HUGE AIRLINER

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 20, 25 January 1938, Page 9

HUGE AIRLINER

BRITAIN'S LARGEST

RUST TEST FLIGHT

ONE OF FLEET OF 14

(United Press Association—By Electric TeleErapb—CoDvrißht.)

(Received January 25, 10.50 a.m.) LONDON, January 24.

Britain's largest passenger airliner and one of the largest in the world, built at Hamble for Imperial Airways, had, its first test flight today. It is so huge that trees and fences had to be removed to permit its entrance to the aerodrome.

( It has a wing span of 123 ft, an overall length of 114 ft, a full-load weight of 42 tons, is. driven by four 880 h.p. engines, and has a top speed of 200 miles an hour and a cruising, speed of 165 miles an hour. The landing wheels

are six feet high and the wings are 20ft from the ground.

The plane carries 42 passengers. It is the first of 14 Armstrong-Whitworth Ensign monoplanes ordered, by Imperial Airways.

The plans for the new Ensign type of airliner, as revealed in the middle of last year, were for four-engined monoplanes, land aeroplanes fitted with 785 h.p. air-cooled Tiger engines, any two of which are capable of keeping the fully-loaded machine in steady flight up to 4000 ft. The maximum speed of the Ensign is 200 miles an hour, the cruising speed 170 miles an hour, and they are high-wing machines. The body is an oval shell, immensely strong and completely covered with light alloy metal sheets. The wings are tapered both in breadth and thickness and built on a sjrigle rectangular box spar of corrugated light alloymetal sheets, a special process of the constructors. Split trailing edge-flaps are fitted, and . the undercarriage is retractable. Noise and vibration are almost eliminated. Fresh air is drawn in through orifices in the forward part of the machine and warmedby contact with a heating element containing steam generated by a boiler on the exhaust of the engines. The glass windows are as_thick as weight will permit, and extensive use is made of bulkheads of corrugated metal.