Atlantic in flight, non-stop from New York to Chicago, 1919
Handley Page Limited was a British aerospace manufacturer. Founded by Frederick Handley Page (later Sir Frederick) in 1909, it was the United Kingdom's first publicly traded aircraft manufacturing company. It went into voluntary liquidation and ceased to exist in 1970. The company, based at Radlett Aerodrome in Hertfordshire, was noted for its pioneering role in aviation history and for producing heavy bombers and large airliners.
Frederick Handley Page first experimented with and built several biplanes and monoplanes at premises in Woolwich, Fambridge and Barking Creek. His company, founded on 17 June 1909, became the first British public company to build aircraft.
During the First World War, Handley Page produced a series of heavy bombers for the Royal Navy to bomb the German Zeppelin yards, with the ultimate intent of bombing Berlin in revenge for the Zeppelin attacks on London.[2] Handley Page had been asked by the Admiralty to produce a "bloody paralyser of an aeroplane".[citation needed] These aircraft included the O/100 of 1915, the O/400 of 1918 and the four-engined V/1500 with the range to reach Berlin. The V/1500 had only just entered operational service as the war ended in 1918.[2]
The Handley Page factory at Radlett Aerodrome employed women as part of the war effort, and was visited by royalty.
In the immediate postwar years, Handley Page modified some O/400's for passenger use, which they flew on the London-Paris route as Handley Page Transport. The V/1500 was considered too large to be practical at the time, but many design features of the V/1500 were later incorporated into an O/400 airframe to produce their first dedicated passenger design, the W.8[2] that led to a series of similar airliners, fitted with two or three engines, which, aside from being used by Handley Page Transport, were also exported to Belgium.[citation needed]
In 1924 Handley Page Transport merged with two other airlines to create Imperial Airways, as the UK's national airline service, which continued to use a number of the W.8, W.9 and W.10 series of airliners. Handley Page continued to develop large biplane airliners, including the luxurious Handley Page H.P.42, for use on Imperial routes to Africa and India.[citation needed]
Handley Page developed the Handley Page Slat (or slot), an auxiliary airfoil mounted ahead and above the wing, which formed a narrow gap which improved airflow at high angles of attack and improved low speed handling.[5] The leading edge slat was simultaneously designed by the German aerodynamicist Gustav Lachmann, who was later employed by Handley Page. The design was so successful that licensing fees to other companies were their main source of income in the early 1920s.
In 1929, Cricklewood Aerodrome was closed and Handley Page moved the aircraft final assembly to Radlett Aerodrome. Cricklewood Aerodrome was taken over by Cricklewood Studios, the largest film studio in the UK at that time. Manufacture of aircraft parts and sub-assemblies continued until 1964 at Cricklewood when the remainder of the site was sold off and a Wickes home renovation store currently occupies the site.[citation needed]
World War II
With the Second World War looming, Handley Page designed and produced the HP.52 Hampden bomber, which took part in the first British raid on Berlin.
In response to a 1936 government request for heavier, longer ranged aircraft, Handley Page tendered the HP.56 design powered by twin Rolls-Royce Vultures and this was ordered, along with what became the Avro Manchester. However the Vulture proved so troublesome that – years before the engine was abandoned by Rolls-Royce in 1940 – the Air Staff decided that the HP.56 should be fitted with four engines instead. Therefore, before reaching the prototype stage, the HP.56 design was reworked into the four-engined HP.57 Halifax.[6] The Halifax became the second most-prolific British heavy bomber of the war after the Avro Lancaster (itself essentially a four-engine development of the Manchester). Although in some respects (such as crew survivability) better than the Lancaster, the Halifax suffered in terms of altitude performance[7] and was redeployed toward the end of the war as a heavy transport and glider tug, with several variants being specifically built as such, including the HP.70 Halton.
After the war, the British Government sought tenders for jet bombers to carry the nation's nuclear deterrent. The three types produced were known as the V-Bombers, and Handley Page's contribution was the HP.80 Victor, a four-engined, crescent-winged design. This aircraft remained in service (as a tanker aircraft) well beyond the demise of the company which created it.
In 1947 Handley Page bought some of the assets of the bankrupt Miles Aircraft company. These assets include existing designs, tools and jigs, most notably for the Miles M.52 supersonic research aircraft, and the Miles site at Woodley, near Reading. The operation was named Handley Page (Reading) Ltd, a company constituted to buy and operate the assets formed out of the inactive Handley Page Transport Ltd. The most significant of the inherited designs became the Herald airliner. Designs from the Reading site used the initials HPR ("Handley Page (Reading)").
