Today
we’re taking a look at the record-setting Fairey Long-Range Monoplane.
It was the product of a time when great national prestige was attached to the field of aviation,
or rather, the field of record-breaking aviation. The country whose aircraft could fly the fastest,
furthest, and highest, all whilst burning the least amount of fuel,
were obviously the best – and there was a constant battle of the numbers throughout the
1920s and 1930s as countries and manufacturers vied to make the best aircraft possible.
Now, there aren’t many photos of the fairey available, so I’m going to have to reuse them
a few times to keep this from appearing too much like a glorified slideshow.
The story of the Long-Range Monoplane began with Air Ministry specification 33/27. This
was drawn up in response to interest from Fairey in developing a long-range aircraft to try and
complete a nonstop flight to India. Initially, Fairey test pilot Norman Macmillan had proposed
using the prototype Fairey Fox for the flight, but as the type was still going through its
development as a military aircraft, this proposal was denied, and the Air Ministry instead drew up
the specification for a specific aircraft. The specification was a fairly broad one,
so as to not limit Fairey too much in exploring design proposals. It had some basic requirements,
such as positive stability in all axes (which is usually preferable) and proposing the use of a
Napier Lion engine (which was fairly common) – though the use of a Rolls-Royce ‘F’ engine was
later considered. The gross weight was to be about 16,000 lbs and the fuel capacity
more than 1,000 gallons, giving the aircraft a theoretical range in the order of 5,000 miles.
Designed by Fairey’s chief engineer, Maj T.M. Barlow, the aircraft was ostensibly listed as
a ‘Postal Aircraft’ to placate various members of parliament and the treasury,
who frowned upon the vanity of chasing after records in times of growing economic strife.
Various design layouts were explored, including those for a biplane,
and for both high and low-wing monoplanes as well. The high-wing cantilever arrangement was
eventually chosen following favourable wind tunnel tests at Farnborough, and when consideration was
given to the need for the fuel to be gravity fed, with the main tanks being in the wing,
the high-wing layout became the obvious choice. By May 1928, construction was well underway at the
factory at Hayes. The wing had wooden spars and it featured a new type of steel pyramid bracing.
The object of this bracing was to transmit torsion loads and to compel each spar to carry
an appreciable proportion of the total load, irrespective of the position of the centre of
pressure. This was considered especially important as during a long-range flight, the aircraft
would encounter a large variety of different weather conditions, and its structure had to
manage all of them with equal effectiveness. For a single engine aircraft, the wingspan was
on the large side, coming in it at 82 feet, but this was necessary to produce the amount
of lift required to keep it efficient enough for just a single engine. Despite being quite thick,
with an aspect ratio of 7 ½, wind tunnel tests estimated that a maximum lift/drag ratio of
22:1 would be attained – which, when combined with an appreciable fuel load, would be more
than enough to meet the range requirement. Though the wings were efficient in the air,
the aircraft was expected to have a fairly lengthy take off run. To address this,
and to make it as stable as possible on said take-off run, the long-range monoplane
had an unusually wide, fixed undercarriage. There was tankage for a total of 1,043 gallons,
and the fuel was fed by gravity to a collector tank in the fuselage. From
this it was fed by mechanical pump to the engine, and in case of failure there was an
additional pump driven by a windmill which could be extended into the slipstream.
The engine itself was not decided upon until October 1928, when the aircraft was
almost complete, and it was decided to power the ‘postal’ -as it was now called- with the 570hp
Napier Lion XIA. A twelve-cylinder, broad-arrow liquid-cooled engine with a slightly raised
compression. One of the special features of the powerplant installation was the oil system. Two
oil filters, which could be reached from the cockpit, were installed in parallel circuits,
so that one could be removed if necessary for cleaning while leaving the other in action.
The ‘Postal’ was to have a crew of two, a pilot and a navigator, who could also act
as a reserve pilot if needed. Accommodation for 40 hour-plus flights was provided with special,
extra-comfy upholstery in the cockpit, and a folding bed in a cabin directly behind.
The Postal was flown for the first time on the 14th of November 1928.
Curiously, it was not a Fairey test pilot who took it up for the inaugural flight,
but a pair of RAF servicemen: Squadron Leader A.G Jones-Williams, and Flight Lt F.V. Major. Though
Fairey had produced the aircraft, the Air Ministry insisted that the record-attempt flight was to be
made by RAF personnel, and because of this they might as well get to fly it from the get-go.
After preliminary trials, in which Fairey pilots also got a chance to test the aircraft
their company had developed, it was handed over to the RAF and sent to Cranwell for
more intensive evaluations. Among these was partially loaded take-off tests,
and a 24-hour endurance trial, after which, and providing all was well, a new engine would be
installed for long-distance record attempts. Things, however, did not go quite according to
plan. The engine had to be changed after just the second test flight,
which lasted less than ten minutes, due to problems with high fuel consumption and engine
vibrations – neither of which would be idea on a long distance flight over incredibly
remote regions. The vibration caused what was described at the time as ‘carburettor-dither’,
which, in turn, caused a varying of the fuel mixture and irregular fuel consumption.
