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AIRCRAFT HAWKER SIDDELEY TRIDENT Joluqa Malta: The Hawker Siddeley Trident Story PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-AQq3wBQYA Peter Burgess COMMENTARY I was a young man when all the many elements of this story was unfolding. Better yet ... I had an education in both engineering and economics and a bit of an understanding of business decision processes. Fast forward about 60 years and it is fairly clear that in the UK a lot of very competent technical / engineering companies failed because of a dominant managment culture that was weak and dengerously incompetent. Peter Burgess
The Hawker Siddeley Trident Story Joluqa Malta Jun 23, 2024 2.51K subscribers ... 6,845 views ... 194 likes UNITED KINGDOM This video explaines the story of the Hawker Siddeley Trident,I hope that you will enjoy it,Thanks for following and Subscribing!#planespotting #aviation #classicaircraft #history #britishairways Transcript 0:00 the De Haviland 121 conceived after the introduction of the world's first passenger jet the comet later to become the Trident the d121 was to create a juter position in aviation history as a plane that broke technology boundaries but ultimately ended up a victim of its own success if you drive into Hatfield from any direction you will see below the sign which says Hatfield there's a sign which says birthplace of Jet Aviation the and Comet following hard on the heels of the Comet the Trident was to push the bounds of 1950s technology to new and unexplored Heights the comet team was Keen to show that they could 0:42 rise to the challenge of this new found jet age there was a a team spirit about the Trident but of 0:50 course that had built up on the comet and I think pretty about all of us have 0:55 gone straight from the comet onto the Trident so the team spirit you can imagine on the comet the first jet 1:02 airliner tremendous excitement and tremendous team spirit and we moved from that onto the Trident and I think that that carried on the comet was originally designed for Long Haul destinations and during 1957 to havin started production of a short-range version of the aircraft the comet 4B while the comet was revolutionary for its day it was soon becoming clear that its simple design and slightly docile nature was was not suitable for the high-speed era ahead and altogether new design of plane was required and in the 1:35 early 1960s the Trident was born but to be successful the Trident would have to 1:41 cruise faster higher and carry more passengers than its predecessor for the designers and Engineers it was back to 1:48 the drawing board our design aim was to produce a reliable airplane an airplane 1:56 which was not going to suffer from fatigue problems and sort of things as it happened in the past and I think 2:02 largely we succeeded in that aim the major driving force behind the Trident design was Britain's National Airline for Europe Bea the airlines Fleet of propeller driven vicant were getting long in the tooth and was simply too slow for the challenges of the new found jet age they also fell victim to bad weather the airline required an altogether new type of plane the specification really was very much orientated on maximizing the benefits of speed high frequency from on routes like Paris London as such they wanted um a sophistication of automatic 2:45 Landing which hadn't been done before they wanted maximum speed which 2:51 the aircraft did possess I think we were very very a very long time in getting an 2:57 airplane into flight test test which had all the bits and pieces in it which 3:03 would allow Bea through their um pilot acceptance group uh to feel happy that they were accepting a safe operation the specifications required by Bea were not only to be groundbreaking but also expensive moving into such Uncharted Territory was ultimately a big risk for any aircraft manufacturer a concern recognized by the government of the day well I mean it was strong enough to um justify them providing launching 3:37 Aid government leverage was very important there because with that Pro 3:43 program which was going to cost quite a modest sum I think it was only 23 million the launching cost of the trient 3:49 one and they were contributing 5 million in launching aid about 3:54 21% but that was a very important um contrib ution from the point of view 4:01 of the private companies [Music] involved on the 4th of August 1961 at Hatfield the deavin Trident the first three-engine jet airliner was wheeled off the assembly line this trident 1 first took to the air on the 9th of January 1962 aircraft G arpa flew for 1 hour and 21 minutes under the command of Chief test pilot John Cunningham it flew at 88% of the speed of sound 592 mph at 32,000 ft long before we got to the point of actually using the equipment in 4:46 real fog we must have done thousands of automatic Landings in good or reasonably 4:53 good weather conditions where you could see whether the machine was and the equipment was working properly or not so 5:00 it really wasn't a question of suddenly trying out Auto Land it was using Autoland when you didn't have any outside reference because of the bad visibility and the Machine just performed in exactly the same way as it had done on hundreds of automatic Landings that we' done on different airfields with different ILS systems uh all over the place with the Auto Land technique perfected there remained one 5:32 major problem to overcome before acceptance by the Airlines and the Trident was the first 5:37 airplane where we really tried to understand and do something about the 5:43 Deep stall that comes from a configuration where the vertical control 