AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 93 / 265

Plate 93 of 265 · Second World War · Heavy night bomber

Armstrong Whitworth Whitley Mk V

Whitley Mk V, N1380, painted as N1380 ‘DY-R’, an Armstrong Whitworth Whitley Mk V of No. 102 (Ceylon) Squadron RAF at Driffield in March 1940, during the leaflet-dropping and early bombing raids over Germany: Armstrong Whitworth’s twin-engined night bomber, with a thick, slab-sided fuselage, a broad wing of 84 ft span set at a steep incidence that made it fly nose-down, two 1,145 hp Rolls-Royce Merlin X engines driving three-bladed propellers, a Nash & Thompson nose turret above the bomb-aimer’s window, the pilots’ glazed canopy, and a four-gun FN4 tail turret between twin fins and rudders, shown standing tail-down on its main wheels and tail wheel: Dark Earth and Dark Green over the upper surfaces and fuselage sides, black undersides, blue, white and red fuselage roundels without a yellow ring, ‘DY’ and ‘R’ in grey either side of the roundel, the serial in small black characters on the rear fuselage, and no fin flashes (shape from the-blueprints.com Whitley Mk V three-view, cross-checked against a second Mk V side view; markings from an air-to-air photograph of N1380’s port side and IWM C927 of its starboard side; the wing camouflage pattern is representative); no complete Whitley survives, and Midland Air Museum holds the rear fuselage of another Whitley V, N1498.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as N1380 ‘DY-R’, an Armstrong Whitworth Whitley Mk V of No. 102 (Ceylon) Squadron RAF at Driffield in March 1940, during the leaflet-dropping and early bombing raids over Germany: Armstrong Whitworth’s twin-engined night bomber, with a thick, slab-sided fuselage, a broad wing of 84 ft span set at a steep incidence that made it fly nose-down, two 1,145 hp Rolls-Royce Merlin X engines driving three-bladed propellers, a Nash & Thompson nose turret above the bomb-aimer’s window, the pilots’ glazed canopy, and a four-gun FN4 tail turret between twin fins and rudders, shown standing tail-down on its main wheels and tail wheel: Dark Earth and Dark Green over the upper surfaces and fuselage sides, black undersides, blue, white and red fuselage roundels without a yellow ring, ‘DY’ and ‘R’ in grey either side of the roundel, the serial in small black characters on the rear fuselage, and no fin flashes (shape from the-blueprints.com Whitley Mk V three-view, cross-checked against a second Mk V side view; markings from an air-to-air photograph of N1380’s port side and IWM C927 of its starboard side; the wing camouflage pattern is representative); no complete Whitley survives, and Midland Air Museum holds the rear fuselage of another Whitley V, N1498. 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 (V); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Whitley Mk V, N1380 modelled here.

History

The Whitley V

Armstrong Whitworth designed the Whitley, under John Lloyd, to Air Ministry specification B.3/34 for a heavy night bomber, and the prototype first flew from Baginton on 17 March 1936. It was one of the RAF’s first monoplane heavy bombers, with a retractable undercarriage and a stressed-skin fuselage, but it was built around a thick, broad wing set at a steep angle to the fuselage, chosen to give a low landing speed before flaps were added to the design. The result was an aircraft that flew with its slab-sided fuselage hanging nose-down, the look by which everyone knew it. It entered service with No. 10 Squadron at Dishforth in March 1937.

The early marks had Armstrong Siddeley Tiger radials and were badly underpowered. The Mk IV brought Rolls-Royce Merlins and a power-operated rear turret, and the Mk V, which first flew in December 1938, added more powerful Merlin X engines, a four-gun Nash & Thompson tail turret, a rear fuselage 15 in longer and fins with straight leading edges. It was by far the most numerous version: 1,466 of the 1,814 Whitleys built were Mk Vs, made by Armstrong Whitworth at Coventry.

At the outbreak of war the Whitley squadrons of No. 4 Group in Yorkshire were Bomber Command’s night specialists. On the first night of the war Whitleys dropped leaflets over Germany, and through the winter of 1939–40 they flew long, freezing leaflet sorties, the “Nickel” raids. On 19/20 March 1940 Whitleys and Hampdens attacked the seaplane base at Hörnum on Sylt, the first bombs deliberately dropped on German soil, and in June 1940 Whitleys crossed the Alps to bomb Turin. They were withdrawn from the main bomber force in 1942, but went on as paratroop and glider-towing trainers, dropping the raiders on the Tragino aqueduct in Italy in February 1941 and on the Bruneval radar station in February 1942, and with Coastal Command on anti-submarine patrols over the Bay of Biscay.

This airframe

Whitley V N1380 ‘DY-R’ of No. 102 Squadron

N1380The airframe modelled

N1380 served with No. 102 (Ceylon) Squadron at Driffield in Yorkshire, one of the No. 4 Group Whitley units flying leaflet and bombing raids over Germany in the first winter of the war. It was photographed from both sides: an air-to-air view of its port side with the serial legible, and the Imperial War Museum’s photograph C927 of its starboard side on the ground at Driffield in March 1940, the month of the raid on Hörnum. No complete Whitley survives. Midland Air Museum at Baginton holds the rear fuselage of another Whitley V, N1498, recovered from the Scottish Highlands, where it crashed with No. 19 Operational Training Unit in January 1942; no photograph of it in service is known, so the model shows N1380 instead, complete as those photographs record it, standing tail-down on its main wheels and tail wheel: Dark Earth and Dark Green over the upper surfaces and down the fuselage sides, black undersides, blue, white and red fuselage roundels without a yellow outer ring, ‘DY’ and ‘R’ in grey either side of the roundel, ‘N1380’ in small black characters on the rear fuselage, camouflaged fins without fin flashes, and black spinners. The camouflage pattern on the upper surfaces of the wings and tailplane, and the red and blue roundels above the wings, follow standard practice of the time rather than a photograph of this aircraft. The shape follows the-blueprints.com Whitley Mk V three-view, cross-checked against a second Mk V side view.

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Whitley V in one UK collection.

Every airframe and serial All 265 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.