AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 06 / 91

Plate 06 of 91 · Great War · Reconnaissance and artillery-spotting biplane

Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.8

R.E.8, painted as F3556, a Daimler-built R.E.8 of 1918 that reached France in its packing case on Armistice Day, as restored by the Imperial War Museum and displayed at Duxford: PC10 khaki-brown fuselage, fin and upper surfaces, clear-doped linen undersides, a bare aluminium cowling with ‘A Paddy Bird from Ceylon’ on the port side, the R.A.F. 4a V-12 with its tall twin exhaust stacks and air scoop, roundels on the fuselage sides and under the lower wings, white ‘F3556’ on the rear fuselage, a blue, white and red striped rudder with the serial in black, a grey four-blade propeller and a Lewis gun on the observer’s ring.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as F3556, a Daimler-built R.E.8 of 1918 that reached France in its packing case on Armistice Day, as restored by the Imperial War Museum and displayed at Duxford: PC10 khaki-brown fuselage, fin and upper surfaces, clear-doped linen undersides, a bare aluminium cowling with ‘A Paddy Bird from Ceylon’ on the port side, the R.A.F. 4a V-12 with its tall twin exhaust stacks and air scoop, roundels on the fuselage sides and under the lower wings, white ‘F3556’ on the rear fuselage, a blue, white and red striped rudder with the serial in black, a grey four-blade propeller and a Lewis gun on the observer’s ring. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.1 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the R.E.8 modelled here.

History

The R.E.8

The R.E.8 was designed at the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough by John Kenworthy and Walter Barling to replace the B.E.2 in the Royal Flying Corps’ corps squadrons, the units that spotted for the artillery, took photographs and watched the trenches. The most important change was to put the observer behind the pilot, where he had a clear field of fire for a Lewis gun on a Scarff ring, while the pilot had a Vickers gun firing forward through the propeller. Frank Goodden flew the first prototype on 17 June 1916. The engine was the Factory’s air-cooled R.A.F. 4a V-12, whose two tall exhaust stacks rose above the upper wing.

No. 52 Squadron took the first production aircraft to France in November 1916, and things went badly. The R.E.8 landed faster than the B.E.2e and gave little warning of a stall, and several crews were killed in spins on the approach, some of the aircraft burning after the crash. The squadron went back to B.E.2es in January 1917 while the fin was enlarged and pilots were retrained. The type was still no match for German fighters: on 13 April 1917 Jasta 11 shot down all six R.E.8s of a No. 59 Squadron photographic formation whose escort had failed to meet them.

Even so, the R.E.8 became the RFC’s, and then the RAF’s, standard corps aircraft. Some 4,077 were built, nearly all by contractors such as Austin, Daimler, Standard, Siddeley-Deasy and the Coventry Ordnance Works, and by 1918 it equipped nineteen squadrons. It served on the Western Front, in Italy, Palestine, Mesopotamia and Russia, with the Australian Flying Corps, and with Belgium after the war. Crews called it the ‘Harry Tate’, rhyming slang after a music-hall comedian. Only two originals survive: F3556 at IWM Duxford and a Belgian aircraft in Brussels.

This airframe

R.E.8 F3556

F3556The airframe modelled

F3556 was built under contract by the Daimler Company at Coventry in 1918 and reached France on Armistice Day, still in its packing case, so it never saw action. It passed to the Imperial War Museum and was shown in London for many years before moving to Duxford, where its restoration was completed in 2004. It now hangs from the roof of the AirSpace hangar. The model shows it as photographed there: PC10 khaki-brown on the fuselage, fin and upper surfaces, clear-doped linen undersides, a bare aluminium cowling with ‘A Paddy Bird from Ceylon’ painted on the port side, the R.A.F. 4a engine with its twin exhaust stacks and air scoop, roundels on the fuselage sides and under the lower wings, white “F3556” on the rear fuselage, a blue, white and red striped rudder carrying the serial in black, a grey four-blade propeller and a Lewis gun on the observer’s ring. It is modelled standing on its wheels and tail skid rather than in the flying attitude in which it is displayed.

See it at IWM Duxford

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the R.E.8 in 2 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 91 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.