Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_..._Factory_B.E.2

The Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2 was a British single-engine tractor two-seat
biplane designed and developed at the Royal Aircraft Factory. Most production
aircraft were constructed under contract by various private companies, both
established aircraft manufacturers and firms that had not previously built
aircraft. Around 3,500 were manufactured in all.

Early versions of the B.E.2 entered squadron service with the Royal Flying Corps
in 1912; the type continued to serve throughout the First World War. It was
initially used as a front-line reconnaissance aircraft and light bomber;
modified as a single-seater it proved effective as a night fighter, destroying
several German airships.

By late 1915, the B.E.2 was proving inadequate in defending itself against
German fighters such as the then new Fokker Eindecker, leading to increased
losses during the period known as the Fokker Scourge. Although by now obsolete,
it had to remain in front-line service while suitable replacements were
designed, tested and brought into service. Following its belated withdrawal from
operations, the type served in various second line capacities, seeing use as a
trainer and communications aircraft, as well as performing anti-submarine
coastal patrol duties.

The B.E.2 has always been a subject of controversy, both at the time and in
later historical assessment. From the B.E.2c variant on it had been carefully
adapted to be "inherently stable", this feature was considered helpful in its
artillery observation and aerial photography duties: most of which were assigned
to the pilot, who was able to fly without constant attention to his flight
controls. In spite of a tendency to swing on take off and a reputation for
spinning, the type had a relatively low accident rate. The stability of the type
was however achieved at the expense of heavy controls, making rapid manoeuvring
difficult. The observer, often not carried because of the B.E.'s poor payload,
occupied the front seat, where he had a limited field of fire for his gun.

Background

The B.E.2 was one of the first fixed-wing aircraft to be designed at what was
then called the Royal Balloon Factory (the organisation was formally renamed as
the Royal Aircraft Factory on 26 April 1911). The team responsible for its
design came under the direction of British engineer Mervyn O'Gorman, the
factory's superintendent. The B.E.2 designation was formulated in accordance
with the system devised by O'Gorman, which classified aircraft by their layout:
B.E. stood for Blériot Experimental, and was used for aircraft of tractor
configuration (although in practice, all of the B.E. types were biplanes rather
than the monoplanes typical of the Bleriot company).

At first, the activities of the Factory were limited to the conduct of research
into aerodynamics and aircraft design and the construction or design of actual
aircraft was not officially sanctioned. O'Gorman got around this restriction by
using the factory's responsibility for the repair and maintenance of aircraft
belonging to the Royal Flying Corps; existing aircraft that needed major repairs
were nominally reconstructed but often actually transformed into new designs,
which generally retained few original elements apart from the engine.

The first pair of B.E. aircraft were flown within two months of each other and
had the same basic design, the work of Geoffrey de Havilland, who was at the
time both the chief designer and the test pilot at the Balloon Factory. The
layout of these aircraft came to be seen as conventional, but when it first
appeared this was not the case. Rather, in common with the contemporary Avro
500, the B.E.2 was one of the designs which established the tractor biplane as
the dominant aircraft layout for a considerable time. Following its first public
appearance in early January 1912, aviation publication Flight commented that:
"everything one could see of the machine was of singular interest".


Role
Reconnaissance, light bomber, night fighter, trainer, coastal patrol aircraft

Manufacturer
Royal Aircraft Factory, Vickers, Bristol, Ruston

Designer
Geoffrey de Havilland, E.T. Busk

First flight
1 February 1912

Introduction
1912 (RFC)

Retired
1919 (RAF)

Primary users
Royal Flying Corps/Royal Air Force
Aviation Militaire Belge


Number built
~ 3,500

Variants
Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.9
Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.12

The early models of the B.E. 2 had already served in the RFC for two years prior
to the outbreak of the Great War, and were among the aircraft that arrived with
the British Expeditionary Force in France during 1914. Like all service aircraft
of this period, they had been designed at a time when the qualities required by
a warplane were largely a matter for conjecture and speculation, in the absence
of any actual experience of the use of aircraft in warfa at this stage all
the combatants were still feeling their way and aerial combat, especially the
need for reconnaissance aircraft to be able to defend themselves, was not widely
anticipated. As a result, the B.E.2 was originally designed without any
provision for armament.

In the absence of any official policy regarding armament, more aggressive crews
improvised their own. While some flew entirely unarmed, or perhaps carried
service revolvers or automatic pistols, others armed themselves with
hand-wielded rifles or carbines as used by ground troops, or even fitted a Lewis
gun. The performance of the early Renault powered models of the B.E. was
degraded by any additional weight, and in any case the carriage of this weaponry
proved of questionable effectiveness.

It was still necessary for the observer to be located over the centre of
gravity, in front of the pilot, to ensure fore and aft balance when the aircraft
was flown "solo". In this awkward position, his view was poor, and the degree to
which he could handle a camera (or, later, a gun) was hampered by the struts and
wires supporting the centre section of the top wing. In practice, the pilot of a
B.E.2 almost always operated the camera, and the observer, when he was armed at
all, had a rather poor field of fire to the rear, having, at best, to shoot back
over his pilot's head. Whenever bombs were to be carried, or maximum endurance
was required, the observer would normally have to be left behind.

