Farnborough Air Sciences Trust Museum
Beside Farnborough Airfield. Keeps the aircraft and archives of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, the Factory’s successor.
The types
Royal Aircraft Factory aircraft you can see
| Type | First flew | Built | UK museums |
|---|---|---|---|
| Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2B.E.2b–2e | 1912 | ~3,500 | 6 |
| Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2b | 1915 | ~1,900 | 1 |
| Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.8 | 1916 | 4,077 | 2 |
| Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5a | 1917 | 5,205 | 8 |
The firm
Royal Aircraft Factory in brief
Geoffrey de Havilland was its first new designer. Henry Folland, later chief designer at Gloster, also worked there. At first the letters described layout: B.E. for a Blériot-style tractor, F.E. for a Farman-style pusher. Later they described role, such as R.E. for reconnaissance and S.E. for scout. The B.E.2 stayed in production long after it was outclassed. The S.E.5a was a front-line scout of 1917–18.
Many of its designs were built by private contractors. In 1918 it became the Royal Aircraft Establishment, partly to avoid confusion with the new Royal Air Force. It gave up manufacturing to concentrate on research.
Where to go
Museums holding Royal Aircraft Factory aircraft
| Museum | Royal Aircraft Factory types | Adult entry | Airframes | Headline exhibit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal Air Force Museum LondonLondon, Greater London | 4 | Free | 88 | Avro Lancaster R5868 'S-Sugar' — 137 operations, the RAF's highest-scoring surviving heavy — under the same roof as a Vulcan, a… |
| IWM DuxfordCambridge, Cambridgeshire | 3 | £29 | 146 | Concorde 101 (G-AXDN), the pre-production development aircraft and the fastest Concorde of them all at Mach 2.23 — plus an SR-71A… |
| Montrose Air Station MuseumMontrose, Angus | 2 | £10 | 14 | The 1913 fabric itself, plus the resident ghost stories (Montrose is Britain's most famously haunted airfield, a claim the volunteers… |
| Stow Maries Great War AerodromeChelmsford, Essex | 2 | £12 | 11 | The aerodrome itself: 24 listed RFC buildings, plus flying examples of Great War types on event days (a Fairey Swordfish cameo got… |
| Yorkshire Air MuseumYork, North Yorkshire | 2 | £17 | 54 | Halifax 'Friday the 13th' — the world's only complete Halifax reconstruction, honouring the type that flew from this very field —… |
| Boscombe Down Aviation CollectionSalisbury, Wiltshire | 1 | £13.50 | 49 | The Lancaster cockpit reproduction tour, and a test-and-evaluation pedigree collection you can physically inhabit rather than admire… |
| Brooklands MuseumWeybridge, Surrey | 1 | £24–£27 | 32 | Concorde G-BBDG, the British production-test aircraft, bookended by a Wellington bomber dredged out of Loch Ness in 1985 and the only… |
| Tangmere Military Aviation MuseumChichester, West Sussex | 1 | £15 | 23 | Hawker Hunter WB188 in one-off scarlet, in which Neville Duke took the world air speed record to 727.63 mph off this coast in 1953;… |
| The Shuttleworth CollectionBiggleswade, Bedfordshire | 1 | £19.50 | 55 | The 1934 DH.88 Comet 'Grosvenor House', winner of the MacRobertson England–Australia air race, restored to fly; and the Edwardians —… |
Questions
Frequently asked
What do B.E., F.E., R.E. and S.E. stand for?
At first they described layout: B.E. after Blériot-style tractors, F.E. after Farman-style pushers, S.E. after Santos canards. From 1913–14 they described role, such as Reconnaissance and Scout.
Why was the Royal Aircraft Factory renamed?
In 1918 it became the Royal Aircraft Establishment. The change avoided confusion with the new Royal Air Force, and the site had moved to research.
Where was the Royal Aircraft Factory?
At Farnborough, Hampshire, which remained a research site for decades.