The Handley Page Hermes was a long range British aircraft, powered by four Bristol Hercules 763 engines. It first flew on 2 December 1945 and unfortunately crashed on that very first test flight. After a delay and some redesign, the second prototype took flight on 2 September 1947.
Designed to carry between 40 and 82 passengers up to 5,719km (3,554 miles), the Hermes IV entered service with BOAC on 6 August 1950. This was on the route from London Heathrow to Accra via Tripoli, Kano and Lagos.
Handley Page Hermes Video
Following on from the last video on the Boeing 717, this week we head over to Great Britain for a look at the Handley Page Hermes. This colour production dating from the 1950s runs for just under 12 minutes.
It begins with a train journey and our passengers, who are dressed to the nines, arrive at the airport at 3:15. Shortly after, from about 3:56 they board the plane and eventually land in Paris and are onto another train at 8:30.
The second video above is a short newsreel piece by British Pathé running for 20 seconds. It shows the prototype Hermes in its original tail dragger configuration, which is interesting.
Overall Thoughts
Just 29 Handley Page Hermes aircraft were built, and they operated for only a short time with BOAC, being largely retired by 1952. Independent airlines such as Airwork, Skyways, Britavia and Falcon Airways operated the Hermes after that.
The final flight in commercial service was operated by Air Links on 13 December 1964, with one operated by the military on test work through to 1969. Today there is one fuselage preserved at the Imperial War Museum at Duxford in the UK.
Have you ever flown on board a Handley Page Hermes? What did you think of the videos? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image by Alex Christie on Airliners.net.
As a young child I flew on BOACs Hermes several times first between London and Lagos, (via Tripoli and Kano) where it took over from the unpressurised Yorks and later from London to Nairobi. After the York it was popular though at times unreliable. The cabin was spacious, with a nod towards Art Deco and at least on a par with the Constellation. It was also quieter than the Argonaut, its Merlin powered successor. In BOAC service it was limited to the African routes, never venturing further east than Aden. It served Johannesburg via a West African route and East… Read more »
Interesting to read your first hand experience with the Hermes. I’ll have to check out some cabin shots there. I had heard that the Argonaut was very noisy as the Merlin was hardly a quiet engine. Great info there, so I appreciate you taking the time to share that (fixed the typos for you too!). Thanks very much!
I flew to Spain in 1961 on the Air Safaris Hermes based at Newcastle Airport. We drove from Rochdale to Newcastle in my father’s rare 1957 Morris Isis series 2 and flew to Spain to stay at Tossa De Mar. We landed at Barcelona airport and had a long winding trip to the resort in a petrol engined Austin coach. The flight back was interrupted as we took off from Barcelona and then landed at Gerona due to a fault with the plane. After about a 3 hour wait we took off and landed safely at Newcastle Airport which was… Read more »
Now that sounds like some adventure all round!! Rare cars and rare planes. Clearly you remember it well and so you should, a first flight usually is. Thanks so much for that, enjoyed the read!
Totally forgot about that one. Reminds me of a DC-6 with a “British” nose, similar to the Britannia and dare I say the VC-10. With all the competing British design firms in that era, I wonder if nationalizing/merging the primary companies post-war would have resulted in greater British commercial aircraft success? So many designs of that era seem to have been tailored to BEA/BOAC’s specs with so few finding much demand outside of the UK and the Commonwealth. Certainly many opportunities missed.
Yes, many different manufacturers and everyone doing something different. They eventually did nationalise and merge everything into the British Aircraft Corporation, but that was done in the 1960s. Perhaps it should have been much, much earlier. Makes for an interesting story anyway!