Pictures from the Heritage Archives

This week we will take a look at aircraft images from the archives.[1]

Our first image is of an Imperial Airways Armstrong Whitworth Argosy MKI, City of Glasgow, flying over London, you can just see the pilot in the open cockpit. This aircraft is finished in the later colouring of silver fuselage with dark blue edging and lettering.

Here we see the relative size of people to the aircraft, the windscreen of the open cockpit is even more noticeable on this image. This aircraft is finished in the early colouring of a dark blue fuselage with silver letters and edging. Compare the engines in this image to those in next one.

This is a MKII Argosy, the front of the engines are equipped with Townend rings and streamline shaped rear cowlings. Whilst the Townend rings gave a slight improvement in performance they tended to cause the engines to overheat in certain circumstances and were removed after only a few flights.

1. The Sir W. G. Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Co. was part of The Armstrong Siddeley group of companies.