Beauforts Over Australia

Instead of using a tried and trusted aircraft manufacturing company such as the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC), the Commonwealth Government decided to trust this endeavour to Australia’s motor vehicle, steel and associated industrial leaders with responsibility for the new Aircraft Construction Branch resting on the shoulders of the Commissioner of the Victorian Railways, Harold Clapp. He was able to gather around him a veritable ‘army’ of leaders in their respective fields and lay the groundwork for an industry that by mid 1944 would have produced 700 Beauforts and also 46 Beaufreighters (a Mk IX transport conversion of the standard Mk VIII Beaufort).

When the Beaufort Division of the Department of Aircraft Production replaced the Branch in 1941 and Harold Clapp was succeeded by John Storey, it was decided to introduce Progress Reports detailing the various aspects of production. When they issued their 55th report on 1 August 1941 it mentioned several details of T9540’s approaching debut on the world stage: “The first production Beaufort is approaching completion”. Forty-two production and assembly stages had been completed including the painting of the aircraft in the RAF camouflage scheme of light green, light earth and sky type S on the undersurfaces. As for the other aircraft following, 29 stages had been completed on T9541, 39 on T9542, 36 on T9543, 20 on T9544, 11 on T9546 and two on T9548 (T9545 and T9547 were to be the first two Mascot built Beauforts). With only a matter of days away from being run out for the start of its engine trials, tentatively set down for 14 August, John Storey telephoned Prime Minister John Curtin to tell him T9540 would be flying by 18 August, with an anticipated completion date for T9541 and T9542 of 18 and 22 August respectively. Delays, however, were to set these dates back to 22 and 29 August with the first flight of the Beaufort being Monday 22 August 1941, and not the 18th as originally planned.

Thus it was on a cool August morning that Captain Tommy Young taxied T9540 out in front of the flight shed at Fishermen’s Bend, past the expectant group of newsmen, production and administrative staff, crowded around in tight huddles. Young usually flew with Australian National Airways (ANA) but in June 1941, ANA’s General Manager, Ivan Holyman, and Young had come to an agreement with DAP for Young to be employed on a limited contract to test fly Beauforts at the going rate of £5 per aircraft, while still retaining his job with ANA. His appointment had been necessary as the previous pilot, Squadron Leader Carlos Lumsden (RAF) was due to return to England in October at the end of his contract and there was no other suitably experienced pilot available.

On the half hour test flight, Young found T9540 to handle better than L4448 when Lumsden had taken it up on 5 May for its first test flight (L4448 had been supplied by the Bristol Aeroplane Company as pattern aircraft for Australian production) but it did share one thing in common with L4448, and that was a strange ‘buffeting’ effect over the tailplane.

As with any new aircraft, type trials are mandatory and T9540 was not spared this requirement. Three days after its first flight, the Experimental and Special Duties Flight at 1 Aircraft Depot (AD) Laverton began flight trials, paying special attention to the roll and yaw reported by Young and his observer, Arthur Webb. Young had found T9540 slipped into an oscillation in roll and yaw which if not corrected by rudder increased in intensity. With any slight disturbance of the rudder or of the aileron in a turn, during a climb or in straight and level flight, instability become worse. And from a violent disturbance, such as half rudder or half aileron applied for even a second, the disturbance reached its maximum level quickly. A study of the motion showed the oscillation in yaw preceded that in roll by a quarter of a cycle, that is, the aircraft was laterally level when fully yawed. As the leading wing tip yawed backward, it rose, reaching the laterally level position as the trailing tip.

The type trials held at the end of August also found the rudder swung over to starboard 1/a of a cycle after the yaw to port was fully developed which aided its righting movement and that the aircraft could be controlled aileron free in level flight and gentle turns could be made using rudder and elevator only. When Young’s attention was drawn to his continual small corrective rudder pedal movements, even when flying in calm air, without him even consciously making these corrections he became more aware of the degree of oscillation and yaw.

The answer to all these problems was quite simple: increase the dihedral of the tailplane. A dihedral tailplane raised the tailplane in order to get it into a different part of the slipstream or downwash, either because of buffeting or in the hope of improving longitudinal stability. By increasing the dihedral of the fin area by 15. 5% to 39. 26sq ft (3. 65m2) from the original 9. 75sq ft (0. 9m2) with a fairing from the top of the rudder to the base of the fin on the leading edge, the problems almost disappeared. When tested in flight, under full load and conditions and a speed range from stall with engine on and off, to top speed and takeoff and landing with bomb doors open, the coupled oscillations were reduced to an acceptable level. With Air Board support this modification was fitted to all production Beauforts in Australia as well as L4448 but for some obscure reason, Bristol fitted it to only two of its British built Beauforts.

With so many delays in producing Beauforts and with the RAF pressing for these aircraft to replace their obsolete Vickers Vildebeests of 36 and 100 Squadrons RAF in Malaya, it was of paramount importance to complete the type and armament trials on as many Beauforts as possible. Because of the instability problem, the delay in manufacturing a new tailfin and the seasonal weather so characteristic of Melbourne, T9540 was still not ready for the trip to Malaya at the end of September. Innumerable problems, totalling 59 in all, plagued its early days. Some of these were easily correctable, like the scored wheel bearings due to incorrect fitment of race bearings, but others were not, such as a damaged internal wing structure caused through expansion of the oil tanks when the valve breathers in the crankcase stuck in the off position and the casting of the tail strut under full load conditions.

