine 😂

[@pavelavietor1]

hello great presentation, thanks for sharing this with us, saludos

[@nilo70]

Thank you for making this happen !

[@davidcormier6346]

Great video I love old stuff like this

[@drstevenrey]

The Beardmore Cyclone/Typhoon: Good Lord above. 6 cylinders, near 69 liters. This thing had a stroke of 12 (!!) inches. I am amazed that this cathedral of an engine didn't shake the Aldershot to pieces. Seriously, I would love to see one of these running. In a single stroke this engine displaced and fired an entire Mini Cooper engine.

[@loddude5706]

If only 'time' had a more wicked sense of humour - just imagine Frank Whittle's dad walking into Avro with 'HIS' new-fangled 'turbo-stovepipe motor' at around this time - 'Boys, you're gonna be needing a stronger fabric!' : )

[@bigyin2586]

Good video- glad you learnt the correct pronunciation of “Aldershot”!

[@johnhagemeyer8578]

Oh Rex, sounds like you live'in a FULL life at this particular time. Good luck and no heart attacks please 🥺.

[@Dr.K.Wette_BE]

Well done and very interesting !

[@Dr_Jebus]

Pity none survived till today. I'm really loving these early designs from well-known manufacturers. I'd also love to see a flight sim focusing on this period. So many weird and extreme designs.

[@sighshell8670]

I can absolutely second that.

[@dancahill8555]

Very interesting story. Philosophy-wise (i.e. moneywise) this is like the story of the single-engined and then twin engined Huff-Daland bombers the U.S. Army bought in the '20s.

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

@Rex's Hangar >>> 👍👍

[@tuzonthume]

crew of 3. copilot is the gunner, bomb-aimer is the radio operator.

[@JohnsonPadder]

What a beast!

[@chrisbell52310]

That picture with the single seater for comparison is... ШоШ! ωοω! What a monster!

[@anon_y_mousse]

That thing is a beast. 3 tons empty, yeesh.

[@m.i.andersen8167]

Thanks for the video. Rex. It's time to prepare the 100,000 subscriber video! 🙂

[@RemusKingOfRome]

.. needed a turret ...WACK! :D

[@iatsd]

this channel is criminally short of subscribers given the quality of the content

[@seamuscashin2606]

enjoyed the stuff on the avro i am reading ROY CHADWICK book architect of wings hard to believe that the great man was killed by a miss rig on the tudor 1 ailron reverse rip

[@Pootycat8359]

When I was a teenager, I had a small book of WW1 fighter planes. It had a description of an ALL METAL, low-wing Junkers fighter that was produced during the final days of the war. According to the photo, the fuselage skin was corrugated sheet metal, kind of like that of the Ford Tri-Motor. So the statement at 1:21 is not true.

[@chel9190]

Interesting video ^^

[@mattheweagles5123]

What would the bomb aimer be doing on route to and back from a target?

[@robertl6196]

The man standing next to the aircraft at 7:00 shows the impressive size of the propellor.

[@calvingreene90]

Surprisingly good performance from a poorly conceived specification. Hopefully much was learned.

[@davidcormier6346]

Thanks for your videos I love old Arrow info you said none still exist but with all the plans has a replica ever been built and where were the original Avro built

[@merafirewing6591]

What a Majestic Beast, if only it was mass-produced in numbers.

[@Itsjustme-Justme]

It's sad to hear that all were scrapped. They were reliable, had decent flight performance and were able to lift impressive loads. If they were sold to a civilian owner, they could have been quite useful as long range mail planes.

[@douglasfur3808]

An odd duck in a way, having quixotic design restrictions yet making the best of it. My preference is for designs that push the limits and might even have worked. What about research around this time in the US and USSR on rockets and rocket planes?

[@tylergehring7879]

Holy shit that thing is massive

[@JGCR59]

Seriously for such a Monster with one engine, the Aldershot seems to have been a remarkably fine aircraft. A.V. Roe was apparently the opposite of Blackburn in many ways ;)

[@seantaggart7382]

A10: my true ancestor

[@williamscoggin1509]

Interesting playing though

[@jimdavis8391]

Hummm. Blackburn makes an appearance, surprised? Not. 🤪

[@mpetersen6]

Blackburn, nobody expects the Blackburn Dept of Silly Aitcraft Names

[@patrickwentz8413]

As a "test" aircraft they had a remarkably long life. Interesting aircraft.

[@KyriosMirage]

Wonder if you could have refitted them as transport aircraft. Strip out the bomb bay, bolt in some seats.

[@dallesamllhals9161]

..if only one(1) - make/be it BIG 😲

[@ussliberty109]

It looks like a fighter that got upscaled by times 2. Especially judging from the speed and maneuverability.

[@magicintelligence6625]

"The Brisfit's Bulky Brother"

[@samuelyoung1]

i feel like it could be a minimum of three, one pilot, a gunner, and a radio/bombsight operator but that would only be in the case when, say, two of the crew died in flight. take off minimum of four

[@wembleyford]

Seems astounding this crate was designed by the same guy who did the initial work on the Vulcan bomber.

[@TheNecromancer6666]

Weren't some of them also flying with those ludicrous, massive, low revving 6 cylinder Beardmore engines?

[@omgdwayne1565]

I am very curious to know what that four-engine monster is that is shown early in the video.

[@mockier]

It's a shame they didn't keep one for display in a museum

[@joshuaashton1929]

The crazy shit that came from the First World War and 20s is so entertaining. It’s like the war equivalent of the Cambrian explosion. Throwing shit at the wall and seeing if it sticks. Edit: spelling

[@neddyladdy]

Should engines have more than one tone? Tome, as in musical tone, or tone as in colour tone?

[@OtherWorldExplorers]

It was so big they couldn't even fit it on one blueprint

[@pbyguy7059]

There's something about big biplanes that's just... wrong. Uncanny, like Bart Simpson flying a kite in the dark.

[@steve1978ger]

Napier, stubbornly refusing to arrange their cylinders in a way that makes sense to the uninitiated

[@Dave5843-d9m]

The gasoline engines of the day were so heavy it does beg the question why diesels were not seriously tried.

[@nottelling8129]

An engine with a plane mounted to it, just like the GAU-8 is a gun with a plane mounted on it.

[@davidpawson7393]

With the constant barrage of political ads lately here in New Hampshire it's refreshing to get an ad for something I can actually use. Quality advertising on a quality channel.

[@jillatherton4660]

Nice surprise.

[@TheRaptorXX]

ONLY the British could even THINK of naming an aircraft an 'Aldershot'!!

[@richardarcher7177]

Able to carry the entire bombload as a single massive bomb? Seems to be a Roy Chadwick trademark.

[@gustiwidyanta5492]

Its a big *boi*

[@JohnJohansen2]

1:00 900 kilo. That's almost half the capacity of WW2 B-17 bombers. 😲 At a way shorter range, yes I know. But anyway.

[@paulhelman2376]

I bui.t a rubber powered scale model of this. Currently hanging in basement.