In January 1929, there were two more engine changes in an attempt to remedy this,
and other seemingly obstinate fuel efficiency problems, during which it was discovered that
the ignition advance/decrease control had been reversed during an earlier installation.
Although it was said at the time that this reversal made little difference,
the consumption curves apparently ‘looked much better’ after the error had been corrected.
Owing to these delays the 24-hour endurance flight, planned for December,
was not completed until the 22 & 23rd of March 1929. The flight was reasonably successful,
though exhaust fumes entered the cabin, causing discomfort and no small amount of nausea,
and one valve in the Lion engine burned and caused a drop in RPMs by about 200. But an estimated
distance of 1950 miles was covered using a little over 430 gallons of fuel and 15 gallons of oil;
this test showed that with a full fuel load, a total distance of over 5,000 miles was still
possible. This was reassuring as the current long-distance record sat at 4,466 miles.
The three-month delay had meant a change in plans for the proposed route. Initially, the plan had
been to fly from Cranwell, to Cape Town. However, the wind and weather no longer served for such a
journey, and an alternative route from Cranwell to Bangalore was selected instead. Additionally,
the crew compliment for the aircraft was also changed. Flt Lt Major was considered medically and
temperamentally unsuitable, and he was replaced by Flt Lt Jenkins. Major had considerably more
experience than Jenkins in the art of navigation, and for reasons that will eventually become
apparent, this decision to replace him would later come under painful scrutiny.
Despite the record attempt being just a few weeks away, the aircraft had yet to complete
the team’s idea of a fully loaded take-off. On the first day of full-load tests, the 30th of March,
the wind had blown in the wrong direction, so the test had to be abandoned; on the next day,
it was attempted again, but the wind had not changed and the take-off run was at a slight
incline, rather than the ideal downward slope that had been chosen, and after failing to
exceed 73mph on the ground the run was abandoned. Just four days before the planned flight to India,
the aircraft’s first, full-load take-off was finally completed, and everyone was confident
that, providing it took off into the wind, with about a mile of runway in front of it,
the long-range monoplane would be fine. Jones-Williams and Jenkins took off for
their record attempt on the 24th of April. Accompanied by a Supermarine Southampton as
far as the coast of Holland, they were over Istanbul after 16 ½ hours of flight time,
and 22 hours later they were flying above Karachi. At this point they realised there was only enough
fuel for six more hours of flight time, and that they still needed to cover and additional
650 miles to break the record. This could had been done, but it would have necessitated flying until
the tanks were empty and then attempting a landing in the dark, which given the state of the hastily
prepared landing field did not seem like a fun option. They turned back and landed at Karachi
with 83 gallons of fuel left. Though they had not beaten the record of 4466 miles, they had
completed the first nonstop flight to India. Early in June the decision was made to try for
the record again Autumn, when the winds were calmer, and the destination could once again
be switched back to South Africa. The existing record still stood at 4466 miles, and this could
be beaten by a nonstop flight to Walvis Bay, which would cover a distance of 5,340 miles.
Jones-Williams and Jenkins were again chosen to make the flight, though there were concerns raised
that Flt Lt Major should have taken Jenkins’ place as a dedicated navigator. This was for
two reasons; better navigation reduced flight corrections and thus wasted fuel, and it also
provided an extra level of safety for a flight that would cover the entire length of the African
continent. However, Jenkins remained on the crew. Before the flight was attempted, the decision was
made to modify and test the monoplane further, following an extensive report on the flight to
India. Complaints from Jones-Williams about constant rudder handling, and a tendency for
the engines to run hot, let to the enlarging of the radiator, as well as a some adjustments to the
rudder and balancer to improve ‘feet-off’ flying. Unfortunately, these changes delayed the flight
until December 1929; this not only resulted in a deterioration of the weather, but there was now
added pressure as the record-breaking distance now needed was 4,975 miles,
as the old record had been broken in late September by a flight from Paris to Manchuria.
Jones-Williams and Jenkins took off for their new attempt on the 16th of December, 1929,
but tragically they would never reach their destination. The attempt ended in
disaster when the aircraft struck high ground south of Tunis at around 645 in the evening,
with both pilots being killed. The point of impact, about 30 miles south of Tunis,
was at a height of 2,300 ft and it was never fully established why the aircraft had descended.
The nagivation log-sheet and barographs mostly survived the crash unscathed. As it crossed the
coast of Sardinia, the aircraft was maintaining altitude at 5,000 feet. But a short while later,
the navigation log said that the aircraft was ‘still in very thick cloud at 5,000 feet’, yet the
barographs showed that the aircraft was in fact well below 3,000 feet and descending gradually.