Nonetheless, the B.E.2s were already in use as light bombers as well as for
visual reconnaissance; an attack on Courtrai Railway station on 26 April 1915
earning a posthumous Victoria Cross for 2nd Lt. William Rhodes-Moorhouse, the
first such award to be made for an aerial operation. By this time, prewar
aircraft were already disappearing from RFC service.

The type that replaced the B.E.2a and B.E.2b (as well as the assortment of other
types in use at the time) in the reconnaissance squadrons of the RFC in 1915 was
the B.E.2c, which had also been designed before the war. The most important
difference in the new model was an improvement in stability – a genuinely useful
characteristic, especially in aerial photographic work, using the primitive
plate cameras of the time, with their relatively long exposures. Unfortunately,
in this case the stability was coupled with "heavy" controls and relatively poor
manoeuvrability. A suitable engine was not available in sufficient quantities to
replace the air-cooled Renault – the RAF 1a being essentially an uprated version
of the French engine – so that the improvement in the B.E.2c's performance was
less than startling.

The vulnerability of the B.E.2c to fighter attack became plain in late 1915,
with the advent of the Fokker Eindecker. This led the British press to
disparagingly refer to the aircraft as being "Fokker Fodder", while German
pilots also gave it the nickname of kaltes Fleisch ("cold meat"). British ace
Albert Ball described the B.E.2c as "a bloody awful aeroplane". Unable to cope
with such a primitive fighter as the Fokker E.I, it was virtually helpless
against the newer German fighters of 1916–17. The aircraft's poor performance
against the Fokker and the failure to improve the aircraft or replace it caused
great controversy in England, with Noel Pemberton Billing attacking the B.E.2c
and the Royal Aircraft Factory in the House of Commons on 21 March 1916,
claiming that RFC pilots in France were being "rather murdered than killed".

Night fighter

As early as 1915, the B.E.2c entered service as a pioneer night fighter, being
used in attempts to intercept and destroy the German airship raiders. The
interceptor version of the B.E.2c was flown as a single-seater, outfitted with
an auxiliary fuel tank on the centre of gravity in the position of the
observer's seat.

Among other projected weapons intended to attack airships from above, including
Ranken darts and small incendiary bombs, was the Fiery Grapnel. Developed at the
Royal Aircraft Factory, the grapnel consisted of a two-inch long hollow steel
shaft packed with an explosive charge and fitted with a sharp four-sided nose
and metal plates that acted as fins; this would have been attached to a
winch-mounted cable and carried by a single B.E.2. It was intended for the
fighter to approach a Zeppelin from above, after which the grapnel would be
dropped and appropriate manoeuvring employed to strike the surface of the
Zeppelin with it: it then would bury itself and explode, causing ignition of the
airship's hydrogen gas.

A simpler and much more practical solution proved to be to attack from below,
using a Lewis gun firing a mixture of explosive and incendiary ammunition at an
upwards angle of 45°.

The new tactic proved to be highly effective. On the night of 2–3 September
1916, a single B.E.2c was credited with the downing of SL 11, the first German
airship to be shot down over Britain after over a year of night raids. This feat
led to the pilot, Captain William Leefe Robinson, being awarded a Victoria Cross
and various cash prizes, totalling up to £3,500, that had been put up by a
number of individuals.

This was not an isolated victory; five more German airships were destroyed by
Home Defence B.E.2c interceptors between October and December 1916. As a
consequence of these losses, the German Army's airship fleet ceased raids over
England: German naval airship raiders of 1917 flew at higher altitudes to avoid
interception, reducing their effectiveness. Daylight raids by heavier-than-air
bombers were also planned.

The performance of the B.E.2 was inadequate to intercept airships flying at
15,000 feet much less the Gotha bombers that emerged during 1917, and its career
as an effective home defence fighter was over.

Specifications (B.E.2c – RAF 1a engine)

General characteristics
Crew: Two, pilot and observer
Length: 27 ft 3 in (8.31 m)
Wingspan: 37 ft 0 in (11.28 m)
Height: 11 ft 1½ in (3.39 m)
Wing area: 371 ft² (34.8 m²)
Empty weight: 1,370 lb (623 kg)
Loaded weight: 2,350 lb (1,068 kg)
Powerplant: 1 × RAF 1a air cooled V-8 engine, 90 hp (67 kW)

Performance
Maximum speed: 72 mph (63 knots, 116 km/h) at 6,500 ft (1,980 m)
Endurance: 3 hr 15 min
Service ceiling: 10,000 ft (3,050 m)
Climb to 3,500 ft (1,070 m): 6 min 30 s
Climb to 10,000 ft (3,050 m): 45 min 15 s

Armament

Guns: Normally 1 × .303 in (7.7 mm) Lewis gun for observer
Bombs: 224 lb (100 kg) of bombs

(With full bomb load usually flown as a single-seater, without machine gun)



*