Handley Page Hermes (1949)

The Handley Page Hermes was one of the first British airliners with a pressurised cabin. Developed during the Second World War, it shared several components with the Halifax bomber.  It had an inauspicious start when the prototype crashed on its first flight on 2 December 1945 but eventually 25 Hermes IV were built, of which 19 served with BOAC who introduced it on its West African and South African routes in 1950.

Equipped to a high standard of comfort – BOAC’s Hermes had two flight attendants for only 40 passengers – it was popular with passengers.  It was not, however, much liked by the airline: it proved to be underpowered for operations to high-altitude African airports, so BOAC uprated its Hercules engines, putting additional strain on them that led to frequent engine failures.

BOAC withdrew the Hermes after only three years, in 1953, but some returned to service in 1954 when all BOAC’s new Comet jetliners were grounded after two fatal crashes. When BOAC finally withdrew the Hermes,  many were snapped up by independent airlines who used them on their less demanding, shorter routes until the early 1960s. The last flight by a civilian Hermes was in December 1964, but one aircraft remained flying with the Royal Radar Establishment until 1969.

G-ALDG is the only surviving Hermes. It was delivered to BOAC in 1950, who operated it until 1953. It then served with several operators before being acquired by charter airline Britavia in 1959, whose sister airline Silver City operated it until 1962. British United Airways then used the fuselage for cabin crew training before passing it to the Gatwick Fire Service who used it for smoke evacuation training. When the Fire Service had no further use for it they appealed for an aircraft preservation group to rescue it, and in collaboration with the Handley Page Association it was moved by road to Duxford in January 1981.

The fuselage, restored and painted in its original BOAC livery, now sits beside Concorde in Duxford’s AirSpace building. The restored flight deck recalls the time before satellite navigation and computerised controls – the Hermes required five crew to fly it whereas modern airliners need only two. The ladies’ ‘powder room’ is a reminder of when ladies wore hats and high fashion and gentlemen wore suits to travel. The cabin now houses the Duxford Aviation Society Museum, describing the history of British Civil Aviation since the Second World War.