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Aviation History
1939
1939 - 1923.PDF
FLIGHT, June 22, 1939. The picture above, showing Handley Page monoplane No. 2, built in 1911, affords an interesting contrast with the photo graph of the latest Hampden bomber on the right The crescent-shaped plan form of "No. 2," and its upturned wing-tip trailing edges, were designed to give inherent stability. The engine was a 35 h.p. Green four-cylinder water-cooled. Inset| shows " H. P." looking not too worried after 30 years' struggle with Air Ministry officials. " A DJOINING the new factory which /\ Messrs. Handley Page, Ltd., •* *> now occupy at Creekmouth, Barking, the firm have a very convenient flying ground. It is about 2£ miles long by about a mile wide, and is situated between Barking and Dagen- ham Stations on the L.T. and S. Railway. A flat part of the ground is being levelled for starting purposes, and an artificial hill is available for gliding ex periments." It will be no use for any Flight reader to rush off to Barking to see the new Handley Page aerodrome there ; he will not find it, even if he succeeds in identifying the "L.T. and S. Railway." The Barking factory and aero drome referred to were the original ones owned by the firm in 1909, and the opening passages above were taken from Flight of August 21 of that year. Handley Page, Ltd., was formed on June 17, 1909, as a limited company, although Mr. Frederick Handley Page himself had been interested in aeronautics for some years before that date. Originally an electrical engineer, he became attracted to flying by reading of what was being done in America by the Wright brothers, and by other experimenters in Europe. As was to be expected, his early ideas were not very firmly formed, and he was equally interested in all the different forms of flight. In fact, one of his early models was a sort of wing-Happing box kite. It was not long, however, before he decided that the aero plane was the type showing most promise. He studied the work of Jose Weiss, a painter who became keenly interested in flying and who produced a number of bird-like gliders, although it is not clear whether because of their aesthetic appeal or on account of aerodynamic reasoning. It would seem that Mr. Handley Page was influenced by the work of Weiss at least to this extent that his earliest aeroplanes shared with them the back-swept wings and washed-out angle of incidence which added so much to their stability during a period when most other designers were content to get their machines to fly and did not worry much about whether they were stable or not. And it is cer tainly something more than mere coincidence that the name of Hand- ley Page has been asso ciated so closely with safety features; first the inherently stable aero plane, and afterwards the slot and slotted aileron. The third Handley Page monoplane, known as "The Yellow Peril," retained the crescent- shaped wings. It had a 50 h.p. Gnome Rotary- engine and carried pilot and passenger.
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