The cause of the crash could have been a deliberate descent, in an attempt to get
below the poor weather, but another likely cause could have been the failure of the altimeter.
Either way, many felt that had Flt Lft Major been on the flight as a dedicated navigator,
one with many years’ experience, things may have been different, and there was many a
guilty conscience for some time after this. In 1931, after the investigation had concluded,
and after the worst of the financial shock of the 1929 crash had abated,
the RAF felt they could justify another attempt at the record. Despite the accident,
the Fairey monoplane had performed well, and A second, slightly improved version was designed
and built to a new specification – 14/30. This second Long-range Monoplane had a
somewhat different fuel system, a redesigned rudder balance, new landing wheel fairings,
a more carefully faired undercarriage -to reduce drag-, and an early autopilot system. This system
was developed by the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. It operated in two axes for roll
and direction control, and a windmill-driven pump provided compressed air to drive the two gyros
and to power the servo pistons which operated the controls. Additionally, most instruments,
especially the altimeter, had redundancies built in to dramatically improve safety.
Three altimeters were installed, one of them being portable and highly sensitive; there were
four compasses, two airspeed indicators, two turn-and-bank indicators, a pitch and azimuth
indicator, and a high-frequency transmitter. The crew selected for the new aircraft were
Squadron Leader O.R Gayford, and Flight Lieutenant D.G Bett. After waiting some
days for suitable weather, a proving flight of just 2,800 miles was made to Egypt to test
everything out. Despite a forced landing on the return flight, with the aircraft digging
its nose into a ploughed field in Essex, the reasons for which were never fully divulged,
but it was probably something embarrassing enough to be suppressed, everything else went well.
The actual record-attempting flight did not happen for another year, though. Poor weather,
and a desire to fly during a certain season, and when a full moon was present, meant that the whole
thing was pushed back to February 1933. There was also a slight delay due to the death of Flt
Lt Bett, who passed away due to complications during an operation, and he was replaced as
navigator by Flt Lt G.E Nicholetts. Now, the record stood at 5,012 miles, which necessitated
the lengthening of the planned route, however everyone was confident the plane could do it.
Much to the relief of all, it did indeed break the record. The long-range monoplane,
as that is what it was becoming known as then, took off on the 6th of February at 715 am. The
flight went reasonably well, the weather was good, the aircraft behaved, and most
importantly the instruments didn’t send it into a Tunisian hillside, though the autopilot did give
up partway through and the rest of the flight was completed under manual control. 57 hours,
and 5,341 miles later, it landed at Walvis Bay, claiming the absolute distance record for a single
flight. To add to the prestige, this meant that, for a time, British aircraft held the records for
distance, altitude, and speed all at the same time. Something that was much publicised.
The aircraft was flown on to Cape Town, and later completed a long tour of Africa before
finally returning home on the 2nd of May for an official reception. The prestige, however,
was short lived. Just three months later in August, a new distance record was set by the
Bleriot-Zappata 110, which covered 5,657 miles. The Royal Aircraft Establishment explored
the possibility of upgrading the long-range monoplane to challenge this new record. In 1934,
consideration was given to re-engining the aircraft with a diesel powerplant,
the 600Hp Junkers Jumo IV. Along with some further modifications to the airframe to reduce drag,
it could certainly be done. However, wind tunnel tests would take at least three months,
the rebuild would take another twelve, and the total cost of the endeavour would almost exceed
that of designing a brand new aircraft. Additionally, the Bleriot-Zapatta, which
currently held the record had a claimed air range of 7825 miles, which still placed it ahead. Fairey
suggested that if the experimental Bristol Phoenix was used, their aircraft could exceed a range of
10,000 miles, but this would of course further increase the cost of the project.
In the end, the Royal aircraft establishment suggested in its report that the best and most
economical procedure was to design and build a new aircraft from the ground up,
and so the Fairey Monoplane received no further modifications. Despite being a record setting
aircraft, and a damn unique looking one at that, it sadly didn’t live out the year as
it was scrapped at some point in late 1934. As always thank you all so much for watching,
and a special thank you of course to the patrons, whose names you’ll see here. I apologise if this
video is a bit rough, the video planned for today was lost thanks to a corrupt adobe premiere file,
and I had to advance this video – which was planned for Wednesday- to this weekend, so we
didn’t have a 10 day lull in content. Hopefully I can get the other video finished for next weekend.
A big thank you as well to the wing-commanders, the highest tier patreon supporters. You guys have
seen my video plans for this month, and despite editing problems that should remain mostly on
schedule…we’ll see. But anyway, thank you all so much, and I’ll catch you all next time. Goodbye.