Design
The design of the series of aircraft began shortly after the outbreak of the First World War as a result of meetings between the Royal Navy's Director of the Air Department, Captain Murray Sueter and Frederick Handley Page. Sueter requested "a bloody paralyser of an aircraft" for long-range bombing. The phrase had originated from Commander Charles Rumney Samson who had returned from the front. Coastal patrol adaptations of the unbuilt Handley Page L/200 and M/200 and MS/200 were initially discussed but Sueter's technical advisor Harris Booth favoured a large seaplane for coastal patrol and dockyard defence that would also be capable of bombing the German High Seas Fleet at its base in Kiel: a prototype (the AD Seaplane Type 1000) had already been commissioned from J Samuel White & Co. of Cowes. Handley Page suggested building a landplane of similar size, and a specification was drawn up around his suggestions: this was formally issued on 28 December 1914 as the basis of an order for four prototypes. It called for a large biplane - that would fit in a 75 ft x 75 ft shed and so necessitating folding-wings - to be powered by two 150 hp (110 kW) Sunbeam engines to carry six 100 lb (45 kg) bombs and provided with armour plating to protect crew and engines from rifle-fire from the ground. The crew of two were to be enclosed in a glazed cockpit and the only defensive armament planned was a rifle to be fired by the observer/engineer. The designation O/100 came from the aircraft's proposed wingspan prefixed by an 'O', since Handley Page gave their types alphabetical type letters at the time. The outline design was approved on 4 February 1915, now with 250 horsepower (190 kW) Rolls-Royce Eagle engines and on 9 February the contract was amended to include a further eight aircraft.
The O/100 was an unequal-span three-bay biplane with the overhanging part of the upper wing braced by kingposts, with a rectangular section fuselage and a biplane tail unit with twin balanced rudders mounted between the horizontal surfaces. Balanced ailerons were fitted to the upper wing only. These extended beyond the wing trailing edge, giving the aircraft a distinctive planform. The two engines drove four-bladed propellers rotating in opposite directions to avoid torque effects and were enclosed in armoured nacelles mounted between the wings on tubular steel struts. The nacelles had a long tapered fairing to reduce drag: in order to clear the wing rigging wires when the wings were folded the rear portion of the fairings were hinged to fold inwards. Construction of the fuselage and flying surfaces was primarily of spruce, with great pains being taken to reduce weight by extensive use of hollow section members.
Read more about this topic: Handley Page Type O
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“Westerners inherit
A design for living
Deeper into matter—
Not without due patter
Of a great misgiving.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.”
—Marilyn French (20th century)
“You can make as good a design out of an American turkey as a Japanese out of his native stork.”
—For the State of Illinois, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)