Fairey Battle

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 Hawker
Hart and Hind biplanes. The Battle was powered by the same high-performance
Rolls-Royce Merlin piston engine that powered various contemporary British
fighters like the Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire. The Battle was much
heavier, with its three-man crew and bomb load. Though a great improvement over
the aircraft that preceded it, the Battle was relatively slow and limited in
range. With only two .303 in machine guns as defensive armament, it was found to
be highly vulnerable to enemy fighters and anti-aircraft fire.

The Fairey Battle was used on operations early in 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. In May 1940 the Battle suffered many
losses, frequently in excess of 50 percent of aircraft sorties per mission. By
the end of 1940 the type had been withdrawn from front line service and
relegated to training units overseas. As an aircraft that had been considered to
hold great promise in the pre-war era, the Battle proved to be one of the most
disappointing aircraft in RAF service.

The Battle was furnished with a single cockpit to accommodate a crew of three,
these typically being a pilot, observer/navigator and radio operator/air gunner.
The pilot and gunner were seated in a tandem arrangement in the cockpit, the
pilot in the forward position controlling the fixed .303 Browning machine gun
mounted in the starboard wing, while the gunner was in the rear position where
he could use the manually-aimed .303 Vickers K machine gun. The observer's
position, who served as the bomb aimer, was situated directly beneath the
pilot's seat; sighting was performed in the prone position through a sliding
panel in the floor of the fuselage using the Mk. VII Course Setting Bomb Sight.
Complete with a continuous glazed canopy, the cockpit of the Battle had several
similarities to that of a large fighter rather than a bomber.


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
Five remain in museums

Primary users
Royal Air Force
Belgian Air Force
Royal Australian Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Free Polish Air Force

Produced
1937–1940

Number built
2,201

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)
Wing area: 422 ft² (39.2 m²)
Empty weight: 6,647 lb (3,015 kg)
Loaded weight: 10,792 lb (4,895 kg)
Powerplant: 1 × Rolls-Royce Merlin II liquid-cooled V12 engine, 1,030 hp (768
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: 1 × .303 in (7.7 mm) Browning machine gun in starboard wing
1 × .303 in (7.7 mm) Vickers K machine gun in rear cabin

Bombs: 1,000 lb (450 kg) bombs internally (4 × 250 lb (110 kg) bombs) or
1,500 lb (680 kg) bombs externally





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