AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 37 / 97

Plate 37 of 97 · Second World War · Multi-engine trainer

Airspeed Oxford

Oxford I, painted as V3388, an Airspeed Oxford I built by de Havilland in 1940 with two Armstrong Siddeley Cheetah radials, flown after the war as G-AHTW by Boulton Paul Aircraft as its company hack, restored to RAF colours by the Skyfame museum at Staverton in 1960 and now hanging in AirSpace at IWM Duxford, painted as it is shown there: Dark Earth and Dark Green upper surfaces over trainer-yellow sides and undersides, dark green cowlings, a yellow-ringed Type A1 roundel and ‘V3388’ in black on the fuselage, Type A roundels and large serials under the wings, a fin flash below the rudder horn, the glazed nose panel, no dorsal turret, and black two-blade propellers with yellow tips; the upper surfaces are never photographed whole, so their camouflage pattern is a generic one.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as V3388, an Airspeed Oxford I built by de Havilland in 1940 with two Armstrong Siddeley Cheetah radials, flown after the war as G-AHTW by Boulton Paul Aircraft as its company hack, restored to RAF colours by the Skyfame museum at Staverton in 1960 and now hanging in AirSpace at IWM Duxford, painted as it is shown there: Dark Earth and Dark Green upper surfaces over trainer-yellow sides and undersides, dark green cowlings, a yellow-ringed Type A1 roundel and ‘V3388’ in black on the fuselage, Type A roundels and large serials under the wings, a fin flash below the rudder horn, the glazed nose panel, no dorsal turret, and black two-blade propellers with yellow tips; the upper surfaces are never photographed whole, so their camouflage pattern is a generic one. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.4 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Oxford I modelled here.

History

The Oxford

Airspeed based the Oxford on its Envoy, a small twin-engined airliner, to meet an Air Ministry specification for a multi-engined trainer. It was a low-winged wooden monoplane with a retractable undercarriage, flaps and a cabin for a pilot, a navigator or bomb aimer and a wireless operator or gunner. The prototype, L4534, first flew at Portsmouth on 19 June 1937, and the Central Flying School received the first Oxfords that November.

As the RAF expanded, the Oxford became its standard advanced trainer for pilots going on to bombers, and it also trained navigators, bomb aimers, wireless operators and air gunners; some early aircraft carried a dorsal gun turret. Airspeed could not build enough on its own, so de Havilland, Percival and Standard Motors built them too, and 8,586 had been made when production stopped in 1945. Under the Empire Air Training Scheme they flew in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Southern Rhodesia and South Africa as well as Britain.

Oxfords also flew as air ambulances, communications aircraft and for radar calibration and beam-approach training. After the war many were sold to civil owners and foreign air forces, and Airspeed turned some into Consul light airliners. The RAF retired its last Oxfords in 1956.

This airframe

Oxford I V3388

V3388The airframe modelled

V3388 was built by de Havilland in 1940 and, after a spell in storage, had an uneventful wartime career. In 1946 it was sold to Boulton Paul Aircraft, registered G-AHTW and flown as the company’s communications aircraft from Wolverhampton and Seighford for fourteen years. On 25 March 1960 it went to the Skyfame Aircraft Museum at Staverton, which painted it back into RAF colours as V3388; for a time it was the last Oxford still flying. When Skyfame closed in January 1978 it moved to Duxford with much of the collection, and today it hangs from the roof of AirSpace. The model shows it as displayed: Dark Earth and Dark Green upper surfaces over trainer-yellow sides and undersides, dark green cowlings, a yellow-ringed fuselage roundel, the serial on the fuselage and under the wings, a fin flash, and black propellers with yellow tips. It has no dorsal turret. Its upper surfaces cannot be seen whole in any photograph, so the camouflage pattern there is a generic one, and the roundels on top of the wings follow a 1990 photograph.

See it at IWM Duxford

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Oxford in 2 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 97 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.