PLANE TALK
BRISTOL 170 — THE UGLY WORKHORSE THE BRISTOL 170
BY ROGER BEEBE
Aircraft, like people, unfortunately get judged by fi rst impressions of how they look. People usually get beyond that and see inherent worthiness. The Bristol 170 would never win any aircraft beauty contest but did establish a solid reputation as a reliable workhorse. I fi rst saw the Bristol when I arrived at 1 Wing, Marville, France, in December 1964. I found it to be the weirdest looking aircraft on the air fi eld. I soon learned that it was put to good use in general transport duties around Western Europe. I was not much interested in it then as I was working on the CF-104 Starfi ghter and had a snobbish attitude that real pilots fl ew jet fi ghters and real maintenance technicians worked on jets. I recall an Air Force Wings parade
to retire the Bristol 170 out of RCAF squadron service. I still can see in my mind the logbooks being reverently taken into retirement. Some older retired RCAF members may remember the Bristol 170 crash close to 1 Wing Marville, France in which several people were killed. In one of those strange life events I worked with one of the accident’s
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surviving pilots many years later at Transport Canada. Little did I know that this aircraft
type would enter my life again while employed with Wardair. While having coff ee one day with Ken Burgess, Lead AME, he said, “Guess what! Max has purchased four Bristol 170 aircraft to use up north!” I soon learned they were the same air force birds I helped to retire. Max Ward, the owner of Wardair, had previously operated one, registered as CF-TFX, and it worked out well in the north. Some of my old Wardair friends like Ken Burgess and Guenther Moellenbeck cut their northern teeth on maintaining the Bristol with its sleeve valve engines in minus forty and fi fty degrees all over the arctic. The aircraft took a lot of maintenance time on the wiring, as it was getting old. The wiring was cloth covered and had many 60-pin cannon connectors — typically complicated British engineering of the nineteen forties.
THE ENGINE AND SYSTEMS The Bristol 170 was designed originally as a rugged transport to
SPECIFICATIONS WINGSPAN
LENGTH HEIGHT ENGINES
32.92 m (108') 20.83 m (68' 4") 6.55 m (21' 6")
Gross Weight 44000 lb. Two 1,980 hp
Bristol Hercules
MAX. SPEED 362 km/h (193 mph) at 3,048 m (10,000’)
MAX. RANGE ROLE 1,320 km (820 miles)
with 5,443 kg payload (12,000 lbs.) Cargo
MANUFACTURER Bristol Aeroplane
Company First Flight: December 1945 INTRODUCED
NUMBER BUILT
1946 214
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