A VIP Bristol Britannia that was “No Bloody Good”
Photo from: Library and Archives NT via Airhistory.net
Bristol Britannia 102 G-ANBG (constructor's number 12908) was built at Filton and first flew on March 29, 1956. One of fifteen 102 variants ordered by BOAC, it was delivered to London (Heathrow) Airport on May 8, 1956, and entered service with the airline as BA 121/7 following modifications at Filton.
G-ANBG was fitted with a VIP interior and furnishings and was used for a demonstration flight to Australia in 1957. Australian Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. R.G. Menzies and Dame Pattie Menzies sampled the aircraft on a flight between Sydney and Canberra. Another distinguished passenger was British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan who flew with a party of fourteen on a Commonwealth tour including India, Pakistan, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand on January 7, 1958. During this tour, the same Britannia carried the Queen Mother from Fiji to Auckland and Sydney between January 28 and February 1. The Prime Minister’s party returned to London on February 14, having covered almost 31,000 miles.
Despite its high-profile role—and possibly due to subsequent technical issues—the aircraft acquired the unflattering nickname “No Bloody Good.” This was likely the reason for its re-registration as G-APLL on March 19, 1958. Thereafter, the aircraft led a less glamorous service life with Nigeria Airways, British United Airways (BUA), Malayan Airways, and BKS, before being broken up and scrapped in September 1969, having accumulated 20,159 flight hours and 7,772 landings—a sad end to an impressive career of what proved to be a “bloody good aircraft”.
When I decided to build the Britannia I wanted to represent it in its luxurious beginnings and not as a second-rated charter or cargo plane. This unusual combination of a VIP role and an unflattering nickname sparked my interest in the aircraft, making it the potential subject of my current modeling project. A brief article from BOAC Review titled “Britannia Carries Premier on His Commonwealth Tour,” found in the National Aerospace Library, provided a cutaway of the interior configuration and a photograph of the aft cabin. This, combined with a publication titled BOAC Aircraft Interior Layouts (Issue ‘R,’ September 1959) from the British Airways Archive, provided sufficient information for the aircraft’s interior. Finally, a contemporary British Pathé video showing the Prime Minister disembarking G-ANBG in Pakistan on January 12, 1958, sporting the new “blue tail” BOAC livery, confirmed whether the aircraft had a white or blue tail at that time. This completed the picture and allowed my project to commence, in 1950s style!