3D model
Turn it over
A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as E3273, a No. 77 Squadron Home Defence night fighter of 1918, as worn by The Shuttleworth Collection’s airworthy 504K G-ADEV: dark green-grey NIVO upper surfaces and fuselage over clear-doped linen, a grey cowling round its Le Rhône rotary, blue and red night roundels, a Lewis gun on the upper centre section, the anti-nose-over skid between the wheels and a blue and red rudder lettered ‘E 3273’, as it is flown from Old Warden. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.2 MB)
History
The 504K
Alliott Verdon Roe’s company designed the 504 as a two-seat tractor biplane, and it first flew at Brooklands in July 1913. It was light, simple and easy to fly, and the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service both bought it before the war. In November 1914 three RNAS 504s flew from Belfort to bomb the Zeppelin sheds at Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, one of the first strategic bombing raids.
It was soon outclassed at the front, but it found its true job at home. In 1917 Robert Smith-Barry built his Gosport system of flying instruction round the 504, with the instructor and pupil talking through a speaking tube, and the 504J and then the 504K became the standard RAF trainer. The K’s universal engine mounting, with an open horseshoe cowl, let it take whichever rotary engine was to hand. Some 8,970 504s were built in Britain in all, and no other British aeroplane was built in greater numbers during the war.
In 1918 Home Defence squadrons also flew the 504K as a single-seat night fighter against the Gothas and Zeppelins, with the front cockpit faired over and a Lewis gun above the centre section. After the war, hundreds of surplus 504Ks gave joyrides at seaside resorts and air pageants, and the RAF went on training pilots on the 504K and its successor, the radial-engined 504N, into the 1930s.
This airframe
504K G-ADEV (‘E3273’)
G-ADEV is The Shuttleworth Collection’s airworthy 504K. It served the RAF as a 504N trainer, was impressed in 1940, and was rebuilt to 504K standard by Avro apprentices in the 1950s for the film ‘Reach for the Sky’. It has flown from Old Warden, Bedfordshire, for decades, for many years as ‘H5199’. After its 2010 overhaul it was repainted as E3273, a 504K night fighter of No. 77 Squadron, a Home Defence unit in East Lothian in 1918. The model shows it in that scheme: dark green-grey NIVO over clear-doped linen, a grey cowling round its Le Rhône rotary, blue and red night roundels, a Lewis gun on the upper centre section, red wheel discs and a blue and red rudder lettered ‘E 3273’.
Where to see one
In the gazetteer
The gazetteer records the 504K in 4 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.