5:49 of the airplane pitch um relied on a tail plane mounted at the top of the fin 5:57 right at the back end of the airplane not as an elevator down near the center 6:03 of the fuselage which is what is sort of common today and we uh discovered early on that um it was not at all a satisfactory arrangement from a a safety point of view to have the condition where you could stall the aopl and get into a stall from which there was no recovery and you ended up on the ground in PE pieces one of our test pilots was lost that way and it took us a long time to develop a system which was thought of 6:38 safe enough to get airworthiness approvement approval but which never 6:44 really solved the problem of the deep stall from a high tail plan and that was 6:50 always held I think in the back of many Pilots Minds uh as a bad limitation on the 6:58 flying qualities of the TRU because all the weight of the airplane was in the 7:03 tail you can appreciate that if you got too low and too slow in speed and the tail went down you could get the airplane in a nasty attitude and you had to be a little bit careful in the early days of not getting too low on speed too slow and therefore you could get a too high nose up attitude but it soon got people got used to that unfortunately the havins had got a bit of a bad name because of the various crashes of the comet in a few years earlier and I think 7:38 people did some people did feel that maybe we hadn't spent enough effort and 7:44 time to produce a design which was more tolerant of mistakes which airlines 7:50 unfortunately do make with safety at the Forefront of the minds of both manufacturer and Airline it was to 7:57 become a Bea requirement that the traditional dual controls were triplicated the dh1 121 was three of 8:05 everything three engines three Pilots three hydraulic systems three automatic pilots in other words it was meant to fly as a Triplex [Music] airan during this development stage the American Federal Aviation Administration introduced New Vision requirements for Pilots posing an additional headache for the manufacturers resulting in Hawker sidley having to make some critical adjustments to the Flying 8:36 controls the Pilot's control column had a a Rams Horn type hand wheeel and we 8:42 did that to give the maximum possible vision of the Pilot's 8:49 instruments but of course this was a bit of a departure uh in fact I guess the Trident 8:56 was the first airplane to have the the Rams Horn hand wheel superbly laid out cockpit we took us a little bit of 9:03 getting used to the fact that the control column did this as opposed to that but it's like another motorc car sometimes you get in the gear levers on there and the next turn the gear lever's up there it's only a matter of getting used to it although the pilot had a compass in front of him for keep it straight he also had what is known as PVD and PVD was was par visual directors which were a couple of Barbers poles literally Barbers poles right on the b 9:32 top of the combing just above the instrument panel and they were just like Barber's poles and if the airplane 9:38 wandered to the right they'd Barber's Pole to the left if the airplane wandered to the left they'd Barber's 9:44 Pole to the right so they were if you kept them steady you were going straight you were aware of what they 9:51 were doing they were known as peripheral instruments once the problems of flight deck design Auto Land and low speeed 9:58 handling problems have been over come the Trident started service with Bea and a number of smaller Airlines mostly from 10:04 former British colonies suddenly the jet agent arrived by Jo we really we've turned over a big leaf in aviation and I think I mean the vikon was quite a comfortable airplane didn't fly as high as the Trident of course it didn't get above the weather as well as the Trident you've got to remember all these factors because the Trident used to operate at you could operate anything from 25 to 35 5,000 ft in round figures whereas the vicount I don't think I can't remember 10:34 the Vicon now but it certainly didn't do as much as that and little things like this it was everybody said oh you always 10:40 Fly Above the weather when you go in a in a jet you know and all this and it it it filtered through to the general 10:46 public and I think this is why it was such a success for the pilots who' been 10:51 used to Flying slow propeller and piston aircraft the Advent of this new exciting 10:56 jet age was to be quite a culture shock well you see the airplane you could do so many things you could you had full uh 11:03 control of the air braake you couldn't use the lift dumpers in flight but you could use full air braake you could lower the undercarriage you had a very high speed that you could use on descent and you could come down to about 8 or 9,000 ft a minute no trouble at all little bit uncomfortable for the customers uh but the same time from a performance point of view this is where a lot of the fun came with the airplane you couldn't do that until this this sort of thing happened the original plan 11:30 was to sell over 550 planes but with no firm orders except from Bea the grand 11:36 plan for a medium Hall aircraft carrying in excess of a 100 people was soon shelved in favor of a small short Hall 11:44 plane designed largely for routs such as London to Paris was such a tragedy that 11:49 they were only allowed to build this little Trident in the first place I think if they'd gone right for the for 11:55 for the jugular right at the very beginning the whole picture would have been different from the point point of view of General spreading of Aviation 12:02 amongst the general public I'm sure of