Aviation of World War II
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Aviation of World War II |
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YorkTransport AircraftAVRo
The first flight of the prototype on July 5, 1942. The first four aircraft were assembled with Rolls-Royce Merlin XX engines, and the only car with Bristol Hercules VI engines was the first prototype, on which they were installed in 1943, after which it received the designation York C. Mk.II. To compensate for the directional stability that had deteriorated due to the larger area of the fuselage, the aircraft received a third, middle, keel. On a production aircraft, the third keel was first mounted on the third copy, named Ascalon, which entered the 24th squadron in March 1943. The cabin of this aircraft was equipped for holding meetings directly in flight, and the aircraft itself was intended for the transport of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Serial Yorks began to enter service with the RAF in 1944. Most of the 1944 aircraft were passenger aircraft, then a series of cargo aircraft followed, and as a result, purely cargo and combined cargo-passenger aircraft were produced in parallel. In the spring of 1944, five early-built aircraft were received by BOAC, another 25 aircraft in the second half of 1945 entered service with the British Air Force Transport Command. In total, "York" was in service with ten squadrons of the Royal Air Force and, in addition to transporting high-ranking officials, was used for long-distance transport operations to Africa and the Far East. After the end of World War II, "Yorkies" were used to transfer troops to points of local conflicts - the Suez Canal zone, British Malaya and the Far East. Serial production of York was discontinued on April 29, 1948. A total of 259 aircraft were built, of which 203 were for the British Air Force, 30 were transferred to BOAC, 12 to British South American Airways (she received another 7 from BOAC), 8 to Surrey Flying Services, five to Argentine FAMA and two at Skyways Ltd. One York was collected in Canada. |
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Construction. The four-engine all-metal cantilever high-wing "AVRo York" almost completely repeated the "AVRo Lancaster", with the exception of the fuselage and the presence of a third keel. The fuselage was semi-monocoque, had a rectangular cross-sectional shape and was assembled from five separate modules. On the left side under the wing there was a door for the entry of the crew and passengers; the transport versions in the tail section of the left side had large swing doors of the cargo hatch. In the passenger version, the aircraft had two cabins, a toilet and a wardrobe were located between the cabins opposite the front door, a kitchen and a luggage compartment were located in the tail section, and there were emergency exits on the ceiling in each cabin. In the wing between the spars there were 7 fuel tanks with a total capacity of 11,265 liters, 3 in each wing and one in the center section. The chassis is tricycle, with a tail wheel. The main racks were hydraulically retracted back and up into the nacelles of the internal engines and, after cleaning, were completely closed by the flaps.
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