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Subject: Fairey Battle
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Battle
The Fairey Battle was a British single-engine light bomber designed and
manufactured by the Fairey Aviation Company. It was developed during the
mid-1930s for the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a monoplane successor to the earlier
Hawker Hart and Hind biplanes. The Battle was powered by the same Rolls-Royce
Merlin piston engine that provided various contemporary British fighters high
performance; however, the Battle was weighed down with a three-man crew and a
bomb load. Despite being a great improvement on the aircraft that preceded it,
by the time it saw action, the Battle was relatively slow, limited in terms of
range and was quickly found to be highly vulnerable to both anti-aircraft fire
and hostile fighters, possessing only two defensive .303 in machine guns.
The Fairey Battle participated in direct combat missions during early stages of
the Second World War. During the "Phoney War", the type achieved the distinction
of attaining the first aerial victory of an RAF aircraft in the conflict.
However, by May 1940, the Battle had suffered heavy losses, frequently in excess
of 50 per cent of sortied aircraft per mission. By the end of 1940, the type had
been entirely withdrawn from active combat service, instead being mainly
relegated to use by training units overseas. For an aircraft which had been
viewed to possess a high level of pre-war promise, the Battle quickly became one
of the most disappointing aircraft in RAF service.
Even prior to the first flight of the prototype, some members of the Air Staff
had concluded that both the specified range and bomb load, to which the aircraft
had been designed to, were insufficient to enable its viable use in a
prospective conflict with a re-emergent Germany. Despite these performance
concerns, there was also considerable pressure for the Battle to be rapidly
placed into mass production in order that it could contribute to a wider
increase of the RAF's frontline combat aircraft strength in line with similar
strides being made during the 1930s by the German Luftwaffe. As such, the
initial production order placed for the type, for the manufacture of 155
aircraft built as per the requirements of Specification P.23/35, which had
received the name Battle, had been issued in advance of the first flight of the
prototype.
Role
Light bomber
National origin
United Kingdom
Manufacturer
Fairey Aviation Company
Designer
Marcel Lobelle
First flight
10 March 1936
Introduction
June 1937
Retired
1949
Status
5 remain in museums
Primary users
Royal Air Force
Belgian Air Force
Royal Australian Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Free Polish Air Force
Produced
Number built
2,185
The Battle was obsolete by the start of the Second World War, but remained a
front-line RAF bomber owing to a lack of a suitable replacement. On 2 September
1939, during the "Phoney War", 10 Battle squadrons were deployed to pre-selected
airfields France to form a portion of the vanguard of the British Advanced Air
Striking Force, which was independent of the similarly-tasked Army-led British
Expeditionary Force. Once the Battles arrived, the aircraft were dispersed and
efforts were made to camouflage or otherwise obscure their presence; the
envisioned purpose of their deployment had been that, in the event of German
commencement of bombing attacks, the Battles based in France could launch
retaliatory raids upon Germany, specifically in the Ruhr valley region, and
would benefit from their closer range than otherwise possible from the British
mainland.
While found to be inadequate as a bomber aircraft in the Second World War, the
Fairey Battle found a new niche in its later service life. As the Fairey Battle
T, for which it was furnished with a dual-cockpit arrangement in place of the
standard long canopy, the type served as a trainer aircraft. The Battle T was
equipped with dual-controls in the cockpit and optionally featured a
Bristol-built Type I gun turret when employed as a bombing/gunnery training. As
the winch-equipped Fairey Battle TT target tug, it was used as a target-towing
aircraft to support airborne gunnery training exercises. Furthermore, Battles
were not only used in this role by the RAF, several overseas operators opted to
acquire the type as a training platform.
Specifications (Mk.II)
General characteristics
Crew: 3
Length: 42 ft 4 in (12.91 m)
Wingspan: 54 ft 0 in (16.46 m)
Height: 15 ft 6 in (4.72 m)
Empty weight: 6,647 lb (3,015 kg)
Loaded weight: 10,792 lb (4,895 kg)
kW)
Performance
Maximum speed: 257 mph (223 kn, 413 km/h) at 15,000 ft (4,600 m)
Range: 1,000 mi (870 nmi, 1610 km)
Service ceiling: 25,000 ft (7,620 m)
Climb to 5,000 ft (1,520 m): 4 min 6 sec
Armament
Guns:
Bombs:
500 lb (230 kg) of bombs externally
*
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