Handley Page Heyford
The Handley Page Heyford was a British twin-engine biplane heavy night bomber, the last biplane heavy bomber to serve with the RAF. Built to Specification B.19/27, it first flew in June 1930 with its fuselage hung from the upper wing, a layout that gave the crew an unusually good view from a cockpit seventeen feet off the ground. Handley Page delivered 124 production aircraft between 1933 and 1936, and eleven squadrons flew the type; it stood armed and ready at the Munich crisis of 1938, yet never fired a shot in anger, and it left front-line service on 2 September 1939. It flew on as a trainer and glider tug until 1941, and no complete example survives.
Why It Mattered
The Heyford was the last biplane heavy bomber to serve with the Royal Air Force, and for a few years in the mid-1930s it equipped eleven front-line bomber squadrons. The RAF Museum records that 124 were delivered between June 1933 and July 1936. Crews liked the type: the museum calls it easy to maintain, sturdy and agile, and one was even looped at the 1935 Hendon Air Pageant. Its most lasting contribution may have come away from bombing: History of War judges the Heyford's most important contribution to history to have been its use in early radar tests in 1936–37, when its roomy, unobstructed fuselage suited the bulky experimental sets. In 1937, History of War records, a Heyford became the first aircraft to carry a working air-to-air radar set.
Design Notes
The Heyford was designed to an Air Ministry specification issued in 1927, B.19/27, which called for a heavy night bomber; much of the design is credited to George Volkert, Handley Page's lead designer. Its strangest feature was the layout: the fuselage was attached to the upper wing rather than the lower one, reversing the normal biplane arrangement. The point of the layout was visibility: History of War notes that it gave the pilot and the nose and dorsal gunners a view matching that of later monoplane bombers. The price was a nose-high stance on the ground, with the pilot's cockpit seventeen feet up when the aircraft was landed. The bombs rode in a wide bay in the thickened centre section of the lower wing, completely cut off from the fuselage. The airframe was metal with a fabric cover, and its rear section was hinged, so that it could swing aside to give access to the tail's interior. Power came from a pair of Rolls-Royce Kestrel engines; production Mk Is used the 575 hp version, the crew numbered four, and the defensive armament was three .303-inch Lewis guns, one of them in a retractable ventral "dustbin" turret.
Operational History
The prototype first flew in June 1930 — Wikipedia gives the day as 12 June — and a production order followed in 1932, to specification B.23/32. The first production aircraft flew on 21 June 1933, and the type entered service with No. 99 Squadron at Upper Heyford between November 1933 and March 1934. Handley Page delivered 124 production aircraft by July 1936: on Wikipedia's per-mark accounting there were 15 Mk Is, 23 Mk IAs, 16 Mk IIs and 70 Mk IIIs, and the prototype brought the total built to 125. Eleven squadrons flew the Heyford in front-line bomber service. By the Munich crisis of September 1938 only six squadrons of Heyfords were left in Bomber Command, and they were brought to readiness with full bomb loads and armament. For all that readiness, no Heyford ever dropped a bomb or fired a shot in anger. Replacement by a new generation of monoplanes had begun in 1937, as the Whitley and Wellesley entered service. The last front-line Heyford did not leave No. 166 Squadron at Leconfield until 2 September 1939, the day before Britain declared war on Germany, when Whitleys took its place. Forty aircraft remained in use as bombing and gunnery trainers until August 1940. The last two airworthy examples, K5184 among them, flew on as glider tugs on trials with the Hotspur assault glider until April or May 1941.
Afterlife
No complete Heyford survives. The last candidates were two derelict, wingless airframes lying at Cardington in 1950, and the RAF Museum records that they did not survive either. One account noted by the museum suggests that K5184 remained airworthy on trials work as late as August 1944, kept under armed guard at RAF Cardington. What does remain is components: the RAF Museum displays Heyford parts including a pair of main wheels, two propeller blades and tailplane parts from Heyford III K6875, recovered from that aircraft's crash site in the Peak District. The museum also notes that tales of Heyfords dumped and buried near RAF Cosford have yet to be proved.