It was because of these problems that the Beaufort was left behind on 2 December 1941 when Wing Commander R N McKem left Fishermen’s Bend in T9541 leading five other Beauforts (T9542, 43, 44, 45, 47) on the Beauforts’ first delivery flight to Malaya, via Alice Springs, Batchelor and Surabaya. Three days later they arrived after almost losing McKern’s aircraft at Soura- baya when it ground looped on landing, damaging the undercarriage in the process. But fast work by Dutch navy engineers, working through the night, saw T9541 ready for its flight the next morning and on Friday 5 December the aircraft reached Seletar on Singapore Island.

Then on Monday 8 December, the RAAF were pitched into the war against Japan striking the first blow for the allies when No 1 Squadron’s Hudsons attacked Japanese shipping off Kota Bharu. The call went out to Australia to send more Beauforts but as T9540 was still undergoing armament trials it was impossible to send it to Malaya and as for the sixth production Beaufort from Fishermen’s Bend, T9546, problems with incorrect rigging of the ailerons and vibration in the nose section when the Browning gun was fired, caused it to be held back. The only other Beauforts possibly available were T9548 and T9549. So in the early hours of Monday 22 December they lifted off from the Bend with Squadron Leader Tingledew flying T9548 and Flight Lieutenant Harry Purvis and John Hampshire in T9549, but the aircraft had only flown as far as Batchelor before the recall signal was given: due to the worsening situation in Malaya and the need to give conversion training in a safe environment, Far East HQ and the Air Board agreed the Beauforts should return to Australia to allow ‘Q’ Flight (the Australian detachment) of 100 Squadron RAF to have sufficient time for nine crews to convert to Beauforts.

With the fall of Malaya there was then no need to send Beau- forts so while ‘Q’ Flight cooled its heels at Point Cook the Air Board decided T9540 and the other RAF Beauforts should stay on strength with the RAF squadron which in February 1942 became a RAAF unit due to the fact it could no longer be usefully employed in the Far East. It then appeared as if T9540, which was still with 1 AD at Laverton, would join 100 Squadron but the decision was made instead to send it to No 1 Operational Training Unit (OTU) which was then based at Nhill. Then, within days of its arrival the decision was overturned and it was decided to send it to 100 Squadron, which was now at RAAF Richmond, and fit it with dual control as a training aircraft for the conversion of squadron crews.

But the maintenance troubles which were to plague its first few months forced a decision to return it to 1 OTU in a veritable seesaw of red tape and here it was to remain for several months, now renumbered as A9-1.

Training of pilots onto Beauforts certainly presented many hazards to the instructors and on 29 September 1942 it overshot the flarepath and crashed through the boundary fence sustaining severe damage to the engines and undercarriage. Repaired, it remained with 1 OTU until December 1943 when it was sent to 1 AD for overhaul, remaining there until 7 October 1944 when it was reallocated, this time to DAP at Essendon for conversion under Specification 4/44 to the Mk IX Beaufreighter conversion of the standard Australian built Beaufort.

However, due in part to its historical significance, its age, and the fact that Mk. VIII Beauforts were preferred for conversion to Beaufreighters, it had its allotment as Beaufreighter A9-705 cancelled in November 1944 and was released back to 1 AD. As the pattern Beaufort, L4448, had been scrapped by this time, A9-1 became the ‘workhorse’ for the Beaufort Division and survived in this role until October 1945. On the 23rd of that month, 1 AD’s Test and Ferry Flight flew it up to 5 AD at Wagga Wagga where it was to be stored indefinitely under Category ‘C’ (in which preservative maintenance was involved) and here it was to languish along with so many other Beauforts, Beaufighters and Kittyhawks while a decision was made on its future. With the end of the war in the Pacific there was little need for the thousands of aircraft the RAAF now possessed and in December 1945, the Air Member for Supply and Equipment said 70 of the Beauforts held at the aircraft depots should be offered for disposal through the Commonwealth Disposals Commission (CDC) and that none of the total of 290 Beauforts would receive civil certificates of Airworthiness. Included in this were A9-1,24, 35, 44 and 56 at 5 AD, A9-39 at 7 AD Tocumwal, and A9-177 at 5 OTU Williamtown.

With the fate of A9-1 hanging in the balance, it was decided on 29 January 1946 to offer the aircraft for disposal through CDC with them stating on 27 February that Beauforts were unsaleable and authorizing those that were surplus to be written off. Included in this was A9-1. The final entry on its Aircraft Status Card for 29 July 1946 recorded its fate at the hands of the scrap merchant (“Store Category ‘E”””) by the beginning of 1947, a sad ending for this historic first Australian-built Beaufort.

No effort was ever made to preserve A9-1 although the Australian War Memorial did retain a Beaufort in 1955, but it too was scrapped by 1967 after proving uneconomical to repair. Today, however, the Memorial has an ex-100 Squadron Beaufort (A9-557) which it hopes to restore by 1995.