In April 1962, a long twin-rotor helicopter hovered over the new cathedral in Coventry with an 80-foot bronze spire hanging beneath it. Slowly, the crew lowered the spire, the flèche, onto the roof of the building that had risen beside the ruins of the old cathedral.

The helicopter was a Bristol Belvedere, and the moment captured everything that made it special. It was the only British tandem-rotor helicopter ever to enter production, and the Royal Air Force flew it from Britain to Borneo.

Today the Belvedere is a footnote, overshadowed by the American Chinook that took up its twin-rotor layout years later. Its story, from a cancelled airliner to the jungles of Borneo and the mountains of Aden, deserves better.

From airliner to warship to the RAF

The Belvedere began as something else entirely. Its ancestor was the Bristol Type 173, a civil tandem-rotor helicopter that first flew on 3 January 1952. That project was cancelled in 1956, and Bristol turned instead to the Type 191 and Type 193, naval versions for the Royal Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy.

Those were cancelled too, but the RAF stepped in, and the design became the Type 192 Belvedere. Three Type 191 airframes that were almost complete were put to work on the programme, two as ground test rigs for its new Napier Gazelle turboshaft engines and one for fatigue testing.

The naval heritage left a mark. The forward undercarriage was unusually tall, designed to give clearance for loading torpedoes under the fuselage in the anti-submarine role. On a troop transport, it meant the main passenger and cargo door sat 4 feet (1.2 m) above the ground. The name came from its lead designer, Raoul Hafner, who named it after a Baroque palace in his home city of Vienna.

Two rotors, two engines, one shaft

The first Type 192 prototype, XG447, flew on 5 July 1958. Early aircraft had wooden rotor blades and fully manual controls; from the fifth prototype, all-metal four-bladed rotors were fitted. Production aircraft got controls and instruments suited to night flying.

The layout was elegant. One Gazelle sat at each end of the cabin, each rated at 1,465 shp. The two rotors were linked by a synchronising shaft so the blades could never collide, which also meant either engine could drive both rotors. If one engine failed, the other automatically ran up to double power.

The Belvedere could carry up to 18 fully equipped troops, 12 stretchers or 6,000 lb (2,700 kg) of cargo, inside the cabin or slung underneath. Only 26 were built. By the time production aircraft rolled out, they were being built by Westland Aircraft’s Bristol Helicopter Division, which is why the RAF Museum calls its example the Westland Belvedere.

Archive footage of the Bristol Belvedere at the 1958 Farnborough Airshow, the year of its first flight.

Spires, jungles and longhouses

The Belvedere Trials Unit at RAF Odiham became No. 66 Squadron in September 1961, and Nos. 72 and 26 Squadrons soon followed. One of the type’s first headline jobs was the Coventry Cathedral lift, known as Operation Rich Man. It made such an impression that it followed one staff officer around for months.

In 1962, No. 66 Squadron took its Belvederes to RAF Seletar in Singapore, some of them shipped out crated. When the Brunei revolt broke out that December, a detachment flew to Borneo to support Royal Marine and SAS patrols, move prisoners and troops, and lift a damaged Whirlwind helicopter to the carrier HMS Albion.

In January 1963, the Belvederes flew flood relief in North Borneo after exceptionally heavy rain, and in the months that followed they hauled tractors, bulldozer blades and road plant into the jungle so Gurkha engineers could build an airstrip. During the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation they flew troop lifts, reconnaissance and casualty evacuation. Local people gave the big, long-bodied helicopters a fitting nickname.

British Pathé’s 1961 newsreel on the RAF’s first Belvedere helicopter squadron.

Sand and fire in Aden

In 1964, Belvederes were sent to RAF Khormaksar in Aden for No. 26 Squadron’s operations in the Radfan mountains. They resupplied forward positions, moved 105 mm guns and evacuated casualties. At the forward base of Thumier, some 2,000 feet up, midday temperatures reached 40 °C.

Aden was hard on the machine. Fine sand meant frequent engine changes, and the Avpin engine starting system, which had been troublesome from the start, caused several minor fires. The type also suffered fatal accidents that grounded the fleet more than once, and the deaths of ground technicians flying as Belvedere crewmen pushed the RAF to create dedicated helicopter crewmen.

The RAF Museum’s own Belvedere shows what that meant for a single airframe. XG474 was shipped crated to Singapore in 1962 and joined No. 66 Squadron in June 1962, flew in the Brunei detachment and in Sarawak, then sailed to Aden aboard the carrier HMS Centaur in May 1964. With No. 26 Squadron it logged 218 hours of operational flying, mostly in support of the Radfan operations.

A short career

The Belvedere’s service life was brief. Procurement had always been political: the Treasury had pushed to curb production in favour of the licence-built Westland Wessex, and No. 72 Squadron swapped its Belvederes for Wessexes as early as August 1964. No. 26 Squadron disbanded in Aden in November 1965, and its aircraft went by carrier to Singapore to join No. 66 Squadron.

When No. 66 Squadron disbanded in March 1969, the RAF’s Belvedere era was over. A civil 24-seat version, the Type 192C, had been offered for intercity services, but no orders came.

Combat Power on the rise and fall of the Bristol Belvedere.

A handful survive. XG474, which flew in Singapore, Borneo and Aden, is on display at the RAF Museum in London, while The Helicopter Museum at Weston-super-Mare looks after others. The twin-rotor layout lived on, but it was the American CH-46 Sea Knight and Chinook that went on to make it a worldwide standard.

The Belvedere was awkward, temperamental and gone in eight years. It was also the helicopter that put a spire on a cathedral, flew into the jungle as a “flying longhouse”, and proved that Britain could build a heavy-lift twin-rotor machine of its own.

Sources: Wikipedia (Bristol Belvedere), RAF Museum (individual history of Belvedere XG474), Royal Air Force Historical Society Journal 25, Historic England