Handley Page Herald

Handley Page HPR.7 Dart Heralds at London Southend Airport in the 1990s.
The Herald was designed in the 1950s as a replacement for the DC3 Dakota. Other manufacturers were competing for the same market, including Fokker with their F.27 Friendship, the Avro 748, and even Southend's own Aviation Traders with the Accountant.
When Handley Page acquired the Miles Aircraft Company in 1947, plans for a new airliner, named Herald, were already being developed by Miles.This was a development of the Miles Marathon, later produced by Handley Page as the HPR1 Marathon.The HPR prefix to the designs came from the combined company name , Handley Page (Reading) Limited, based in the Miles works at Woodley, near Reading.
The first plans were designed with two large piston engines, but circumstances dictated a change to four smaller engines, and the first prototypes, known as HPR.3 Herald appeared in this form in 1955.
Customer demand was favouring the newly developed turboprop engines as fitted to the rival F.27, and facing a lack of orders for the HPR.3, the aircraft was re-designed with two Rolls-Royce Dart engines, the second prototype HPR.3 being rebuilt and renamed HPR.7 Dart Herald.
By this time, the F.27 had gained a dominant position in the market, and even after continued development, with a longer fuselage in the HPR.7 - 200 series, and a 400 series military version , total production only amounted to fifty aircraft.
British Air Ferries, based at Southend , acquired a large fleet of Heralds that were used on scheduled passenger services in the 1970's, before the services, and several of the aircraft were operated by British Island Airways, later becoming Air UK. BAF also leased aircraft to many operators, and continued to do so until the last one went to Channel Express, who continued to use them until 1999.

Music;
Cylinder Three by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Source: http://chriszabriskie.com/cylinders/
Artist: http://chriszabriskie.com/

Seeger by John Deley And The 41 Players.

Artwork;
'Loading The Classics'. Painting by Robin Pinnock.