Saunders-Roe Princess

Saunders-Roe · United Kingdom · first flew 1952 · airliner

The largest all-metal flying boat ever built, a ten-engined British airliner intended for transatlantic service.

Recognition (WEFT)

W — Wings	High-mounted, straight
E — Engines	4 × turboprop, wing-mounted
F — Fuselage	45 m fuselage
T — Tail	Conventional

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Spot it by:

Massive flying boat with a deep boat-shaped hull and wingtip floats
Ten Bristol Proteus turboprops, mostly coupled in pairs (note the ten engines)
High wing spanning over 60 m above the water

A vast high-wing flying boat with a deep planing hull, wingtip floats and a row of turboprops along the wing. Its enormous size and boat hull are unmistakable, but it can be seen only in photographs today.

Specifications

The Saunders-Roe Princess has a length of 45 m (148 ft).
It has a wingspan of 66.9 m (219 ft).
Its maximum speed is 610 km/h (379 mph).
Typical crew: 6 flight crew.

Figures are for the representative variant described above; marks differ. See how AircraftIQ sources figures.

History

The SR.45 prototype first flew on 22 August 1952. Ten Bristol Proteus turboprops powered it, eight coupled in pairs driving four contra-rotating propeller units plus two single outboard engines, to carry around a hundred passengers across the Atlantic. By then long-range landplanes had made the flying boat obsolete.

Variants

Three airframes were laid down but only the first prototype ever flew; the other two were never completed.

Where you'll see it

Never entered service. The unflown hulls were cocooned for years on the Isle of Wight before all three were scrapped in the 1960s; nothing survives, though the story is preserved in British maritime-aviation collections such as Solent Sky in Southampton.

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