AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 59 / 227

Plate 59 of 227 · Between the wars · Two-seat side-by-side training biplane

Blackburn B-2

Blackburn B-2 (1932), painted as G-AEBJ, the Shuttleworth Collection’s Blackburn B-2, built at Brough in 1936, the only complete survivor of the 42 built, kept airworthy at Brough by Blackburn and its successors until BAE Systems gave it to the Collection in 2022, and flown from Old Warden: Blackburn’s side-by-side two-seat training biplane of 30 ft 2 in span, with a polished semi-monocoque metal fuselage, single-bay fabric-covered wings with Handley Page slots on the upper wing, a split-axle undercarriage with oleo legs and a fully cowled 130 hp de Havilland Gipsy Major I, shown standing tail-down on its wheels and tail skid as displayed and flown at Old Warden: polished bare-metal fuselage and cowling, aluminium-doped wings, slots and tail, pale turquoise-blue struts, oleo legs and wheel hubs, black ‘G-AEBJ’ on both fuselage sides and along the belly, ‘G-A’ and ‘EBJ’ under the lower wings, ‘1932 BLACKBURN B2’ on the cowling, and a propeller with cream blades and a pale blue spinner cap (shape from D.P. Fidling’s 1969 Aeromodeller scale plan of G-AEBJ, cross-checked against a published three-view, with the paint and markings following photographs of G-AEBJ).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as G-AEBJ, the Shuttleworth Collection’s Blackburn B-2, built at Brough in 1936, the only complete survivor of the 42 built, kept airworthy at Brough by Blackburn and its successors until BAE Systems gave it to the Collection in 2022, and flown from Old Warden: Blackburn’s side-by-side two-seat training biplane of 30 ft 2 in span, with a polished semi-monocoque metal fuselage, single-bay fabric-covered wings with Handley Page slots on the upper wing, a split-axle undercarriage with oleo legs and a fully cowled 130 hp de Havilland Gipsy Major I, shown standing tail-down on its wheels and tail skid as displayed and flown at Old Warden: polished bare-metal fuselage and cowling, aluminium-doped wings, slots and tail, pale turquoise-blue struts, oleo legs and wheel hubs, black ‘G-AEBJ’ on both fuselage sides and along the belly, ‘G-A’ and ‘EBJ’ under the lower wings, ‘1932 BLACKBURN B2’ on the cowling, and a propeller with cream blades and a pale blue spinner cap (shape from D.P. Fidling’s 1969 Aeromodeller scale plan of G-AEBJ, cross-checked against a published three-view, with the paint and markings following photographs of G-AEBJ). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (799 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Blackburn B-2 (1932) modelled here.

History

The B-2

Blackburn’s Bluebird IV of 1928 had sat its pupil and instructor side by side, so that the instructor could see, and point at, everything the pupil did. For its successor the company kept the side-by-side cockpit but replaced the Bluebird’s steel-tube and fabric fuselage with a semi-monocoque all-metal one, using the methods it had worked out for the Segrave Meteor touring monoplane. The single-bay wings, of 30 ft 2 in span, were fabric-covered and could be folded for storage, and the upper wing carried Handley Page slots.

The prototype, G-ABUW, first flew at Brough on 10 December 1931 with a 120 hp Gipsy III. It and the first production aircraft were shown at the Hendon display and flew in the King’s Cup race in June 1932. Blackburn offered the B-2 as a military trainer, and Portugal tried the prototype, but chose the tandem-seat Tiger Moth instead. Production, with the 130 hp Gipsy Major or the 120 hp Cirrus Hermes IV, ran to 42 aircraft by 1937.

Almost all of them went to Blackburn’s own flying schools at Brough, on the Humber, and at the London Air Park, Hanworth, which trained pilots of the RAF reserve under contract to the Air Ministry. When war broke out in 1939 the Hanworth aircraft moved north and the two schools were merged at Brough as No. 4 Elementary Flying Training School. The B-2s kept their civil registrations but wore wartime trainer colours, until in 1942 the survivors were passed to the Air Training Corps, mostly as ground instructional airframes.

This airframe

Blackburn B-2 G-AEBJ

G-AEBJThe airframe modelled

G-AEBJ was built at Brough in 1936 and is the only complete B-2 left; a second fuselage, carrying the identities G-ACBH and G-ADFO, is at the South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum. After the war it flew with the Brough Flying Club and with North Sea Air Transport, and Blackburn and its successors, Hawker Siddeley and then British Aerospace and BAE Systems, kept it airworthy at Brough for decades as a company heritage aircraft. On 17 March 2022 BAE Systems gave it to the Shuttleworth Collection, together with its DH.60 Moth and Avro Anson, and it now flies from Old Warden. The model shows it as photographed there, with its 130 hp Gipsy Major I, standing tail-down on its wheels and tail skid: a polished bare-metal fuselage and cowling, aluminium-doped wings, slots and tail, pale turquoise-blue struts, oleo legs and wheel hubs, black ‘G-AEBJ’ on both fuselage sides and along the belly, ‘G-A’ and ‘EBJ’ under the lower wings, ‘1932 BLACKBURN B2’ on the cowling, and a propeller with cream blades and a pale blue spinner cap. The shape follows D.P. Fidling’s scale plan of G-AEBJ in Aeromodeller (May 1969), cross-checked against a published three-view and photographs of G-AEBJ; both drawings make the fuselage about 6.9 m long, half a metre less than the 24 ft 3 in usually quoted.

See it at The Shuttleworth Collection

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

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

Every airframe and serial All 227 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.