Shipbucket

Those are some tubby looking bombers

It's hard for me to imagine that Handley Page engineers didn't have something more effective to be doing with their time in the depths of 1942.

Its great to see these in FD scale.
The fruits of research that have unearthed something that not many others have seen before are always rewarding.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

In June 1945 HP started design work on a replacement for the Avro Lincoln, seen as being six years into the future. Work on two alternate designs was commenced, and they were allocated HP model numbers in January 1946

H.P.75A



Continuing with the earlier 70 ton jet pusher, the

H.P.72A "Flatfish"

The second project was a radical new design, drawing on post-war information on swept wings gleaned from Arado. This design was definitively allocated a "cover" designation, and was unofficially named the "Flatfish" at HP.



The H.P.75A was quickly dropped in favour of the H.P.72A, and HP the design was then formalised and renumbered as the H.P.80, and design information prepared for the RAF on bomber and transport versions.

You may have noticed (!) that I'm including wingplan views on a lot of these aircraft in this family. As the wing design is such a vital feature of these aircraft I thought it best to include to allow a better visualisation of the aircraft, and provide a better sense of how the designs developed.

Seems that famous Victor's lines begin to appear. I did not know that Vicor's design could be traced back to WW2 German wing design studies.

H.P.80 specification B.35/46

Once HP had shown the RAF what they wanted to build, the RAF responded by working through with HP what they actually wanted to use.



The RAF finally issued the formal specification for jet bombers in January 1947, and HP responded with a completely redesigned aircraft as the new H.P.80. The most obvious feature of the new design was the "crescent" wing. To deal with the aerodynamic requirements of high speed high altitude flight and low speed flight during landings, the wing featured two very different wing sections. But less obviously, the design was a tailless aircraft - aerodynamically closer to the 70 ton tailless bomber, than the 70 ton pusher designs. What appears to be a stubby vertical tailplane is in fact just a pillar raising the horizontal tail surfaces above the airflow of the main wing, while the horizontal tail surfaces themselves were to only provide a trimming force when the wing flaps were lowered at low speeds. As the tailplane was only a low-speed trimmer, elevator and aileron control were provided by a single pair of flying wing-style elevons.

H.P.80 revised design

Continuous work on the H.P.80 design progressed all the way until the design was frozen in September 1950.



The first major modification occurred in January 1948, when concerns about flutter of the fins led to the addition of a standard vertical tail on the fuselage, and the removal of the wing tip fins.
Further changes were implemented later, including a redesign of the flight control system to change the horizontal tail surfaces to include standard elevators and then moving to a T-tail. The complex curves of the cockpit section were changed to flat sections, and the cockpit itself raised and the tip of the nose lowered to provide better visibility.

H.P.87

As the H.P.80 was such a significant departure from previous aircraft designs, the aerodynamics of the basic design and the crescent wing itself required validation.



To ensure that the H.P.80 and the less advanced Avro Vulcan were able to perform as designed, both HP and Avro constructed small scale flying models of their bomber designs. And meanwhile the RAF hedged their bets and had also commissioned the less advanced Vickers Valiant and Short Sperrin as backups in case the advanced aircraft failed.
HP's first aerodynamic trial aircraft was a wooden 1/3 scale remote control towed glider, designated the H.P.87. This aircraft was written off on its first flight, and interest then moved to a manned larger size aircraft.