Airspeed
The Airspeed company was
established to build aeroplanes in about 1930 in York, an English city by
A.H. Tiltman and N.S. Norway. Following production of the AS4 Ferry, a
three engined, ten passenger biplane, the company concentrated on
transport monoplanes. By 1933 the firm had moved to Portsmouth in
Hampshire and in the following year became associated with the Tyneside
ship builder Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Limited.
Their most productive period was during World War Two. A graceful, twin
engined trainer-cum-light transport aircraft known as the AS10 Oxford had
a production run exceeding 8,500. Almost 3,800 AS51 and AS58 Horsa gliders
were built for the Royal Air Force and its allies. Many of these made
one-way journeys into occupied France as part of the D-Day landings, towed
from England by Commandos, Dakotas and other piston-engined aircraft.
In 1940 de Havilland bought the Airspeed company and, besides adapting
some surplus Oxford aircraft as AS65 Consuls for the commercial market,
they went on to produce a superbly streamlined twin-engined piston
airliner called the AS57 Ambassador. This aircraft offered seating for 47
passengers and with a nosewheel undercarriage looked far more modern than
the Commandos, Dakotas, Lancastrians and Vikings that were common on
Europe's shorter airline routes. With three low fins it shared something
of the character of the larger trans-continental Lockheed Constellation.
It first flew on July 10th 1947. British European Airways operated up to
twenty of them between 1952 and 1958, calling them "Elizabethans" in
honour of the newly crowned Queen, it also helped the growth of Dan-Air an
important airline in the development of package holidays. The popularity
of this splendid aircraft was soon eclipsed however by the arrival of
faster turboprops such as the Lockheed 188 Electra and the Vickers
Viscount. Airspeed Ambassador 2 aircraft unfortunately made the headlines
in a disastrous take off from Munich air disaster, West Germany on 6
February 1958 (also a tragedy for English football) and a spectacular
fatal crash landing at London Heathrow Airport, England on 3rd July 1968
by a BKS AS57 Ambassador in which several horses on board died and a
parked HS121 Trident was written-off just before the airliner hit terminal
buildings. One has been preserved by the Imperial War Museum at Duxford,
Cambridgeshire in eastern England.
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