this and we had to fight against another Aircraft company to get the order and in so doing of course it became competitive and we agreed to try and do exactly what the specification that Bea centers asked for and of course in those days they were very dominant as a airline in Europe ba had a particular requirement which I think hadn't copped up before instead of having a flight engineer there was a third pilot who for 12:34 the first 10 10 minutes and last 10 minutes of the flight sat in the center of the flight deck facing forward so he 12:41 could monitor the activities of the other two pilots uh and then the rest of the 12:48 flight if he wished he could turn the seat sideways slide it over to the system station and monitor the systems 12:55 in detail the complex flight deck was originally designed with the larger dh12 13:00 one in mind and not what in effect ended up as the much smaller Trident 1 unfortunately the Trident one was so pruned down uh it was underpowered it didn't carry as many passengers as they wanted to carry um and it was very limited on the roots it would operate in the 1950s uh there was a hiccup in air traffic growth and baa in particular couldn't see it picking up for some long 13:32 time and so they they decided that the projects 13:38 which we were putting forward were too big too many passengers um and so we cut 13:46 back but in hindsight of course it would have been a much more acceptable 13:52 aircraft to the world had we been able to stick with what we proposed 13:57 originally you could would say that the board 14:02 of what what was by then going to be hul but it was the havin still in mid 59 should have refused to accept the change you'd be a brave man if You' actually had the guts to do that because uh what was at play was who was going to get this um this this project Vic is Bristol or us and if we had refused it's quite likely that they would have come in with an alternative so I don't really can't really blame the um if you like the 14:40 board at that time for not taking such a robust view because we were playing for high stakes survival of the industry in 14:49 the 60s because so many restrictions were put on to havins who after all were 14:56 only the manufacturers Bea were the people people who paid the money and Bea said no we want a much smaller airplane 15:03 for this reason that reason and the other reason and unfortunately uh Mr Boeing in America who was not exactly a stupid person spotted this triple 3 engine tail engined airplane and thought ah there's something in this and we all know now what happened they built this aing 727 which scooped the world and I've no doubt in my own mind that if baa had built on the same lines as the original d121 obviously with modifications Etc it would have scooped the world and the 15:41 whole Finance of Aviation would have been different with a fledgling an immature Market the hland later to 15:47 become part of Hawker sidley accepted the will of Bea and the Trident One with its Ros Royce spay engines was born 15:54 rolling out in December 1961 the spay had I think technical limitations about 16:01 what you could and couldn't do with it so it it didn't have such a robust growth pattern as it might have had but it it grew in power we nicknamed it the ground gripper um simply because it was a bit underpowered and it it took rather a lot of Runway to get the thing off the ground the spay engines were simply not powerful enough for the sporty Trident and Boeing was to make full Capital out of this with its rival 727 which was 16:29 being aggressively marketed as having most of the benefits of the Trident without the range and payload 16:35 limitations there was a brochure produced I think by Boeing at one stage 16:41 which lorded all the advantages the 727 had over the tridon which was considered to be bit 16:49 below the belt you didn't do that we actually have a decided to fight back 16:55 and did a similar one and funnily enough I mean you could show that the truck had advantages all the way down the line 17:01 compared with their case but at the end of the day big is better but Hawker sidley refused to accept surrender and fought back building its own larger versions of the Trident the versions two and three this was largely as a result of baa being told by the government to buy British the first tribe was called the Trident 1C and then the 1e was produce which became the Forerunner of the twoe which still was still basically the same size of it airplane but it was had a bigger fuel load uh it had more high power engines it had a longer range in other words it was built to do longer Roots than the original Trident 17:42 be designed and then because they'd got so done so well in America with the Boeing 17:48 727 that it would be worth stretching the Trident and hence the evolvement of 17:54 the Trident 3 because they hadn't got any suitable engines to cope with with 17:59 the with the um greater payload and the greater weight because it carried nearly 50% more passengers the Trident 3 from 18:07 the Trident one and two um they put what is known as the Boost engine and the tail so it then became a three engine airplane with four engines but uh it was only used for takeoff and it it cut out automatically and anyway you had to stop it once you'd got into the sky so it was only there really to help the airplane off the ground and funnily enough it wasn't used all that often it only happened when you had uh high altitude air Fields high temperatures uh or shsh runways or some 18:38 other reason where you needed all the power you needed to get the airplane off the ground by now attempts to wind back 18:44 traffic from the all powerful Boeing Company were