Saunders Roe SR.53 and 177
However, the SR.177 was also a victim of the ‘White Paper’ and only a technical inspection mock-up was produced. Saunders Roe also designed the SR.177 to be fitted with an arrester hook for the Royal Navy use. They further tried to find customers outside the UK. Germany was highly interested in the SR.177 both as interceptor and as ground-attack fighter/reconnaissance aircraft, but with no orders coming for the Royal Navy, this end for this promising project was soon in sight.
Another projected SR.53 development was intended to be carried in-flight by a Vulcan bomber. Only fitted with a rocket engine with the jet engine replaced by additional fuel it had a range of 145 km. After completion of the combat mission the pilot had the choice between either baling-out via the ejector seat or flying the plane as a glider to the nearest airstrip!
Museum piece
After flight and ground run testing was terminated, the single SR.53 XD145 was transferred to the RAF Museum storage facility at Henlow. In remained there until 1978 when it was donated to the Brize Norton Aviation Society. Here it was restored into static conditions for final display in the RAF Museum at Cosford. It was officially handed over on 30 November 1981 and can still be seen in this very nice aviation museum!
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Great web pages. I am a bit of an aircraft freak and regret the passing of a great UK aircraft building industry. Living close to the isle of wight I also remeber the days of the Princess flying boat and the Empire flying boats that used to fly from Calshot.
Hello Nico
I wonder if you can help me.
I play a game that uses all sorts of transport.
One form that is currently under consideration for introduction into the game is Flying boats. A moddeler who designs planes needs has been approached by me to make a graphic model of the SR Princess flying boat.
He requests basic dimensions.
This is to eneble him to design a scaled down model of it.
The finished view of the Aircraft is a maximum of 250 PIXELS in size!.
So the dimensions are simply the overal length, wingspan, under_carraige (hull) tail hieghts, engine size and spacing’s etc necessary to present a reaonable image to the screen. The execcutable program has built in variable values that refer to sprite sizes (graphics).
So if you have any information that I can pass directly to my moddleing friend (A Russian player of the game) that would be great.
The game is called locomotion by Chris Sawyer and published by Atari since 2004.
Thank you
Brian