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A Soviet passenger jet engine? Wowza Rob, you got me going on that one!

I remember a lyric from the Beatles "Back in the USSR" (a pretty open handed jibe at the Beachboys formulaic tunesmithing off the White Album):

"Just flew in BOAC
Man I had an dreadful flight"

I don't recall any photos of the fab four with a BOAC jetliner though...

I must cogitate on all this, the threads start to come together then go all frazzled in the space of one panel. Bravo

Mako

BOAC's British, actually; it was the British state airline from 1939-1974. Why the Beatles travelled in song from Miami to the USSR using them isn't clear to me, though.

JimRob wrote:BOAC's British, actually; it was the British state airline from 1939-1974. Why the Beatles travelled in song from Miami to the USSR using them isn't clear to me, though.

Because US airline connections to Moscow were simply not done at the time. It is similar now; US citizens can fly to Cuba, but not on US Airways. They bounce through Canada or Mexico to get there.

Mako, I'd have guesses that the engine in question is a Rolls-Royce, perhaps a Trent 700 series popular on Airbus jets based on the spinner shape and overall configuration.

However, BOAC had merged and undergone a name change during 1974, and they were using 747's at that time. The engine pictured is quite similar to the overall shape of the Pratt&Whitney JT9D that was selected for the 747's BOAC was flying -- but the P&W engines have a much more blunt spinner snout.

There is a General Electric spinner that looks just like that, but the engine cowling is a bit short, and this engine did not enter service until after BOAC was gone.

I don't know what other sorts of jets BOAC might have been flying -- certainly the engine is a modern turbofan and would not have been on the 707s that BOAC had a bunch of.

In other words, I don't have a clue.

Actually, it's quite obviously Australian

Rennen.

Rennen wrote:Actually, it's quite obviously Australian

Oho!

I wonder if anyone has noticed a fall-off in engine maintenance requests.

By the way, this did actually happen once in Chicago, and the resulting loss of hydraulic pressure from the ripped tubing caused the crash of the aircraft shortly after takeoff. It turned out to be a single, large, cracked bolt holding the engine onto the wing.
http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/archive/gene ... crash.html

There is an old joke about maintenance requests (called "squawk sheets" by pilots) from back when engines were still primarily piston powered:

Pilot Report: "Number 2 engine missing during climb."

Maintenance response: "Number 2 engine found on right wing after brief search."

I have a small assortment of such "squawks" and their assortments. Do you know where I can find more?

I'd offer to list here the ones I have, but only if anyone wants to see them.

Mako wrote:I don't recall any photos of the fab four with a BOAC jetliner though...

i scanned this from the Beatles Anthology book just for you. i know it's a BOAC because in the next picture in the sequence, you can see the logo plainly on the steps. this was the superior photograph though. so it goes!

i typed this all out once before and tried to post it, but the internet ate it so here i go again! this was my weird excuse for stepping back in here and saying this: jim, i still read AF, and i love it, even though storylines like this generally go in one eye and out the other for me. but it's damned intriguing!

PROKOFIEV2000 wrote:

Mako wrote:I don't recall any photos of the fab four with a BOAC jetliner though...

i typed this all out once before and tried to post it, but the internet ate it so here i go again! this was my weird excuse for stepping back in here and saying this: jim, i still read AF, and i love it, even though storylines like this generally go in one eye and out the other for me. but it's damned intriguing!

You Da Composer Prokofeiv Tnx!

Mako

"You decomposer"?

Oh, wait, you mean like "you are the composer" as in "you the man"?

I get it.

LevelHead wrote:"You decomposer"?

Oh, wait, you mean like "you are the composer" as in "you the man"?

I get it.

Hmm (searches pockets for a rock, a bowling ball and a tree). Glad you got it LH, I'm apparently fresh out of visual aids

CYa!
Mako