About the Britannia - Introduction

The Bristol Britannia was the world’s first long range ‘jet-prop’ airliner. It was developed as part of the drive to re-build Britain’s civil aviation industry after the Second World War when the focus at the Bristol Aeroplane Company had been mainly on bomber production.

The ancestry of the Bristol Britannia can be traced back to a specification issued by the Brabazon Committee in 1943 with the concept for a long range airliner suitable for BOAC’s post war Empire routes. BOAC issued a revised specification in 1947 initially powered by Bristol Centaurus piston engines but this was revised in 1948 for the power to be provided by the newly designed Bristol Proteus, a turbo-prop engine. Contracts were signed in 1949 and after many and protracted changes to the initial design the prototype Bristol 175 first flew in August 1952.

The Bristol Proteus engines which powered the Britannia were the first in the world to have “control-by-wire” using the ‘Ultra Throttle’ system which was later to be used on the Concorde. Sadly, the Proteus is mostly remembered for icing problems, which after much modification were mostly rectified.

Test flying was also not without incident caused by other design issues …some of a serious nature. This affected the whole programme and it was not until March 1957 that BOAC operated their first scheduled service with the Britannia Series 102 to Johannesburg fully eight years after the initial proposal was issued.

It was at this juncture that the term ‘The Whispering Giant’ was coined by the press which were impressed by the quietness of the aeroplane both inside the cabin and outside.

Bristol had not been exactly idle and were already constructing a larger and longer range aircraft capable of flying the Atlantic non-stop, the Series 300. In June 1957 a development aircraft made a record breaking non-stop flight from London to Vancouver on the west coast of Canada against the headwinds – a distance of roughly 4200nms. This was just one of several record breaking achievements.

Production aircraft, the Britannia Series 312, were introduced on BOAC’s first scheduled non-stop transatlantic passenger services in December 1957 as shown in the video below. 

For all the Britannia’s attributes, sales of the Britannia proved sluggish mainly caused by the protracted introduction into airline service and thereby having to compete with the new jet airliners emerging from the USA.