proving largely futile with attempts to play catchup simply coming 18:50 too late I think in retrospect we we made two errors here 18:57 well the air was undoubtedly very successful technically as an achievement 19:04 it was not flexible enough um in the way it was conceived as a Bea requirement and secondly the reduction in size by something like 15% with the lower power engine gave us a forever more a problem trying to better our performance against the 727 which was almost the size we had 19:32 originally been it wasn't until really the Trident 2 when we changed over to a 19:38 more suitable engine uh and in the Trident 3 where we increased the fuel capacity as well that 19:45 we got an airplane that would do the sort of range and carry out the sort of 19:51 operation that the majority of operators wanted and that of course was a bit late 19:56 on by the time the tried 3B came along the 727 was firmly entrenched throughout 20:02 the world uh and once an airliners picked on a particular airplane they're not going to they're not going to change to another one because of maintenance cost spares costs and all that sort of thing it was soon apparent that the insistence of Bea to reduce the size of the original design had proved to be a big mistake that had cost Haw a Sidle deer and to add insult to injury the British based company also had other problems Beyond its 20:31 control the cost base of the Trident was pound stering the cost base of the opposition 20:40 which was principally the 727 but the dc9 came into it as well uh was was 20:48 dollars at that critical time early 60s um the pound was I think heavily 20:55 overvalued compared to the dollar doesn't matter what Cur currency you actually get paid in everyone compares 21:02 prices in dollars because that's the international yard stick and if your aircraft is turned into dollars at 2.2 dollar to the pound it sounds an awful lot more dollars than if it was $1.4 to the pound which is where it has 21:21 been that was a big handicap in terms of getting a decent price while the 727 was proving more than a match for the Trident it did have one limiting factor along with every other plane ever built 21:34 an inability to take off all land in thick fog and beam switch up waiting for the 21:43 localizer beam indication speed reducing to 21:50 160 this is beine Pap Victor established on the beam call it the out marker inbound 21:56 over on the radar R we used to get the most horrendous fogs in Europe or smog 22:03 as it was called and the Trident could go on operating with with its Autoland when other airlines were grounded which uh well has tremendous advantages from the passengers point of view but also of course it means that the aircraft finishes back at base for maintenance whereas had it not had Auto Land it would have been diverted elsewhere where so it really was a 22:30 tremendous Advantage I seem to remember that uh some statistics that on 22:36 one such foggy day eight 85% of 22:43 flights couldn't take place and all those that did take place were the 22:49 Trident very often when we were over in Paris or Amsterdam or the near Conant 22:54 they would also be affected by their Airlines being delayed and and on several occasions we would have 23:00 passengers say why can't we go captain or can we go now you've got automatic land and occasionally we have to disappointed by saying it was not you know airplanes go unserviceable for some silly little reason and they had to remove the Auto Land capability uh but by and large it was a lovely satisfactory if you say oh yes we should be operating on time and you did operate on time and you operate even if 23:23 you didn't actually land in fog you landed in much lower limits than 23:29 other airlines probably could do with the equipment they had there was a a group of press being flown from Heath to 23:36 Manchester when ba started getting the 737 200s and they basically used them to 23:42 replace Trident ones and the occasional Trident too but they had the Press call 23:48 fly fly all the Press people up to Manchester on a trident put them all on the 737 their brand new aircraft and fly 23:55 them into he throw they all boarded other the 737 got halfway to Heath throw 24:01 ah fog flew them all back to Manchester on the 737 and piled them all back on the old Trident because it could do an automatic Landing with its ability to land in what was known as Category 3 fog Hawker sidley had one ace up its sleeve but what was really needed was a major order to keep the company afloat the total number of trident sold was less than 30 compared to around 150 727s despite its technical superiority the later version Trident still proved 24:31 to be The Underdogs given that um 24:37 reality it takes a terribly um strong-minded chief engineer of an 24:43 airline or a managing director of an airline to propose to his board that we 24:48 buy the least favorite of the two available aircraft why hasn't it sold 24:54 more he has to answer that question so that became more and more of a problem 24:59 as the uh orders went to the 727 we desperately 25:06 needed another major order uh and it was absolute godsend when the Chinese order came along but it was all very much on the edge for a long time as as Johnny and his men negotiated the deal but it really was a godsend and of 25:24 course it saw us through until we started producing the one for 46 eventually we sold I think it was about 25:32 15 of the Wes to Kuwait Iraq Airlines um Cyprus bought a couple and 25:41 most importantly Pakistan International Airlines bought for now that's one has to open a bracket 25:48 there because that was the the trigger for the subsequent Chinese orders we 25:54 didn't