Bristol Aerospace
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Bristol Aerospace is a Canadian aerospace firm located in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
[edit] History
What would eventually become Bristol Aerospace began in 1904, when brothers Jim and Grant MacDonald moved to Winnipeg from Nova Scotia and started a sheet metal business. Brother Edwin would join them later and by the late 1920s air travel had become an important means of transportation with Winnipeg becoming an important hub for travel to the booming west. The MacDonalds formed MacDonald Brothers Aircraft Company in 1930, producing seaplane floats under licence from EDO Corporation of New York. Floats continued to be produced by the company into the early 1980s.
During World War II the factory was used for the production of training aircraft, and by war's end had grown to 4,500 employees. At the end of the war, MacDonald Bros. became an important repair and overhaul centre for the Canadian Air Force. Their location at the center of the country lowered the average travel cost for aircraft to the factories, as well as providing high-tech jobs in the Canadian mid-west. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s the Company performed depot level inspection and repair for many of Canada's early fighter planes.
In 1954, MacDonald was purchased by the British Bristol Aeroplane Company, becoming their Canadian division. They became an important supplier of accessories for jet engines, building the exhaust pipes for the Avro CF-100 Canuck, later becoming the primary maintenance depot for the plane. During the rest of the 50s and 60s, Bristol built on their experience in precision sheet metal work to become a major supplier of hot section components for various engine manufacturers.
In the early 1960s Bristol won the maintenance contract for the CF-100's replacement, the CF-101 Voodoo. This plane had been plagued with problems in the afterburner, and Bristol started a research project into how to correct the issues. Their proposal was accepted and both the Canadian and USAF F-101's were modified by Bristol, roughly doubling the lifetime of the engines. Bristol kept the maintenance contract for the Canadian CF-101's until the last of them were retired in 1984.
In the second half of the 1950s Bristol was selected to build several test rocket airframes for CARDE's ongoing research into high-power solid fuel propellants. After initial research completed in the early 1960s, Bristol started selling a "lightened" version of the test vehicle as the Black Brant for sounding rocket use, and opened the Rockwood Propellant Plant in 1962. As a side effect of this work, Bristol entered a partnership with Aerojet General from the US, and became Bristol Aerojet the same year. This work was later applied in the early 1970s to a new 2.75" (70 mm) engine for use in US-standard rocket launchers, leading to the CRV7, which has since become the standard 2.75" rocket in "the West".
In 1967 the parent Bristol Aeroplane, whose UK aircraft construction division had been incorporated into the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) in 1960, was purchased for its Bristol-Siddeley engine business by Rolls-Royce, and renamed Bristol Aerospace. It would remain part of RR though the coming nationalization and into privatisation again.
During the 1970s the company continued to be involved in overhaul and maintenance work, and the CRV7 became a major product line. During this time they also developed the Wire Strike Protection System for helicopters, which cuts cables that they might strike while flying close to the ground. These devices can be found on almost all helicopters today, in the form of angular "blades" projecting from the top and bottom of the cabin area. They have become so popular that they are now designed right into most new helicopter designs.
In January 1987, Bristol was awarded the maintenance contract for the Canadian CF-116 Freedom Fighter fleet, some say, as a consolation prize for losing the more lucrative and longer term CF-18 maintenance and overhaul contract. The CF-5 effort lasted until 1995 when the federal government decided to remove them from service. Afterward Bristol was contracted to sell off the redundant aircraft to other interested air forces and offered to include a major avionics upgrade to the avionics system. Bristol brokered a deal in 1996 for the purchase of (10) single and (3) dual seat CF-5's by the Botswana Defence Force, but unfortunately this was the only sale to be made. The company returned the two CF-5D demonstration aircraft to CFB Trenton (for storage) on March 2004 ending over 70 years of aircraft repair and overhaul. The company would now re-focus it's energies on fabricating sub-assemblies and other components for the commercial aircraft business.
In June 1997 Bristol was purchased by Magellan Aerospace, a corporation formed by the merger of a number of Canadian and US aerospace firms, for $62,500,000. It was suspected by many that Rolls-Royce plc sold Bristol once the lucrative fighter aircraft service contracts dried up.
In 1999 Bristol won the contract for SCISAT-1, the first purely-Canadian science satellite since 1971. With its successful launch on August 12, 2003, the basic systems have been selected by the Canadian Space Agency as a generic small-satellite "bus", and plans to launch a number over the next decade.
Bristol also produces aircraft sub-assemblies and engine components for all the major aerospace companies. Some examples include but are not limited to:
- Boeing 767 heat pan, Boeing 737 composite panels and Boeing 747 wing to Body Fairings
- F101 engine thruster door
- Airbus A330 & Airbus A380 aft engine plugs
- De Havilland Canada DASH 8 engine nacelles, fairings, etc.
- DHC Dash 8 Tailcone & APU Support
- Pratt & Whitney Canada JT15D, PW545, PW307, PW306 engine components
- M1 Abrams AGT1500 tank engine housing
- AgustaWestland_EH101 lower fuselage and composite engine & transmission cowlings
- F-35 Lightning II JSF Vertical Guide box for Rolls-Royce Lift Fan module
Bristol has also worked in Canadian nuclear reactor construction. It has supplied core components, CANDU_reactor tubes and thermal sleeves to AECL and GE.
[edit] Aircraft
| Aircraft | Description | Seats | Launch date | 1st flight | 1st delivery | Scheduled to cease production |
| CF5A & D (maintenance only) | fighter | 1 & 2 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
