H.P 50 Years Article

FIFTY YEARS OF BUILDING BOMBERS
BY SIR FREDERICK HANDLEY PAGE C.B.E, Hon.F.R.A.E.S., F.C.G.I., Hon.M.Inst., Hon.F.I.A.S., Hon. A.R.I.B.A.

PART 1: TAKEN FROM AN ARTICLE HE WROTE AGED 74, PUBLISHED IN THE R.A.F. BIGGIN HILL ‘AT HOME’ DAY B.O.B. SOUVENIR BOOK OF SEPT 19TH 1959

In no sphere of human activity has development been so rapid as in the art of flying. When I formed the company that bears my name, over fifty years ago in 1909, no one foresaw the tremendous advances that would be made in a mere half century.

In 1906, at the age of 21, I was one of a small band of pioneers interested in flying. By trial and error we were preparing the way for the great strides which aviation has made. For even in the decade after the turn of the century, the fundamental principles of flight were speculative. It is difficult to realise today the utter lack of all aviation facilities then. There were no experimental data on which to base calculations pertaining to the strength or flying capacity of aeroplanes. Theoretical calculations were imperfectly understood. Trained pilots, aerodromes and sufficiently powerful engines were almost non-existent.

It is small wonder therefore that the progress of our company – the first in Britain for the construction of aircraft – was slow in these conditions. However, despite difficulties during these early formative years, several aeroplanes were constructed at our works at Barking near London. Some were to customers’ designs and others were the exclusive products of our young concern. Beside the Thames on marshland strewn with ditches and thistles, we not only produced experimental aircraft but also designed and manufactured propellers. From this came much of the capital needed for our aeroplane construction.

Our Blue Bird of 1909 was the first of a series of monoplanes built before the first world war. Our first big success — a small 50 horsepower monoplane — had sweptback wings of 35 feet span, a top speed of 60 m.p.h and a good Gnome engine. I well remember the great day when it flew across London from Barking to Brooklands. Several other aircraft were built and flown during the three years before the outbreak of war in 1914. All acheived a high degree of inherent stability, a quality which has always been the fundamental basis of our company’s designs.

In the meantime we had moved to larger works at Cricklewood in northwest London. Here, with war-clouds gathering, we built biplanes for the War Office. Experiments continued and a biplane of remarkable stability was produced in 1913. It had a 100 horsepower engine, was capable of 73 m.p.h. and flew with a passenger from England to France.

A ‘Bloody Paralyser’
We had also begun our investigations into the feasibility of large aircraft. In 1914 work started on a big biplane powered by a 200 horsepower engine for competition in a proposed trans-Atlantic flight.

When war started, however, this was superseded when I was called to the Admiralty on Christmas Day, 1914, and asked to construct a large aeroplane which, in their terms, would be a Bloody Paralyser. Receiving an order for four (later increased to forty) we worked night and day in an effort to create a giant aeroplane (some four or five times larger than anything known before) that our critics said was impossible to build. However, we triumphed over all our problems and the prototype was towed by a party of naval ratings in the dead of night along the Edgeware Road to Hendon aerodrome. Although lamp posts had been removed, trees had to be lopped to give it passage—although its wings had been folded back along its fuselage. It was with tremendous satisfaction that we greeted the first flight of this our twin-engined 0/100 heavy bomber and the world’s first successful big aircraft.

With a wingspan of over 100 feet, it was the forerunner of the famous 0/400. the Allies’ standard Great War bomber. and backbone of Britain’s aerial offensive force. ln operational service these Handley Pages had extraordinary stability, were easily controlled and able to maintain flight with one engine out of action. They became pre-eminent in the bombing sphere. With more than a ton of bombs and a maximum speed of 97 m.p.h., they attacked targets inside Germany, systematically bombed U-boat bases along the Belgian coast and operated against the Turks and Bulgarians on the eastern front. These were the great aircraft—0/400 and even larger V/1500 —that blazed the air trail to India and it was a V /1500 that crossed the northwest frontier to bomb Afghanistan.

It was in 1916 that an 0/400 created a world record by carrying twenty passengers and the pilot. This was beaten in 1919 when another of our aircraft, the V/1500, carried forty passengers aloft. Mighty four-engined war-planes of this type were ready to bomb Berlin direct from British bases when the war ended. The aeronautical progress made during those four years of war is illustrated by this 13.5 ton Super Handley. It had a 126-foot span —greater than most of today’s big aircraft—and with a twelve-hour endurance, carried a useful load of 6.5 tons at 100 m.p.h.

Early Passenger Aircraft
Military-aircraft construction having ceased with the war’s end, we turned with our experience and production facilities into civil spheres. Handley Page Transport Ltd., was inaugurated in June 1919 and, operating converted 0/400 bombers, pioneered Britain’s overseas air routes. A London-Paris service, which started in August 1919, was followed by passenger and freight services to Brussels, Amsterdam and Basle. Over these routes the capacious Handley Pages (synonym of large aircraft of that day) captured the lion’s share of the traffic.

For a time, the airliner and bomber were basically the same aircraft. But between them the gap has increased and today the commercial aircraft is as specialised as the bomber. Our company was probably the first in the world to give definition to the two types.

Its first move in this direction was the new aircraft that it developed for early airlines. This was the twin-engined W/8, a twelve-seater commercial biplane which gained easily the highest award in the Air Ministry’s civil aviation competition in 1920 and pointed the way to luxury air travel.

