"What news? I like Lao Qi to keep it in hiding. Last year, Lao Qi said the good news was that there were still materials for eleven BAC1-11 passenger planes left in Romania. What was this time?" Liang Yuan asked curiously.

"Young Master, there is no remaining passenger plane this time, but there is one remaining factory." Qilianshan extinguished the cigarette in his hand in the ashtray, leaned forward slightly and said.

"Factory? Where is the factory?"

"Have you heard of the eldest son of the Short Brothers Aircraft Company located in Northern Ireland, England?" Qilianshan asked.

"Shaote?" Liang Yuan felt that the name sounded very familiar, but he just couldn't remember where he had seen it.

Seeing Liang Yuan thinking without saying a word, Sun Zhuolin took out a thick document from the briefcase under his feet and handed it to Liang Yuan, saying, "Young Master, this is the information brought by President Qi from the UK. The three of us have just read it, and the Young Master will know it after reading it."

Opening the seal of the kraft paper bag, Liang Yuan casually straightened the paper bag, and several photos slid out of the paper bag and fell on the coffee table in front of Liang Yuan.

The thick fuselage with a vertical oval cross-section, a silver-white all-metal structure, a speedboat-style nose, and four star engines are arranged side by side on the straight upper single wing. There are also a circular float hanging on both ends of the outermost wings.

The planes in the photo are so familiar to military fans like Liang Yuan. During World War II, the most influential long-range aircraft of the Royal Air Force, the mortal enemy of the German U-boat, and the Sunderland Seaplane, known as the "flying porcupine".

"I remember that Short Company was the company that produced Sunderland seaplanes during World War II." Liang Yuan said suddenly.

After taking out the thick information in the paper bag, Liang Yuan started to read it carefully.

The Short Brothers Company was founded in 1908 and is one of the first industrial aircraft manufacturing companies on this planet.

Since the 1920s, Schott has been one of the world's leading seaplane manufacturers. During World War II, Schott even produced four-engine long-range aircraft represented by flying porcupines and became famous all over the world. After the end of World War II, the British economy changed from wartime to normal, and all large-scale factories built during wartime emergency were closed. Schott was not surprisingly facing a difficult transformation.

Since the 1960s, the Shorter Brothers began to switch to the freighter field. Due to the rich experience in the field of military aircraft production, the Shorter Company's transformation has been quite good. After launching short-distance transport aircraft such as ShorterSC.7 Skyvan, Shorts330, Shorts360, etc., Shorter Company fell into a big flaw in the military aircraft that the company has worked hard on.

In the early 1950s, the Sun-Don't Setting Empire, which suffered heavy damage in World War II, was still in power. After the Korean War, the two major camps in the East and the West formed Warsaw Pacts respectively, and NATO was in full swing. In order to better protect the global interests of the British Empire, the British Ministry of Defense issued a bid to British aviation companies to develop a new generation of Royal Air Force transport aircraft.

At that time, the British military's idea of ​​building an army was still globally. Therefore, in the bidding documents, the Royal Air Force required a new generation of transport aircraft, the first batch of production models, which could transport all heavy equipment of the Royal Army except the chief's main battle tanks, such as large-caliber artillery, air defense missile systems, armed helicopters, etc., in the later development models, they would be able to transport all the active equipment of the Royal Army.

After some competition, Schott Company code-named the SC5 development plan and won the bid for the RAF's new generation transport aircraft. This is Belfast, a large transport aircraft with strategic bloodline developed by the Sun-Unset Empire.

The Belfast project was officially launched in the late 1950s, and the prototype flew for the first time in 1964. The second prototype also successfully entered flight six months later. The RAF purchased five of the first batch, and the first batch of production models were named Belfast C1 by the RAF.

The Belfast C1 is equipped with four "Mosin" RTy-12 turboprop engines produced by Rolls-Royce, which can carry more than 150 fully armed soldiers. The aircraft can carry twenty tons of cargo and fly 5,000 kilometers. The success of the Belfast C1 makes the dream of rapid global delivery of British military forces close to the point.

Unfortunately, the international situation in the 1950s was unpredictable. With the outbreak of the Suez Canal crisis in 1956, the last piece of shame-covered underwear in the Empire was insidiously torn off by the United States, and the anti-colonial national independence movement swept the world. The British Empire's efforts to maintain the imperial rule for two hundred years fell apart in an instant, and the Belfast transport aircraft dedicated to global delivery was immediately pushed to the forefront.

Faced with the historical tide that was coming like an avalanche, Schott Company struggled. Not only did it launch two modifications, SC5-10 and SC5-13, but it also canceled the automatic landing system of the Belfast C1 transport aircraft, aerial refueling system, military radio and navigation equipment, and turned into a large civilian cargo aircraft code-named 10A.

The performance of the modified Belfast transport aircraft has been significantly improved, and the maximum take-off weight of the aircraft has increased from 98 tons to 113 tons. With a load of ten tons, the range of Belfast has reached an astonishing 8,000 kilometers.

After completing two powertrain modifications based on turboprop engines, Shorter has gone further on the road to technological breakthroughs, and the latest generation of modified Shorter has set its sights on the US C-141 strategic transport aircraft.

Short Company intends to use the newly designed wing and the latest Spey modified RB183 turbofan engine under development by Rolls Reus, using a T-shaped vertical tail wing similar to the US C141 strategic transport aircraft. The maximum take-off weight can reach 190 tons, the maximum load capacity of military models is as high as 54 tons, and the maximum commercial load of civilian models is even expected to exceed 60 tons.

Unfortunately, this general trend in national destiny cannot be recovered by an aircraft's technical goal. Faced with the fact that Britain's military defense is basically the only one left in the British Isles in the future, the British pragmatically chose the US C130 tactical transport aircraft as the next generation of transport for the Royal Air Force.

In the end, the British military only symbolically purchased the heavy transport aircraft of Belfast, which was born at the wrong time. Short Company lost the loss and sold its underwear. From then on, it never recovered and was on the verge of bankruptcy until the 1980s.

After Mrs. Thatcher came to power, large industrial enterprises such as Rawls Reus, which were originally nationalized, were sold to private individuals. The Shorter brothers, which had long become a major burden on the British government's finances, were also put on the privatization agenda.

However, due to the irreparable damage to the Belfast project in the past, the cumulative losses of Shorter Company have exceeded US$800 million since the 1970s. No private capital dares to take over such a mess. As a result, the British government has sold it for more than ten years, but Shorter Company is still unattended.

At the end of the information about the Short Company brought back by Qilianshan, a new news aroused Liang Yuan's great interest. Given that the Short Company's insanity was difficult to arise, the British government intends to exempt all the debts accumulated by Short Company at one time and inject a certain amount of funds for the company's restructuring.
Chapter completed!