AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 25 / 252

Plate 25 of 252 · Great War · Heavy night bomber

Handley Page O/400

Handley Page O/400, C9681, painted as C9681, a Handley Page O/400 flown out from Cranwell to Egypt in July and August 1918 by Brigadier-General Borton and Major MacLaren and taken on by No. 1 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps, as its only heavy bomber, with which Ross Smith bombed Turkish airfields and railways and carried fuel and supplies to Lawrence's Arab forces in September 1918: Handley Page's twin-engined night bomber, a four-bay biplane of 100 ft span with folding wings, the upper wing overhanging the lower and carrying the ailerons, two Rolls-Royce Eagle VIII engines in nacelles between the wings driving four-bladed propellers, a long box-section fuselage with a gunner's ring and twin Lewis guns in the nose and an open pilots' cockpit behind it, a biplane tail with twin fins and rudders, and a four-wheel main undercarriage under the engines, shown standing tail-down on its wheels and tail skid, in the RAF night-bomber finish of 1918: PC10 khaki-green on the upper surfaces, fuselage, nacelles and tail, clear-doped linen undersides, roundels on the fuselage sides, above the upper wing and under the upper-wing overhang, red, white and blue stripes on the rudders and a small white 'C9681' on the rear fuselage (shape from the airwar.ru O/400 three-view, checked against the 1917 German dimensioned drawing of a captured O/100, with paint and markings following the Australian War Memorial's photographs of C9681 in Palestine; the serial's position and the roundels above the upper wing follow other O/400s); no complete O/100 or O/400 survives, and Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome displays a replica of the forward fuselage.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as C9681, a Handley Page O/400 flown out from Cranwell to Egypt in July and August 1918 by Brigadier-General Borton and Major MacLaren and taken on by No. 1 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps, as its only heavy bomber, with which Ross Smith bombed Turkish airfields and railways and carried fuel and supplies to Lawrence's Arab forces in September 1918: Handley Page's twin-engined night bomber, a four-bay biplane of 100 ft span with folding wings, the upper wing overhanging the lower and carrying the ailerons, two Rolls-Royce Eagle VIII engines in nacelles between the wings driving four-bladed propellers, a long box-section fuselage with a gunner's ring and twin Lewis guns in the nose and an open pilots' cockpit behind it, a biplane tail with twin fins and rudders, and a four-wheel main undercarriage under the engines, shown standing tail-down on its wheels and tail skid, in the RAF night-bomber finish of 1918: PC10 khaki-green on the upper surfaces, fuselage, nacelles and tail, clear-doped linen undersides, roundels on the fuselage sides, above the upper wing and under the upper-wing overhang, red, white and blue stripes on the rudders and a small white 'C9681' on the rear fuselage (shape from the airwar.ru O/400 three-view, checked against the 1917 German dimensioned drawing of a captured O/100, with paint and markings following the Australian War Memorial's photographs of C9681 in Palestine; the serial's position and the roundels above the upper wing follow other O/400s); no complete O/100 or O/400 survives, and Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome displays a replica of the forward fuselage. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.0 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (O/400); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Handley Page O/400, C9681 modelled here.

History

The O/400

In December 1914 the Admiralty’s Air Department, under Commodore Murray Sueter, asked Frederick Handley Page for a large twin-engined aircraft that could bomb Germany and attack shipping; Sueter wanted, in his own words, a ‘bloody paralyser’. Handley Page designed the O/100 around two Rolls-Royce Eagle engines in armoured nacelles between the wings, with a 100 ft span that folded back so the aircraft could fit in a hangar. The prototype, 1455, first flew at Hendon on 17 December 1915. Forty-six O/100s were built for the Royal Naval Air Service.

The O/100 reached the RNAS squadrons at Dunkirk in late 1916, flying at first by day and then at night against U-boat bases, railways and the Gotha airfields. One of the first, 3142, landed by mistake at a German airfield near Laon on 1 January 1917 and was captured intact. The O/400 that followed in 1917 had more powerful Eagle VIII engines, its fuel tanks moved from the nacelles into the fuselage and shorter nacelles, and it became the main production version: about 550 were built in Britain, and more were assembled from American-made parts.

O/400s entered service in April 1918, the month the RAF was formed, and equipped the heavy night-bomber squadrons of the Independent Force, which bombed industrial towns, railways and airfields in Germany and occupied France. They could carry up to 2,000 lb of bombs, including the 1,650 lb SN bomb, the largest British bomb of the war, and on the night of 14–15 September 1918 some 40 O/400s attacked targets in the Saar and Metz. After the Armistice the O/400 was replaced by the Vickers Vimy, and Handley Page Transport flew converted O/400s on its first London–Paris and London–Brussels airline services in 1919.

This airframe

O/400 C9681 of No. 1 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps

C9681The airframe modelled

C9681 left Cranwell on 28 July 1918 with Brigadier-General Amyas Borton and Major Stuart MacLaren at the controls and flew by way of Paris, Rome and Crete to Egypt, the first flight from England to Egypt. In Palestine it joined No. 1 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps, as the squadron’s only heavy bomber, and in September 1918 Captain Ross Smith flew it on raids against Turkish airfields and railways and carried fuel and supplies to T.E. Lawrence and the Arab forces at Umm el Surab. In November and December 1918 Borton, MacLaren and Ross Smith flew it on from Egypt to Calcutta, the first flight between the two. No complete O/100 or O/400 survives; Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome in Essex displays a full-size replica of the forward fuselage. The model shows C9681 as the Australian War Memorial’s photographs record it in Palestine, standing tail-down on its wheels and tail skid: PC10 khaki-green on the upper surfaces, fuselage, nacelles and tail, clear-doped linen undersides, roundels on the fuselage sides and under the upper-wing overhang, red, white and blue stripes on the rudders, and twin Lewis guns on the nose ring. The serial is too small to read in those photographs, so its position follows other O/400s, as do the roundels above the upper wing. The shape follows the airwar.ru O/400 three-view, checked against a German dimensioned drawing of the captured O/100.

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the O/400 in one UK collection.

Every airframe and serial All 252 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.