Issue No 21 THE AVIATION HISTORIAN 105
routes from and to Britain (but excluding Europe
and South America), all development of large
medium- and long-range airliners was tailored
towards the requirements of the national flag
carrier. Specifications for many future design
requirements had been drawn up by the
Brabazon Committee, but it was felt there was a
number of gaps within the framework and that
further designs would be required. This provided
Fairey with an opportunity to submit its designs
for a “Medium-Range Empire Aircraft” under
Specification 2/47.
It was not to be, however. The Specification set
out a requirement for a four-engined aircraft with
accommodation for 42 passengers, a design speed
in the region of 300–350 m.p.h. (485–565km/h),
a payload of 13,300lb (6,030kg) and a range
of 1,890 miles (3,040km). Powerplant options
included the Rolls-Royce Clyde, Bristol Proteus
and Armstrong Siddeley Python, all of which
were turboprops developed for military aircraft
projects. These tenders were to act as an insurance
against the failure of the jet-powered de Havilland
Comet and to supersede the Brabazon III project,
which called for a four-engined landplane for
Empire trunk routes. (Type IIIA specified an
aircraft for North Atlantic routes; Type IIIB for a
medium-range aircraft for trunk routes.)
On July 14, 1947, a joint committee made up of
representatives from the MoS, MoCA and BOAC
announced that the Bristol 175 (later named the
Britannia) was the best design to Specification
2/47, and the designs submitted by Armstrong
Whitworth, Avro, Blackburn and Handley Page
were all rejected. The Fairey airliner design had
not even been considered.
The following year Fairey submitted a brochure
to the Air Ministry in response to Specification
5/48, which called for a “Civil Air Liner for
the Long Range Empire [LRE] and North
Atlantic Routes”. Offers to six companies were
tendered, including Fairey, which offered three
similar four-engined designs; the FC.4, FC.5
and FC.6, all featuring a mid-mounted wing
layout. The airframe was to be constructed on
semi-monocoque principles in order to combine
simplicity of design with adequate strength
and stiffness. The four engines were to be
interchangeable and enclosed in a self-contained
streamlined nacelle secured to the wing structure
by quickly detachable joints at the powerplant’s
rear bulkheads. Leading-edge intakes would
feed air into suitably designed plenum chambers
fitted around each engine’s compressor inlet. The
jetpipes were to be led through the mainspar and
terminate just beyond the wing’s trailing edge.
The single-spar wing construction was to be
supplemented by a rear-spar diaphragm to
complete the torsional shear path and to deal
with drag load moments. The undercarriage was
to comprise a pair of twin mainwheels on oleo
legs mounted side-by-side and pivoted on the
wing structure in a manner that allowed them to
retract sideways, one leg inboard and the other
outboard, thus enabling the mainwheels to lie flat
inside the wing. The mainwheels were designed
for a vertical descent rate of 14ft/sec (4·2m/sec).
Hydraulic power-boosted controls were to be
fitted to the ailerons, elevator and rudder.
A 12ft 5in (3·7m)-wide, 15ft 3in (4·5m)-tall
two-tiered deck of faired “double-bubble” cross-ABOVE A foretaste of the 21st-century double-deck
Airbus A380, the Fairey Queen (as the FC.4 to FC.6
were collectively known) was to accommodate up
to 58 passengers in a two-tiered “double-bubble”
fuselage. The powerplants were to be accommodated
in highly streamlined nacelles, as seen in the head-on
view of the FC.4 in the Fairey illustration at TOP.