AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 39 / 98

Plate 39 of 98 · Second World War · Heavy bomber

Handley Page Halifax

B.III, painted as the Yorkshire Air Museum’s Handley Page Halifax B.III at Elvington, a composite rebuilt by the museum’s volunteers around fuselage sections of Halifax II HR792, which force-landed on the Isle of Lewis in 1945, with parts of other Halifaxes and the outer wings of a Handley Page Hastings, painted as it is shown there: Dark Earth and Dark Green upper surfaces over black sides and undersides, on the port side as LV907 ‘NP-F’ ‘Friday the 13th’ of No. 158 Squadron with its nose art and a bomb log of 128 operations, on the starboard side as NP763 ‘H7-N’ of No. 346 (Free French) ‘Guyenne’ Squadron with French roundels and a red fin, four Bristol Hercules radials with red cowling lips, the Perspex nose, the four-gun dorsal and tail turrets, the H2S radome under the rear fuselage and black three-blade propellers with yellow tips; the upper wing surfaces are never photographed from above, so they carry no roundels.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as the Yorkshire Air Museum’s Handley Page Halifax B.III at Elvington, a composite rebuilt by the museum’s volunteers around fuselage sections of Halifax II HR792, which force-landed on the Isle of Lewis in 1945, with parts of other Halifaxes and the outer wings of a Handley Page Hastings, painted as it is shown there: Dark Earth and Dark Green upper surfaces over black sides and undersides, on the port side as LV907 ‘NP-F’ ‘Friday the 13th’ of No. 158 Squadron with its nose art and a bomb log of 128 operations, on the starboard side as NP763 ‘H7-N’ of No. 346 (Free French) ‘Guyenne’ Squadron with French roundels and a red fin, four Bristol Hercules radials with red cowling lips, the Perspex nose, the four-gun dorsal and tail turrets, the H2S radome under the rear fuselage and black three-blade propellers with yellow tips; the upper wing surfaces are never photographed from above, so they carry no roundels. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.8 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (II/III); engine, crew and dimensions are for the B.III modelled here.

History

The Halifax

The Halifax began as Handley Page’s design to specification P.13/36 for a twin-engined bomber powered by the Rolls-Royce Vulture. When it became clear that the Vulture would be late and unreliable, the design was enlarged to take four Rolls-Royce Merlins instead. The prototype, L7244, first flew from Bicester on 25 October 1939, and the first Halifaxes reached No. 35 Squadron at Leeming in November 1940. The squadron flew the type’s first raid, on Le Havre, on the night of 10–11 March 1941, making the Halifax the second of the RAF’s four-engined heavies to go to war, after the Stirling.

The early Merlin-powered marks were underpowered and suffered from rudder overbalance, which could put the aircraft into an unrecoverable sideslip. Handley Page cured this with large rectangular fins, and in 1943 the B.III replaced the Merlins with Bristol Hercules radials and extended the wing tips, making it the best of the family. Halifaxes served throughout the night offensive, especially with No. 4 Group in Yorkshire and No. 6 (Royal Canadian Air Force) Group, flying 82,773 sorties with Bomber Command. Two French heavy bomber squadrons, Nos. 346 “Guyenne” and 347 “Tunisie”, flew them from Elvington from 1944.

The Halifax did far more than bomb. It hunted U-boats and flew weather reconnaissance with Coastal Command, dropped agents and supplies to resistance groups for the Special Operations Executive, and towed gliders into Normandy, to Arnhem and across the Rhine. Handley Page and its partner firms built 6,176 Halifaxes, and the last RAF examples, weather reconnaissance aircraft of No. 224 Squadron at Gibraltar, retired in March 1952. No complete wartime Halifax survives; the RAF Museum displays W1048, raised from a Norwegian lake in 1973, as it was recovered.

This airframe

Halifax B.III “Friday the 13th”

LV907The airframe modelled

The Yorkshire Air Museum’s Halifax was rebuilt by its volunteers at Elvington, the wartime home of the two French Halifax squadrons. Its heart is the fuselage of Halifax II HR792, which force-landed on the Isle of Lewis in 1945 and was later used by a crofter as a hen house. The volunteers added parts of other Halifaxes and the outer wings of a Handley Page Hastings, the Halifax’s post-war transport cousin, and finished the aircraft as a Hercules-engined B.III. On the port side it wears the markings of LV907 “NP-F” “Friday the 13th” of No. 158 Squadron at Lissett, which flew 128 operations and survived the war, with its skull-and-crossbones nose art and a bomb for each raid. On the starboard side it is NP763 “H7-N” of No. 346 “Guyenne” Squadron, with French roundels, the Cross of Lorraine on the nose and a red fin. The model shows it as displayed: Dark Earth and Dark Green upper surfaces over black sides and undersides, red cowling lips, the four-gun dorsal and tail turrets, the H2S radar blister under the rear fuselage, and black propellers with yellow tips. No photograph looks down on the upper wing, so it is left without roundels.

See it at Yorkshire Air Museum

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

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

Every airframe and serial All 98 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.