know it at the time we sold these aircraft to Pakistan but it 26:00 was we had heard that Pakistan were talking to the Chinese about selling them their for aircraft so we and Johnny Johnson was one of the primary mover in this we um offered our assistance to Pakistan in making this sale um and we did a lot of work with them assisting in various ways and we had hope we would be allowed to talk to the Chinese as part of this at one stage it was all set up and we were to meet the Chinese and this was Johnny with a team out in Karachi where 26:41 the Chinese purchasing team had turned up and uh I think it was about sort of 7 26:48 or 8 in the morning when the meeting which would us to start at 8:30 or 9 he was advised that he they'd had second 26:55 thoughts about him attending the meeting with with Pakistan and the Chinese they felt 27:01 that it was only right that they should be talking to the owner not to British Aerospace or hly as we then were we did achieve um an introduction um to to the commercial counselor's office and uh after much discussion it was agreed that they would send a delegation um to to Hatfield by 1973 the order book had dried up and the Trident program ground to a halt however in the skies of Britain the plane continued to 27:42 dominate revolutionizing the way British airline passengers traveled in the 1970s and early 27:49 1980s I suppose it brought travel to the masses you know with with the huge Fleet of trident because baa were one of the 27:56 biggest Airlines in Europe and one of the most busiest Airlines in Europe and the Silver Wing holiday holidays I think 28:01 of one it was about £59 for week in Myka you know so it brought it brought package holidays to the masses and the Triant being the dominant aircraft in Europe whatever airport you went to in Europe is you'd see a trident you know without a doubt the Trident have brought about a new era of technical Brilliance and moved commercial Aviation onto a new level which even today in terms of speed is largely unrivaled as far as we were concerned the airplane performed much more in a much more revolutionary fashion used to have very high rates of climb and all that sort of thing it really whistle up and whistle down and it had a fantastic rate of descent 28:40 control I did a London Stockholm and a trident I think it was a trident one I can't remember what it was but there was 28:48 an anticyclone over the North Sea and coming back from Stockholm we had a very very strong 28:55 tailwind and we crossed the English Coast by clacton on sea um and I remember calling up air 29:03 traffic control and saying we've got a very strong Tailwind I think I've got a very good chance of breaking the record from from Stockholm because in those days you had records going between A and B it wasn't very much publicized but it was interesting and we crossed the coast at clacton at 31,000 ft we crossed um near Watford at 31,000 ft now you know how far Watford is from from Heath thr and we did a straight in Approach at he thr without doing 29:34 any and that is absolutely true whilst This Record has never been 29:39 broken the legacy of this 1950s plane lives on it was the fastest 29:45 subsonic airlin of its time uh and of course the the 29:51 aerodynamic design of the wing was very important tremendous amount of work went 29:56 went into that wind tunnel testing at Hatfield it really was a a world beating 30:02 Wing design and of course the the experience gained in that has fed across into the Airbus family of aircraft because the wings were designed at Hatfield the Airbus Wings designed at Hatfield and was based on the aerodynamic design of the Trident Wing the Trident was such an interesting airplane to fly with all the equipment that no matter what sort of flying you were doing you came home at the end of the day feeling that you'd been well and 30:31 truly occupied you hadn't just sat there and looked at instruments and that to me is a much more enjoyable way of flying I 30:37 can't think of a more enjoyable time a because it was extremely nice airplan to 30:43 fly and B because it occupied you you you you had 30:48 to you know keep going you you couldn't afford to sit back and read a book 30:58 by the mid 1980s the Trident era was nearing an end Bea retired their Trident 31:04 in early 1985 replacing them with Boeing 737s a few of the Chinese Trident continued in service until 1990 but since then none has ever flown whilst the plane never made its presence felt on the international stage its technical Brilliance lived on in generations of later aircraft I don't think um I would never claim that it made a profit um I mean we may have had ideas about a break even point of 100 but by one means or another 31:37 once you redevelop and develop different types that um figure I don't think we 31:44 was achieved so we sold 117 and uh it was 31:50 covering the the cost of running the factory but uh every time you turned 31:56 around you needed a new a new variant which meant more money more lunching cost 32:24 [Music] the Trident I thought was quite an exciting looking airplane of course wherever you went in 32:40 Europe you saw Trident a lot of the flight times are faster in Trident than they are now in 32:48 your modern aircraft all these modern airlin airliners they do all sorts of things but the first airplane to do 32:54 these sophisticated things of automatic Landing ET was the Trident we were the 33:00 first we were the Pioneers it's a funny thing being first in the field in technology you're often the chap who doesn't make anything out of it number two does ... could have been an extraordinary successful plane

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