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Saunders Roe Princess flying boat


kev67

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  • 2 months later...

My Grandfather, who served in the RAF Reserve during the Second World War, owned a Bicycle and Radio Shop in Cowes until the early 1960s. He was a very keen aviation enthusiast and had grown up in sight of Calshot, witnessing all of the Schneider Trophy race events that took place in the Solent together with trial flights for all of Saunders-Roe's products. The Princess clearly had an effect on him, like no other; something he obviously shared with countless others at the time. I do recall that our family photo archives have quite a few shots of the Princess taking off or alighting on the Solent….I will see if I can dig one or two out and post them here.

Recently returned from a quick trip home and managed to recover one of the photos my Grandfather took of the Saunders Roe Princess moving down the slipway. Judging by the crowd, I would think this was one of the early outings (if not the first) for the Flying Boat. Apologies for the quality but my image is almost certainly a scan of a scan since I suspect my late father only had the original negative to go on. I know there are other photos showing the Princess alighting on the Solent but I have yet to dig those up.

Anyway, it is what it is.

SR%20Princess.jpg

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I saw the Princesses from a cruising yacht when they were cocooned on Southampton Water in 1967. They looked quite eerie and seemed as if they would be there forever. There was discussion as to whether they would be used to transport parts for the Airbus,but the Guppy was used instead.

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Don't think it was Airbus, were they around in the 60's but it was planned to be used as heavy-duty freight aircraft for transporting Saturn V rocket components for NASA

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