Shipbucket

Interesting area.

One issue discovered during the Suez Crisis was that the new Austin FV1800 could not be carried externally by the Hastings, leading to Airborne units hunting for jeeps that could be airdropped.

H.P.72

Never getting a name, the H.P.72 was the first development to the Hastings, proposed in July 1945.



The H.P.72 was designed to carry the British Army's largest indivisible loads, including a 5.5inch gun and a 6-ton truck, as well as items more than 20ft long, through a nose door and large side doors, or alternatively 60 troops. The wing was to be a high mounted single spar structure, similar to the H.P.65, but cranked to reduce the length of the landing gear. With the nose section (including nose gear) pivoted to starboard, a system of built in jacks would be lowered to allow the use of a loading ramp. The cockpit and tail section were almost identical to the standard Hastings, and the aircraft was to be fitted with a Boulton-Paul Type D turret as fitted to the late model Halifax.
However by September 1945 after preliminary design work had already commenced the project was shelved.

H.P.73 Hastings II

To the same Specification as the H.P.72, the H.P.73 Hastings II was also submitted.



The Hastings II was a stretched Hastings C.1 with an 80inch plug forward, and a 50inch plug aft of the wing. Unfortunately although the volume increase was good, it only translated into a 1 tonne payload increase, and this project was quickly dropped in favour of the H.P.72.

H.P.89 Hastings Mk.6

A much more radical Hastings version was initially started in design in 1947 as the "Hastings New Development".



By 1949 this design, utilising Hermes developments, had matured into a swept wing, nose wheel transport with a rear loading ramp. However by March 1949 the Air Staff expressed preference for a twin-boom tail as used by the Fairchild Packet and so this project was dropped.

H.P.72 Hastings III

After the H.P.89 was declined, HP revised a more minimal update to the Hastings and resurrected the H.P.72 designation.



The new H.P.72 was a minimum modification to the stretched Hastings, but now with a rear loading ramp. This design got to the stage of a mockup being built, before being halted in March 1951, as the Air Staff still wanted a twin boom design.
Eventually the Air Staff got their favoured design in the Armstrong Whitworth Argosy with replaced the Hastings C.1 in 1962.

Lovely to see these Hastings projects.
The H.P.72 Hastings III looks a most impractical project. The shallow sloping floorline of tailwheel undercarriage transports like the Dakota and standard Hastings was already a hinderance to loading cargo, but the acute angle on the Hastings III would surely make it very difficult to load anything via the rear ramp without the use of winches.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Excellent work!
(although both HP72's are hardly great looking aircraft on their own )

H.P.74 Hermes II

While development of the military Hastings was proceeding, the civilian Hermes was happening in parallel.



With the loss of the first "bare shell" Hermes prototype, work on the second fully furnished aircraft was temporarily halted while the immediate aerodynamic deficiencies were identified and corrected. With the design of the lengthened H.P.73 Hastings, a similar stretch was proposed for a Hermes II, to become the H.P.74 - but this stretch involved 80 inch plugs both fore and aft to rectify the centre of gravity issues of the H.P.73.
With the Hermes' design problems resolved, work recommenced on the second prototype now built to be the Hermes II prototype. Even before completion various upgrades were planned to the design, including turboprop engines. However due to the added time that would be required to implement, the aircraft first flew with the minimum of modifications as a flying shell for test purposes.
Only a single Hermes II was built. In line with the Hastings C.2, the tailplane was soon lowered, and the aircraft was used for development flying for the more advanced Hermes models.
In 1953 the Hermes II was transferred to the RAF, where it embarked on a career as a scientific research aircraft, flying with new design aerial cameras, prototype magnetic anomaly detector equipment, and geophysical survey equipment. The Hermes II was also used to trial the side-ways looking radar array for the T.S.R-2.When finally struck off charge in 1969 it was both the first and the last operational Hermes.

H.P 74 Hermes II nosewheel design

The Hermes II was to be modified to be a nosewheel design during construction.



The underslung engine design of the Hastings/Hermes I was not suited to a simple nosewheel undercarriage system and required a relatively long nose leg. Further, modifying the main landing gear to a rearwards attachment would have added a year's delay to the Hermes II's completion, so this change was shelved for the Hermes II. However it was developed further for the later Hermes designs.