Tuesday, 5 November 2024

Plane facts


As a distraction from the big events happening today - that’s the Melbourne Cup, of course, and Guy Fawkes (oh, and some people in the US colouring in a circle) - here’s a remarkable sight.

It’s a decluttering-discovered postcard (itself an almost museum-worthy object now) sent to me by my father from New York, where he was on a business trip. It was to congratulate me on reaching the momentous age of five, and to wish me all the best in starting “proper school”. I’ll draw a veil over the date, but we all know that’s way (way) back last century, eh.

Anyway, this plane. Look at it! SO BLUNT! What on earth were they thinking? I mean, even back then they surely knew about wind resistance, didn’t they? Or maybe they didn’t - now I’m remembering vertical grilles on cars, and upright train engines, and so on. Wow. It seems so obvious now that you’d want to be all pointy so you could slice through the air, for speed and reduced fuel consumption. 

The details on the back of the postcard say that the Stratocruiser was powered by four Pratt & Whitney Wasp Major engines, and could cruise at a blistering 325mph (that’s 520-odd kmh for us modern types). I’m surprised it could even stay up in the air, dawdling along like that, at half the max speed of an A380. I mean, this was only 20 years pre-Concorde! It was a double-decker, though, well ahead of the 747 and A380. 

Anyway, connection: the Stratocruiser was built by Boeing, and apart from of course having flown in many of their planes, I have been to their mind-blowingly huge factory at Everett just north of Seattle. The assembly hall there is so big it generates its own climate inside, rainclouds and all. You can't take interior photos because they're paranoid about you dropping your phone or camera 4 storeys down onto a plane. Or a person. The tour takes an hour and a half and is obsessively detailed, but interesting. Did you know that light-coloured paint weighs less than dark? Shows how dedicated Air NZ is to the national (rugby-derived) obsession with black. 

Oh, and though I never flew in Concorde, I was once at Heathrow waiting to take off behind it, and our plane was dramatically shaken by the blast from Concorde’s engines as it roared off down the runway. That’s the closest I’m ever going to get to supersonic. I can live with that.

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