Saro Princess fly-by

[hotelgulf]

Excellent! Thanks for posting!

[oldfart387]

Anybody know how much fuel it took to get it up? and nobody say, 3 viagra!

[minitrundle]

My grandad remembers seeing these land on Southampton Water and dock at Calshot in the U.K where we live, shame there's very little left!

[noonsight2010]

@minitrundle

My Dad remembers flyng boats at Calshot as well. I've sailed past the old slipway and I've a Corgi model Sunderland that was sold to BOAC after the war. It sank in Southampton Water. Somehow the flying boats evoke the same romance of travel as the big liners or the Orient Express. I've been in the Sunderland at the RAF Museum at Hendon and I've love to go up in one, or the Saunders Roe in this terrific clip.

[minitrundle]

@noonsight2010 Yeah there's very little left in the U.K I know there is one is Southampton in a museum, but i've never had the chance to look at one close up!

[circusboy90210]

wow too bad our modern world can't produce this technology?

[bellendbrie]

yea baby

[urgdaddy]

The tip tanks protracted downward for pontoons and also doubled as fuel tanks....great engineering.

[patrickhazell]

Absolutely beautiful! Wow--what a plane!

[greenseaships]

Looks like someone made a flying boat out of a Boeing Stratocruiser. Got what a sound though. I'd give anything to be able to hear that every day. Or even any day.

[tocamadera]

@will891410  gilipollas

[will891410]

@tocamadera i cant understand please enlish but i know you say bullshit brow

[bigkitten]

Seems to me, that there was a bit of 'geniussing' going on in the SR camp!

Bastards!....thank God successive British Governments saw you all off! Phew!

[nantyreira]

I saw this from the top deck of a bus going from Newport to Freshwater after a school football match in Newport., somewhere near Yarmouth in about 1954 - the plane was so low we were almost looking down on it. Incredible sight. One was mothballed by the East Cowes ferry for years and another was a fixture on Calshot Spit. British aviation somehow would never be the same again! Great video - thanks for putting it up.

[hoggdawn]

Too bad this thing isn't around anymore. It could have been used to provide cheap, affordable transportation to get college kids to their spring break destinations by using bench seats.

[allanhudson]

I remember as a kid going to Calshot Castle at the mouth of the Solent and seeing three Princess`s mothballed. Their undoing was they couldn't get powerful enough engines. They really needed turbines. That`s why they had to have 10 conventional engines and were seriously underpowered for their size.

Still they were a great aircraft before their time.

[Gruntol5]

They had turbines! Bristol Proteus turboprops - same as the Britannia. I think you are getting confused with the Brabazon that was powered by 8 Bristol Centaurus piston engines.

[juzzi07]

you're quite correct. They had Proteus 2's...four coupled Proteus turboprops with a fifth single Proteus in each wing.

[ragemanchoo82]

Great video :D :D

[briquetaverne]

The nose end looks like actor Robert Morley's face and under chin.

[jonzflicks]

My dad helped build her. I recall the drone of her motors well. Had a look over the mock-up and the prototype when I was a boy. Also saw the Saro Squirt take off and land at Cowes.

She was a beauty!!!!. There was one in mothballs for years near the Cowes to East Cowes chain ferry. Hughie Green the TV entertainer tried to save it but she with her sisters went for scrap.

[jonb0002]

Used to go past her regularly, went to school at Denmark road (next to the old station - which is no longer there..) It was a very impressive sight then and I was 11 years old at the time - and you could see her two sisters at Calshot from my dads house at Egypt point (with a little help from binoculars ..)

[megashegem]

Witch was bigger the Princess or the Mars??

[evilintel]

Now, That's intimidating.

[Stormbird262]

Ken drop a line mate!

[Stormbird262]

Did she have " Made in England " on her Bum.

[Stormbird262]

She is/Was one awesome ugly bitch!

(not Lizzy)

Nice to the one's who like em a bit Beastly, but what a machine, that's some horse's!!

Cheerio and Tally Ho! from Phil in Oz!

[keeshen]

one ugly aircraft

[brino182]

so that's what it sounded like. I've always wanted to know how this plane sounded like too.

[sidewalker22]

Fantastic video! I especially like the part with the sound, since I have always wanted to know what this mammoth aircraft sounded like.

[fordroad]

Many many thanks for this posting, a very very rare look at the last of the BIG flying boats. The design of these machines were in terms of flying boats world leading edge. After WW2 with the invent of the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser and the Lockheed Connie holding the airways until the Boeing 707 & Douglas DC8's arrived the flying boats had no real market, costs per passenger mile meant they were just too expensive.

GREAT POSTING KEEP THEM COMIN' PARTNER. 5 STARS

[JimBCA]

Those brave men in their magnificent fly machines