Demise
Unlike other large British aircraft manufacturers, Handley Page resisted the government's pressure to merge into larger entities. By the late 1960s, the British aviation industry was dominated by two companies: Hawker Siddeley and the British Aircraft Corporation.[citation needed]
Unable to compete for government orders or build large commercial aircraft, Handley Page produced its final notable Handley Page design, the Jetstream. This was a small turboprop-powered commuter aircraft, with a pressurised cabin and a passenger capacity of 12 to 18. It was designed primarily for the United States "feederliner" market.[citation needed]
Although successful, Jetstream was too late to save Handley Page, and the company went into voluntary liquidation in March 1970 and was wound up after 61 years trading under the same name. The Jetstream lived on, the design being purchased and produced by Scottish Aviation at Prestwick, continuing after the company was bought by British Aerospace in 1977.[citation needed]
Radlett Aerodrome was opened in 1929 as a grass aerodrome for Handley Page Civil Aircraft. Its runway was extended in 1939 to enable production of Halifax bombers. By the time of its closure the airfield had two runways:
03/21 approximately 7,000 feet (2,100m)
15/33 approximately 2,500 feet (760m)
Most of the towers, hangars and runways were demolished in the 1970s after the Company was terminated. The M25 Motorway now runs on the south side of the site, with Lafarge Aggregates now owning the remainder. The runway surface was removed and replaced with grass, but a shadow remains when viewed from the air.
Handley Page originally used a letter sequence to designate types (i.e. A, B, C etc.). Beginning with the model E, the letter was used in combination with a slash and a number that referred to the installed horsepower, at least initially. However the 100 in O/100 indicated the type's 100-foot wingspan, while other designs it may or may not have been meaningful other than as a design sequence. By 1923, the company had come to the end of the alphabet and had begun reusing earlier letters, but this would have become confusing, so from 1924 they assigned the letters HP and a sequential number to indicate the model, with previous aircraft being retroactively assigned numbers in the new sequence, starting with the Type A as the HP.1. Thus the O/400 became the HP.16 and the W.8 the HP.18. Unbuilt projects were skipped from this sequence.
When the assets of Miles Aircraft were taken over, the latter's Reading design office used HPR for Handley Page Reading, followed by a number as with the HPR.1 Marathon.
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The Handley Page Type O was a biplane bomber used by Britain during the First World War. When built, the Type O was the largest aircraft that had been built in the UK and one of the largest in the world. There were two main variants, the Handley Page O/100 (H.P.11) and the Handley Page O/400 (H.P.12).
The Handley Page Halifax is a British Royal Air Force (RAF) four-engined heavy bomber of the Second World War. It was developed by Handley Page to the same specification as the contemporary twin-engine Avro Manchester.
The Handley Page HP.67 Hastings is a retired British troop-carrier and freight transport aircraft designed and manufactured by aviation company Handley Page for the Royal Air Force (RAF). Upon its introduction to service during September 1948, the Hastings was the largest transport plane ever designed for the service.
The Handley Page HP.81 Hermes was a civilian airliner designed and produced by the British aircraft manufacturer Handley Page.
The Handley Page V/1500 was a British night-flying heavy bomber built by Handley Page towards the end of the First World War. It was a large four-engined biplane, which resembled a larger version of Handley Page's earlier O/100 and O/400 bombers, intended to bomb Berlin from East Anglian airfields. The end of the war stopped the V/1500 being used against Germany, but a single aircraft was used to carry out the first flight from England to India, and later carried out a bombing raid on Kabul during the Third Anglo-Afghan War. It was colloquially known within the fledgling Royal Air Force as the "Super Handley". The V/1500 which was shipped to Canada to attempt a transatlantic flight was flown in the US, and in 1919 crash-landed in a field at Mount Jewett, Pennsylvania. Photos appeared in the 20 February 1969 issue of the Bradford Journal newspaper.
The Handley Page Dart Herald is a 1950s British turboprop passenger aircraft.
The Handley Page W.8, W.9 and W.10 were British two- and three-engine medium-range biplane airliners designed and built by Handley Page.
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Handley Page Transport Ltd was an airline company founded in 1919, soon after the end of the First World War, by Frederick Handley Page.
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The Handley Page H.P.43 was a three-engined biplane bomber-transport built to an Air Ministry specification. It did not fly well and the biplane configuration was out-dated at completion; the only one constructed was later turned into a monoplane and led to the Handley Page H.P.54 Harrow.
The Handley Page H.P.51 was a monoplane conversion of the earlier, unsuccessful biplane bomber-transport aircraft, the Handley Page H.P.43. The Air Ministry ordered the production variant off the drawing board as the Handley Page H.P.54 Harrow bomber.
The Handley Page H.P.20 was an experimental monoplane modification of a de Havilland DH.9A, built to study controllable slots and slotted ailerons as high lift devices. It was the first aircraft to fly with controllable slots.
The 1920 Handley Page O/400 crash occurred on 14 December 1920 when a Handley Page Transport Handley Page O/400 on a scheduled passenger flight from London to Paris with two crew and six passengers crashed at Golders Green in North London after take-off from Cricklewood Aerodrome. The crew of two and two passengers were killed in the first fatal accident for the airline since the service had started in December 1919. It was reported as the first recorded airliner crash in history, but a larger airliner had crashed the previous year.
The Bristol Type 159 was a British design for a four-engined heavy bomber by the Bristol Aeroplane Company, of Filton, Bristol. A mockup was built but the project was cancelled and no aircraft were built.
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