Blackburn Beverley

My memories of the Beverley was at RAF Acklington at a Battle of Britain Air Day (remember them?). It must have been not later than 1964. The aircraft made an impressive short landing and taxied to a position in front of the crowd. Off marched an RAF Band playing.

According to Wiki the person who dropped through the paradoor was killed. After the incident there was a mod done so that you couldnt open the toilet door if the paradoor was open.

XB259 never entered RAF service but was allocated straight to RAE Farnborough.
When it was retired, it was purchased/given to Autair at Luton, their idea being it could be used to fly RB211s out to other airfields should one of their new Tristars require an engine change, but it was never used for this purpose (how can a civilian pilot get a type rating for an aircraft with no C of A?) and when Autair/Court line went bust it was left parked at Luton.
Shortly after I started work in ATC at Farnborough in 1974, a Farnborough crew flew it from Luton to Paull airfield (open from 1967 to about 1983) on 30 Mar 1974 to land on the 650m grass runway.
When Paull closed it was dismantled and moved by road, first to Beverley then to Fort Paull which is about 1 mile west of the site of Paull airfield.

Later that year, the same Farnborough crew flew Shackleton T4 VP 293 (aka 'Zebedee') from Farnborough to Strathallan having practiced short landings at Farnborough (I saw the brakes smoking on more than one occasion) so as not to copy the fate of a Comet which the RAF had delivered to Strathallan previously.
One of my fellow controllers at Farnborough once flew from Farnborough to Gibraltar backwards in this aircraft seated in the tail turret position!

BA Tristar's could carry a 4th pod for the RB211 if necessary. Never saw one in over 10 years, but did see the very occasional 5th pod on a BA 747 or a VC10. Obviously this resulted in performance restrictions including range, altitude and speed.

PETERTHEEATER wrote:

They had one but being outside it deteriorated and was scrapped in 1989. The size of the airframe limits internal storage and the cost of maintaining external aircraft is prohibitive. The survivor at Hull is likely in poor condition by now and would be a drain on the budget of any museum. But, it is the lone survivor and there may be a benefactor lurking.....

There was one at Southend too which also got broken up.
I drove round Bicester in about 1969 or '70 (long before they built the bypass) and was treated to the sight of no less than 3 on the south east corner of the airfeld.

The museum of Army Transport may well have been a museum of army transport but Im fairly certain it had nothing to do with the Army. Likewise the museum at Newark has RAF aircraft in it, but it has nothing to do with the RAF. After all if the museum at Beverley had anything to do with the Army it wouldnt have folded.

Looks like the Beverley may be 'saved.
The owner of the airsrtip at Selby (Riccall) want so buy it; having already converted an HS125 into a rental dwelling, he intends to do the same with the Beverley.

Lets hope it doesnt rust like the one at Hendon, and I wish him the best of luck in moving it!