AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 03 / 88

Plate 03 of 88 · Great War · Biplane scout

Bristol Scout D

Scout D, painted as A1742 (BAPC 38), Aerospace Bristol’s static reproduction of the Bristol Scout D, the little single-seat scout that grew out of Frank Barnwell and Harry Busteed’s 1914 racer, with its 80 hp Le Rhône rotary in an open-fronted aluminium cowling, built in 1962, shown for many years at Old Warden and at Filton since 2017, painted in the 1916 Royal Flying Corps finish it carries today: PC10 khaki-green upper surfaces on the wings, tailplane and turtle deck, clear-doped linen on the fuselage sides, undersides and wheel covers, bare aluminium cowling and forward panels, varnished spruce struts and undercarriage, roundels on the fuselage sides, above the upper wing and under the lower wing, a blue, white and red striped rudder, black ‘A1742’ on the rear fuselage, a Lewis gun above the upper-wing centre section and cane hoop skids under the lower wing tips.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as A1742 (BAPC 38), Aerospace Bristol’s static reproduction of the Bristol Scout D, the little single-seat scout that grew out of Frank Barnwell and Harry Busteed’s 1914 racer, with its 80 hp Le Rhône rotary in an open-fronted aluminium cowling, built in 1962, shown for many years at Old Warden and at Filton since 2017, painted in the 1916 Royal Flying Corps finish it carries today: PC10 khaki-green upper surfaces on the wings, tailplane and turtle deck, clear-doped linen on the fuselage sides, undersides and wheel covers, bare aluminium cowling and forward panels, varnished spruce struts and undercarriage, roundels on the fuselage sides, above the upper wing and under the lower wing, a blue, white and red striped rudder, black ‘A1742’ on the rear fuselage, a Lewis gun above the upper-wing centre section and cane hoop skids under the lower wing tips. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.2 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (C/D); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Scout D modelled here.

History

The Scout D

Frank Barnwell and the company’s test pilot Harry Busteed designed the Scout at Filton in late 1913 as a small, fast single-seater for racing and sport, and Busteed first flew it at Larkhill on 23 February 1914. It was shown at the Olympia Aero Show the next month, where its neat lines and 80 hp Gnome rotary earned it the nickname “Baby”. With larger wings it reached nearly 100 mph, very fast for 1914, and it was being prepared for races when war came that August and the War Office took over both of the improved Scout Bs.

The Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service ordered it in quantity as the Scout C, and from late 1915 as the Scout D, with a larger, open-fronted cowling and, in later batches, the 100 hp Gnome Monosoupape. It was meant to carry messages and scout ahead, not to fight, and it was built with no fixed gun. Pilots armed it themselves with rifles, pistols and Lewis guns fixed to fire at an angle past the propeller. Captain Lanoe Hawker of No. 6 Squadron, flying a Scout C with a Lewis gun mounted that way, attacked three German two-seaters on 25 July 1915 and was awarded the first Victoria Cross for air-to-air fighting.

Some Scout Ds were given a Vickers gun synchronised to fire through the propeller, but by mid-1916 the Scout was outclassed in France and was sent to quieter fronts: the Aegean, Macedonia, Palestine and Mesopotamia, while the RNAS also flew it from ships and against Zeppelins at home. At home it became a fast advanced trainer and squadron runabout until the end of the war. In all 374 were built, and no original survives. Three museums in the gazetteer show Scouts: the Fleet Air Arm Museum’s uncovered reproduction N5419, Aerospace Bristol’s A1742, and Shuttleworth’s airworthy 1264, which the Bremner family built around their grandfather’s own control column.

This airframe

Scout D ‘A1742’ (BAPC 38)

A1742The airframe modelled

A1742 is a static reproduction built in the early 1960s and recorded as BAPC 38. It carries the serial of the first aircraft of the last batch of fifty Scout Ds ordered for the Royal Flying Corps (A1742–A1791), the original being delivered in mid-1916 with a Gnome Monosoupape. The reproduction spent many years on show with the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden, where it stood alongside the airworthy 1264, and in March 2017 it moved to Aerospace Bristol at Filton, a few hundred yards from where the Scouts were built. The model shows it as photographed there: PC10 khaki-green upper surfaces on the wings, tailplane and turtle deck, clear-doped linen on the fuselage sides, undersides and wheel covers, a bare aluminium cowling and forward panels, varnished spruce struts and undercarriage legs, roundels on the fuselage sides, above the upper wing and under the lower wing, a blue, white and red striped rudder, black “A1742” on the rear fuselage, a Lewis gun on a mounting above the upper-wing centre section and cane hoop skids under the lower wing tips.

See it at Aerospace Bristol

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Scout D in 3 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 88 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.