AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 163 / 181

Plate 163 of 181 · Cold War · Strategic heavy freighter

Short SC.5 Belfast C.1

Belfast C.1, painted as XR371 ‘Enceladus’, the RAF Museum Midlands’ Short SC.5 Belfast C.1 and the last of the ten built, flown by No. 53 Squadron of Air Support Command until the RAF retired the type in 1976 and flown to Cosford in 1978, where it now stands in the National Cold War Exhibition: Britain’s largest military freighter, 158 ft in span, with a deep circular-section fuselage, a beaked nose with a radome under the flight deck and a refuelling probe above it, a high wing carrying four Rolls-Royce Tyne turboprops with four-blade propellers, main-gear panniers on the lower fuselage sides, an upswept beaver tail over the rear loading doors and a tall fin, shown standing level on its tricycle undercarriage: white fuselage and fin, a black radome and anti-glare panel, a dark blue cheatline that steps up below the flight deck, ‘ENCELADUS’ on the nose and ‘ROYAL AIR FORCE’ above the cheatline, red, white and blue roundels on the rear fuselage, a red and blue fin flash with ‘371’ above it, silver-grey wings, tailplane and nacelles and red, white and red propeller tips, as displayed (the rear loading doors are shown closed; the starboard markings are assumed to mirror the port side, and no photograph shows the wing upper surfaces, so no wing markings are painted).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as XR371 ‘Enceladus’, the RAF Museum Midlands’ Short SC.5 Belfast C.1 and the last of the ten built, flown by No. 53 Squadron of Air Support Command until the RAF retired the type in 1976 and flown to Cosford in 1978, where it now stands in the National Cold War Exhibition: Britain’s largest military freighter, 158 ft in span, with a deep circular-section fuselage, a beaked nose with a radome under the flight deck and a refuelling probe above it, a high wing carrying four Rolls-Royce Tyne turboprops with four-blade propellers, main-gear panniers on the lower fuselage sides, an upswept beaver tail over the rear loading doors and a tall fin, shown standing level on its tricycle undercarriage: white fuselage and fin, a black radome and anti-glare panel, a dark blue cheatline that steps up below the flight deck, ‘ENCELADUS’ on the nose and ‘ROYAL AIR FORCE’ above the cheatline, red, white and blue roundels on the rear fuselage, a red and blue fin flash with ‘371’ above it, silver-grey wings, tailplane and nacelles and red, white and red propeller tips, as displayed (the rear loading doors are shown closed; the starboard markings are assumed to mirror the port side, and no photograph shows the wing upper surfaces, so no wing markings are painted). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.7 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Belfast C.1 modelled here.

History

The Belfast C.1

At the end of the 1950s RAF Transport Command needed a long-range freighter that could carry what the Army now owned: guns, armoured vehicles, helicopters and guided missiles, most of which would fit in a Beverley or a Hastings. Short Brothers & Harland of Belfast had studied a freighter using the wing and engines of the Bristol Britannia, and turned it into the SC.5, with a new, much larger circular-section fuselage, loaded through clamshell doors and a ramp beneath an upswept tail. The RAF ordered ten in December 1960, and the first, XR362, flew from Sydenham on 5 January 1964.

The Belfast was the largest military aircraft ever built in Britain. Four Rolls-Royce Tyne turboprops let it lift about 35 tonnes, or some 150 troops, and its main undercarriage of two eight-wheeled bogies retracted into blisters on the fuselage sides. It was designed from the start to carry Smiths automatic blind-landing equipment. In service the drag of the rear fuselage proved much higher than predicted, which cut its cruising speed, and from 1969 the fleet went back to Shorts to have the tail reshaped and the autoland completed. All ten served with No. 53 Squadron, which took its first in January 1966 and flew them from Brize Norton.

With only ten aircraft and a production line that never reopened, the Belfast was costly to keep, and the 1975 Defence Review cut the RAF’s transport force. No. 53 Squadron disbanded in 1976 and its Belfasts were sold. Five went to the cargo airline TAC HeavyLift, which flew three of them from Stansted on outsize loads that would not fit anything else, including work for the British forces in the Falklands in 1982 and the Gulf in 1991.

This airframe

Belfast C.1 XR371 ‘Enceladus’

XR371The airframe modelled

XR371 was the tenth and last Belfast. It first flew on 14 June 1967 and joined No. 53 Squadron at Brize Norton in July, in time to help bring British forces home from Aden that November. It went back to Shorts in 1969 for the drag-reduction and autoland changes, returned to the squadron in 1970 and was named Enceladus, after one of the giants of Greek myth, as every Belfast carried the name of a giant or a hero. After the type was retired it was flown to Cosford in the autumn of 1978, and it now stands in the National Cold War Exhibition at the RAF Museum Midlands. The model shows it as displayed there: a white fuselage and fin, a black radome and anti-glare panel, a dark blue cheatline that steps up below the flight deck, ‘ENCELADUS’ on the nose and ‘ROYAL AIR FORCE’ above the cheatline, roundels on the rear fuselage, a red and blue fin flash with ‘371’ above it, and silver-grey wings, tailplane and nacelles. The rear loading doors are shown closed, the starboard markings mirror the port side, and no photograph shows the upper surfaces of the wings, so no wing markings are painted.

See it at Royal Air Force Museum Midlands

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Belfast C.1 in one UK collection. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 181 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.