Aircraft between the wars

The Hind grew out of Sydney Camm’s Hart, the two-seat light day bomber that first flew in June 1928 and gave the RAF a shock in the 1930 air exercises, when it proved faster than the Siskins and Bulldogs sent to intercept it. Hawker turned the Hart into a whole family: the Demon two-seat fighter, the Audax for army co-operation, the Osprey for the Fleet Air Arm, and trainers and export versions besides, more than 2,800 aircraft in all. The Hind was the last of the bombers, a refined Hart with the more powerful Rolls-Royce Kestrel V, a tailwheel in place of the skid, ejector exhausts and a cut-down rear cockpit that gave the gunner a better field of fire for his Lewis gun.

In the 1930 air exercises the Hart, the Hind’s parent, was so much faster than the RAF’s own fighters that Hawker was asked to build a fighter version of the bomber, which became the Demon.

K5414 is the only Hawker Hind still flying.

The Gladiator was Henry Folland’s last refinement of the open-cockpit Gauntlet. Gloster built it as a private venture, the SS.37, to meet an Air Ministry specification for a four-gun fighter, giving it single-bay wings braced by one pair of interplane struts on each side, cantilever main undercarriage legs with internal springing, flaps on both wings and a Bristol Mercury radial in a long-chord cowling. The prototype first flew on 12 September 1934 and reached about 242 mph, and the Air Ministry ordered the type in 1935 as the Gladiator, with an enclosed sliding canopy, the first on an RAF fighter, and four machine guns, two in the fuselage sides and one under each lower wing.

The Gladiator was the RAF’s last biplane fighter and also its first fighter with an enclosed cockpit: the pilot sat under a sliding canopy between wings braced with wires.

L8032 was the last Gladiator Mk I built.

The Tiger Moth grew out of de Havilland’s DH.60 Moth. To let the instructor in the front seat bail out wearing a parachute, the upper wing’s centre section was moved forward, clear of the front cockpit, and the wings were swept back slightly to keep the balance right. The first DH.82 flew at Stag Lane on 26 October 1931, and the RAF ordered it as an elementary trainer the following year.

The swept-back wings were not for speed: they balanced the aircraft after the upper centre section was moved forward so the front-seat occupant could escape by parachute.

T6296 was built by Morris Motors at Cowley in 1941 and taught RAF pupils at No. 1 Elementary Flying Training School at Hatfield and No. 7 EFTS at Desford.

The Anson grew out of the Avro 652, a small six-seat airliner built for Imperial Airways. A military version, the 652A, flew in March 1935 to meet an Air Ministry need for a coastal reconnaissance aircraft, and in 1936 it became the first RAF monoplane with a retractable undercarriage to reach squadron service.

Early Ansons had to have their undercarriage wound up by hand, 144 turns of a crank.

G-AHKX first flew in November 1946 and went to Smiths Instruments at Staverton, which used it for communications and instrument development until 1959.

In the mid-1930s the RAF taught its pilots on biplanes, while the fighters they would go on to fly were becoming monoplanes. F. G. Miles of Phillips & Powis at Woodley, near Reading, had already built the Hawk Trainer, a two-seat version of his light Hawk monoplane, and the Air Ministry wrote specification T.40/36 around a militarised version of it. The prototype M.14, flown by Miles on 20 March 1937, was a low-wing monoplane built of spruce and plywood, with tandem open cockpits, flaps, a fixed undercarriage and a 130 hp de Havilland Gipsy Major I. It gave pupils the feel of a monoplane, flaps and all, before they moved on to the Harvard, the Master and then the Hurricane and Spitfire.

The Magister was the RAF’s first monoplane trainer, but it was built almost entirely of wood: a spruce and plywood airframe in an age that was turning to metal.

P6382 was built by Phillips & Powis at Woodley in 1939 and served with the RAF as an elementary trainer.

Fairey built the Swordfish as a private venture, the TSR II, a torpedo, spotter and reconnaissance biplane for the Fleet Air Arm developed from an earlier design that had crashed in 1933. The prototype first flew on 17 April 1934, and the Admiralty ordered it into production as the Swordfish. It was a fabric-covered two-bay biplane of steel and light alloy with a Bristol Pegasus radial, open cockpits for a pilot, an observer and a telegraphist air gunner, and wings that folded back beside the fuselage for stowage aboard ship.

The Swordfish outlasted its intended replacement: the Fairey Albacore left front-line service before it did, and Swordfish were still flying operationally when the war in Europe ended.

W5856 was built by Blackburn at Sherburn-in-Elmet and first flew on 21 October 1941.

R. J. Mitchell designed the Walrus at Supermarine as a private venture, a small amphibian that warships could launch from a catapult to scout and spot for their guns. It grew out of the company’s earlier Seagull biplanes but had a single-step light-alloy hull, retractable main wheels and wings that folded back beside the hull. The Bristol Pegasus radial sat in a nacelle between the wings, driving a pusher propeller, and the whole aircraft was stressed to be catapulted with a full load.

The Walrus was the first British squadron aircraft with a retractable main undercarriage, completely enclosed crew accommodation and an all-metal fuselage, and the first amphibian to be catapulted from a ship with a full military load.

L2301 was built by Supermarine and delivered to the Irish Air Corps in March 1939 as N18, one of three Walruses used for coastal patrols during the Emergency; it suffered an engine failure and was damaged in a ditching on its delivery flight.

The Spanish engineer Juan de la Cierva invented the autogiro to make an aeroplane that could not stall. Its rotor was not driven by the engine: once the machine was moving, air flowing up through the blades kept them turning, and they went on lifting it at speeds at which a wing would have quit. His C.4 made the first successful autogiro flight at Getafe in January 1923, and in 1926 he moved his work to Britain and formed the Cierva Autogiro Company.

The C.30 had no ailerons, elevators or rudder: the pilot flew it by tilting the whole rotor head with a control column that hung down from the hub above his head.

K4232 is one of the ten Rotas built by Avro at Manchester for the RAF, and it was delivered to the School of Army Co-operation at Old Sarum, Wiltshire, on 25 August 1934.

Henri Mignet was a self-taught French designer who wanted an aeroplane anyone could build and fly. His HM.14 Pou-du-Ciel, or ‘sky louse’, first flew on 10 September 1933. It had two wings in tandem and no tailplane: the pilot moved the stick fore and aft to tilt the whole front wing and side to side to swing the large rudder.

There were no ailerons and no rudder pedals: the stick tilted the front wing to climb or dive and swung the rudder to turn.

G-AEBB was built by K. W. Owen in Southampton in 1935–36 and registered in January 1936, just as the Flea was grounded; it probably never flew.

R.J. Mitchell designed the S.6 for the 1929 Schneider Trophy, a seaplane race that had become a contest of national prestige. Rolls-Royce built the R engine for it, a supercharged V-12 of nearly 1,900 hp, and Mitchell wrapped it in the smallest metal airframe he could, cooling it through double-skinned radiators that formed the wings and float surfaces.

N248 played the S.6B in the 1942 film “The First of the Few”.

N248 was disqualified from the 1929 race for turning inside a marker pylon but still set world records for 50 and 100 km.