Design and Development
The Belfast was developed to meet Royal Air Force operational requirement (ASR.371), which proposed a freighter capable of carrying a wide range of military loads over long ranges. The military loads envisaged included artillery, more than 200 troops, helicopters, and guided missiles. Shorts' design was based on company studies from the late 1950s, and the project started as the SC.5/10 in February 1959. The prototype Belfast first flew on 5 January 1964, crewed by chief test pilot Denis Taylor, 2nd pilot Peter Lowe, engineer Malcolm Wild (engineer), flight engineer Ricky Steel, and radioman Bill Mortimer. Two flight observers, Alex Mackenzie and Gil Thomas, were also aboard.
The Belfast used a high wing carrying four Rolls-Royce Tyne turboprop engines. The cargo deck, 64 ft long (20 m) in a circular-section pressurized fuselage over 18 ft in diameter (5.5 m) (roomy enough for two single-deck buses), was reached through a "beaver tail" with rear loading doors and integral ramp. The main undercarriage was two 8-wheel bogies and a 2-wheel nose. The Belfast was capable of a maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) of over 220,500 lb (100 tonnes) - less than the contemporaneous 250-tonne Antonov An-22 and the 128-tonne Douglas C-133 Cargomaster, but more than the Lockheed C-130 Hercules. It could carry 150 troops with full equipment, or a Chieftain tank or two Westland Wessex helicopters or six Westland Scout helicopters.
Read more about this topic: Short Belfast
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“What but design of darkness to appall?—
If design govern in a thing so small.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)