Dinger
Airman 1st Class
Hoping someone out there has a bit more info on this...
No, its not a Lancaster - Its a design study from Fairey. I was sent it by the late ID Huntley, font of knowledge on all things Fairey ( I believe he was Fairey's archivist ) who was a prolific writer of articles about camouflage and colour schemes from the 70s through to the early 2000s. The story he told about it goes like this. With the success of the Fairey long-range monoplane, CR Fairey schemed a 6 stage scheme to take its basic design and improve it - progressively adding first a second engine, then retracting undercarriage etc until ending up with this "6th Stage" bomber. This was apparently written up in a printed brochure and with lantern slides (the PowerPoint of the day) CR Fairey tried to sell the program to the Air Ministry and the government in a series of lectures. The program as a whole obviously never got adopted but either the "Stage2" or "Stage3" design ended up being produced as the Fairey Hendon two-engined monoplane bomber. The Hendon suffered from a 4-year delay being ordered by the Air Ministry that rendered it obsolete before it entered service. This four-engined design looks pretty advanced at first glance but you have to realise it is not a stressed-wing design but instead used the internally-braced wing used on the LR Monoplane and Hendon. Although the internal skeleton was metal the whole of the wing and most of the fuselage would have been covered in fabric. The turrets are crude manual- powered ones with just single Lewis guns. The cockpit is offset (like that of the Hendon). Like the Hendon it would not have had flaps, so would have had a very high landing speed for the time (something that was always a problem with the Hendon). I presume the engines would have been Napier Lions when originally designed (but probably been changed for RR Kestrels by the time it got to production, like the Hendon). It had a paltry bombload by WW2 bomber standards, only 2,500 LBs. Range reckoned as 1,500 miles. - Both those last figures are from the only place I can find any mention of it, an article on the Hendon in the January 1974 edition of Aircraft Illustrated magazine by ID Huntley himself (where the same diagram is featured). No idea of expected speed. I've got a big selection of "secret project" type books on British subjects but I've never seen any mention of it in any of them. It is not mentioned in Putnam's "Fairey Aircraft" (at least not in the edition I've got)- Has anyone out there ever come across this design before? - Could point me towards any publication that mentions it? - Anyone got any details of this "six-stage" program and the designs that filled in the gaps between the LR Monoplane and this one? - I suppose its too much to hope that a copy of the "brochure" still exists somewhere. Any information gratefully received.
No, its not a Lancaster - Its a design study from Fairey. I was sent it by the late ID Huntley, font of knowledge on all things Fairey ( I believe he was Fairey's archivist ) who was a prolific writer of articles about camouflage and colour schemes from the 70s through to the early 2000s. The story he told about it goes like this. With the success of the Fairey long-range monoplane, CR Fairey schemed a 6 stage scheme to take its basic design and improve it - progressively adding first a second engine, then retracting undercarriage etc until ending up with this "6th Stage" bomber. This was apparently written up in a printed brochure and with lantern slides (the PowerPoint of the day) CR Fairey tried to sell the program to the Air Ministry and the government in a series of lectures. The program as a whole obviously never got adopted but either the "Stage2" or "Stage3" design ended up being produced as the Fairey Hendon two-engined monoplane bomber. The Hendon suffered from a 4-year delay being ordered by the Air Ministry that rendered it obsolete before it entered service. This four-engined design looks pretty advanced at first glance but you have to realise it is not a stressed-wing design but instead used the internally-braced wing used on the LR Monoplane and Hendon. Although the internal skeleton was metal the whole of the wing and most of the fuselage would have been covered in fabric. The turrets are crude manual- powered ones with just single Lewis guns. The cockpit is offset (like that of the Hendon). Like the Hendon it would not have had flaps, so would have had a very high landing speed for the time (something that was always a problem with the Hendon). I presume the engines would have been Napier Lions when originally designed (but probably been changed for RR Kestrels by the time it got to production, like the Hendon). It had a paltry bombload by WW2 bomber standards, only 2,500 LBs. Range reckoned as 1,500 miles. - Both those last figures are from the only place I can find any mention of it, an article on the Hendon in the January 1974 edition of Aircraft Illustrated magazine by ID Huntley himself (where the same diagram is featured). No idea of expected speed. I've got a big selection of "secret project" type books on British subjects but I've never seen any mention of it in any of them. It is not mentioned in Putnam's "Fairey Aircraft" (at least not in the edition I've got)- Has anyone out there ever come across this design before? - Could point me towards any publication that mentions it? - Anyone got any details of this "six-stage" program and the designs that filled in the gaps between the LR Monoplane and this one? - I suppose its too much to hope that a copy of the "brochure" still exists somewhere. Any information gratefully received.