de Havilland DH.89A Dragon Rapide

De Havilland’s DH.84 Dragon of 1932 had shown that a light twin-engined biplane carrying six or eight passengers could pay its way on short routes, and the four-engined DH.86 had brought a tapered wing and the new Gipsy Six engine. The DH.89 put the two together: a Dragon-sized airliner with the DH.86’s tapered wings, two 200 hp Gipsy Sixes in slim nacelles on the lower wing, and the main wheels in streamlined trousers beneath them. Built of spruce and plywood covered in fabric, it was cheap to buy and easy to fly. The prototype flew at Hatfield on 17 April 1934, piloted by Hubert Broad, and was first called the Dragon Six before the name Dragon Rapide was settled. From 1937 the DH.89A added small trailing-edge flaps under the lower wings.

Railway Air Services, Hillman’s Airways, Jersey Airways and many smaller firms flew it on domestic and island routes, and it sold widely abroad. In July 1936 a Rapide chartered in Croydon flew General Franco from the Canary Islands to Spanish Morocco at the start of the Spanish Civil War. About 205 had been built when the Second World War began. The RAF ordered it as the Dominie, for radio and navigation training and as a light transport, and more than 500 more were built, most of them under contract by Brush Coachworks at Loughborough. Total production came to about 730.

Hundreds of surplus Dominies were converted for civil use after 1945, and the Rapide became the workhorse of Britain’s small post-war airlines, charter firms and air taxi operators. British European Airways flew them on its Scottish Highlands and Islands routes and from Land’s End to the Isles of Scilly until helicopters took over in 1964, and in later years many were used for pleasure flying and parachute dropping. Several still fly in Britain, and others are preserved at the Shuttleworth Collection, IWM Duxford, the De Havilland Aircraft Museum and in museums in the north of England.