PART 2

For many years the holder of the world’s record for weight lifting, this new airliner (the W/8) was more powerful than its predecessor with Handley Page Transport, the 0/700, a civil version of the 0/400 bomber.

Handley Page Transport Ltd merged its identity in that of Imperial Airways in 1924. It was the nucleus around which Britain’s national airline was built and from these beginnings, B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. were evolved. Fourteen aircraft were operated by the new combine shortly after its inception. Nine of them were Handley Pages which provided 70 per cent of Imperial Airways’ total seating capacity.

THE SLOTTED WING
Our company’s most important contribution to the progress of aviation, and ranking in importance side-by-side with its development of large aircraft, was its invention in 1919 and subsequent development of, the slotted wing.

Fundamentally the slot increases the lift of a wing to which it is attatched by allowing the wing to be flown at larger angles with consequent increases in speed and range. In addition it enables aircraft to be controlled at low flying speeds and to be free from spinning. This invention still has world-wide application to both high and low-speed aircraft.

In the inter-war years, during which Britain’s aircraft industry tried to subsist on orders far too small to ensure healthy conditions, the returns from our slotted wing invention were responsible, in large measure, for keeping the company afloat. Revenues from the patents amounted to approximately £750,000, mostly from foreign countries.

The tremendous value of the slot was demonstrated by the Guhggenheim competition held in the United States in 1931 for aircraft which satisfied certain stringent tests as to safety and efficiency. Requirements included a slow speed of 35 mph and the capacity to land in 100 feet and to take off in 300 feet. Of the twenty-seven entrants only two aircraft survived the tests and both were slotted. One, the handley Page Gugnunc had an incredible steep angle of take off, a top speed of 112.5 mph and a minimum speed of 33.5 mph. In a wind of 8 mph it could land and stop in 63 feet after touching the ground. It could take off in 240 feet.

Between the wars, our most impressive achievements in airliner production were the Hannibal/Heracles H.P. 42 biplanes which first flew in 1930. They were the world’s first four-engined air transports and set new standards of reliablity, luxury and safety. Imperial Airways’ fleet of eight of this class comprised the largest commercial airliners in regular use in any part of the world. Some 12,000 hours were registered by each, their aggregate mileage was upwards of 10 million and they carried some half a million passengers without injury to one of them. These aircraft were transferred to active-service transport duties with the RAF when war began again in 1939.

INTER-WAR BOMBERS
During the inter-war years we produced heavy bombers which were the backbone of the RAF’s offensive force. The first of these was the Hyderabad which, with certain exceptions necessitated by its military application, followed closely on the lines of the W/8 airliner. With a maximum speed of 109 mph, the Hyderabad carried a military load of 3,020 lb, climbed at 800 fpm and had a service ceiling of 14,000 feet in comparison with the 0/400’s climb of 340 fpm and its ceiling of 8,600 ft.

Thus the Hyderabad’s increase of engine power above that of its predecessor was utilised to make a relatively slight improvement in military load but achieved a substantial increase in speed, greatly raised the service ceiling and more than doubled the climbing rate. It was also the first large aircraft to use slotted-wing equipment.

We changed our form of construction from wood to metal in 1924. Our first example was the Hinaidi night bomber which was produced, as was the Hyderabad, in series for the RAF. It was in every other way similar to its forbear apart from its engines. Some of the Hinaidi’s most spectacular active-service operations were its rescue missions of the British Minister and civil population in the evacuation carried out by the RAF from Kabul at the end of 1928 during the Afghanistan civil war.

Our next aircraft was the Clive, a multi-purpose, well-armed heavy transport. It was as a result of the good work performed by Hinaidis that this new aircraft was ordered by the RAF for work in India. It was designed to fulfil any of five different functions: troop, freight, or petrol carrier, bomber or ambulance. A biplane night-bomber, the Heyford, of all-metal construction, was put into production in 1933. It had a speed of 142 mph was well protected by three gun turrets – giving the most intense field of fire devised up to that time – and carried a very large load of bombs for 2,000 miles. In service with the RAF it was judged the most efficient biplane ever tested up to that time.

Quickly following came the Harrow, a big monoplane bomber which had a high performance despite its greatly increased load-carrying ability in comparison with preceding types. It was a first-class example of all-round efficiency as comprising performance, ease of production, serviceability and robustness. With a range of 1,840 miles, the Harrow had a speed of 200 mph, and a service ceiling of 10,000 feet. Aerodynamically, it was important by marking the heavy-bomber’s transition from biplane to monoplane.

Both the Heyford and Harrow saw operational service with the RAF during the last war. The most renowned part played by the Harrow was at Arnhem in the closing stages of hostilities. Being the only large aircraft available to land and take-off from small fields, to the Harrow fell the honour of evacuating paratroops wounded during the Arnhem fighting.

REARMAMENT
With re-armament came our twin-engined all-metal hampden which was designed specifically for fast production methods. It carried a bigger load over a longer distance at a much higher speed than the Harrow, although being much smaller. Like its predecessor, the Hampden embodied the most advanced wing-slot equipment. This enabled its very high top speed to be obtained without sacrificing a desirably low landing speed. In consequence, under active-service conditions, the Hampden proved easy to handle although its speed and rate of climb were greatly in advance of its contemporaries. With the advent of war, squadrons of them attacked all parts of Germany; thereafter they operated with Coastal Command as torpedo-bombers and were used for parachute mine-laying.

Next part: deals with the Halifax and Post War endeavour