Britain - 1917 Beardmore WB.III

Hello again. I hope you are ready for a great weekend. I love comments, especially when they make me think.. Lately I have been getting many which make me focus so I can answer the questions put to me. When answering a comment question on the Sopwith Pup post posed by KP I threw out this aircraft as an example of licensing aircraft for third party manufacture. Since I have been working on a British aircraft thread I figured it was time to post this.

Early British Carrier Based Aircraft

Beardmore W.B.III - 1917

The Beardmore WB.III, nicknamed the folding Pup was a British carrier-based fighter biplane of World War I. It was a development of the Sopwith Pup that William Beardmore and Company was then building under license, but was specially adapted for shipboard use.

The Beardmore W.B. III was built to be used on aircraft carriers as naval scouts. It featured a redesigned wing cellule with no stagger, facilitating folding for stowage, a stretched fuselage that carried emergency floatation gear, and main undercarriage that could be folded for stowage (though not in flight). Later models had fixed landing gear that could be jettisoned off in case of an emergency landing at sea. A Lewis machine gun was mounted on the upper wing that fired over the propeller. By the end of 1918, one hundred of these aircraft were deployed by the Royal Naval Air Service on the carriers HMS Furious, Nairana and Pegasus.

References

1. Beardmore W.B.III. (2009, May 17). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 08:46, September 4, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Beardmore_W.B.III&oldid=290566872
2. Sharpe, Michael. "Biplanes, Triplanes, and Seaplanes". Pg 75. London, England: Friedman/Fairfax Books , 2000. ISBN 1-58663-300-7.
3. Mason, Francis K. "The British Fighter since 1912". Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1992. ISBN 1-55750-082-7.
4. Taylor, Michael J. H. (1989). "Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation". London: Studio Editions. pp. 122.

Britain - 1917 Beardmore W.B.IV

Another Strange Design

Beardmore W.B.IV-1917

There have been numerous times when design specifications set by the Admiralty led to the construction of very odd aircraft. The Beardmore W.B.IV is a good example of this statement. It is a hybrid land or carrier based fighter and flying boat which looks like it was designed by committee. It did have interesting lines and a distinctive appearance making it a good subject for drawing. I was in luck, there are line drawings and photographs available for reference.

The Beardmore W.B.IV was a British single-engine biplane ship-based fighter of World War I developed by William Beardmore and Company. Only one was built.

The W.B.IV was designed to meet Admiralty Specification N.1A for a naval land or ship based fighter aircraft. The design was dominated by the demands of safely ditching and remaining afloat, with a large permanent flotation chamber built into the fuselage under the nose. The pilot was in a watertight cockpit over the propeller shaft, with the Hispano-Suiza V-8 engine behind him over the center of gravity of the aircraft. The entire undercarriage could be released from the plane for water landings. The wing tips were fitted with additional floats, while the aircraft's two-bay wings could fold for storage on board ship.