Airspeed - pre-war projects

Schneiderman

Schneiderman

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Here’s a thread for anyone looking for info on pre-war Airspeed projects. Not much has been written or illustrated regarding the numerous projects produced by Hessel Tiltman and his team, limited, pretty much, to what can be found in;

A project listing in Flight 23rd February 1951 – Type numbers and some company artwork.

Airspeed Aircraft Since 1931 – H.A.Taylor, Putnam 1970 – a very slim volume with a few projects in an appendix

Airspeed Projects – Don Middleton, Aeroplane Monthly Dec 1981/Jan 1982 – a bit more information, anecdotal but still rather limited.

Rather than repeat what is in those here I recommend you seek them out if interested.

However, going back to the original GA drawing blueprints a little more can be added to these sources. Tiltman liked to produce his GA drawings with the side view at one scale and the plan and front views at a smaller scale. When these are adjusted to a common scale numerous mismatches are apparent; on one large project the discrepancies in layout can reach 3 feet or more. For the compiled drawings that follow I have assumed that the larger side view is likely to be the more accurate and have adjusted the others to match. If other more detailed drawings of individual parts are available I have assumed that these are also more accurate.

As far as I can see there were three distinct GA drawing numbering systems in use through the 1930s. The early projects have drawing numbers that conform to the project numbers, so project A.S.14 has drawing numbers 14-1 sht1, 14-5 and so on. A second series of drawings start with M and appear to be numerically sequential .They overlap with the first; the lowest I have seen is M305 (for the A.S.14), and the highest M607. Finally, for the later projects a new system was introduced, again starting with the project number. So, A.S.33 has drawing numbers starting with 33, as in 3301001.

You will find bits regarding some of these projects dotted around in other threads but as I have new information and additional projects with new drawings to show I prefer to keep them all together here. So, here we go
 
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A.S.8 Viceroy

The original design for the A.S.8, a modified A.S.6 Envoy to compete in the 1934 MacRobertson race from Britain to Australia, was planned to have a different nose and cockpit layout from that which was finally built. A DH influence perhaps. Based on drawing no. 8-1
AS8.jpg
 
A.S.14

Taylor says that the initial version of the A.S.14, in 1935, was to be powered by two Pratt & Whitney Wasp Juniors or 620hp Armstrong Siddeley Panther VI, and to have a span of 56ft. I have seen no trace of this. Preliminary GA drawing number M305 dates from Dec 1935 and has a span of 86ft and two Bristol Pegasus P.E.IM engines. Drawing 14-1, from January 1936, is titled High Speed Twin-Engine Passenger or Mail Carrying Machine. It too has an 86ft span and Pegasus P.E.1M engines, is only slightly different in detail, and appears to be the definitive design. Drawing 14-5 shows that it was laid out to carry 15 passengers in five rows of three. An un-numbered and undated drawing of this design, as High Wing Commercial Monoplane, has the name ‘Ambassador’ added and is powered by Pegasus X engines.
AS14.jpg
 
A.S.15

High Speed General Purpose Day & Night Bomber and Troop Carrier, drawing 15-1 dating from April 1935, was a speculative design for a huge four engine monoplane bomber of 166ft span. For context that is 50% greater than a Lancaster. The four radial engines are of an unspecified type, each of 1300hp. Middleton praises Tiltman’s drawings as works of art, but this one is a nightmare to adjust to a common scale, the discrepancies are large, especially the turrets and cockpit. There are five defensive turrets, three with twin machine guns and two with single guns, presumably cannon.
AS15.jpg
 
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A.S.27

Project A.S.27 came in two distinct forms, an unusual biplane of ‘Irving’ configuration and a fairly standard high-wing monoplane. Drawing 27-1, late 1936, Slow Speed Coastal Patrol & General Purpose Aircraft, shows a layout rather different from that in Taylor’s Putnam, there are obvious differences in the fin and rudder, the wing struts and most noticeably in the undercarriage struts. It was to be powered by a Wolseley Aries 225hp radial.

The monoplane, Drawing M607, Slow Coastal Patrol Aircraft (AM Spec 38/35), Jan 1937, was to be powered by an Armstrong Siddeley Cheetah. The fuselage is very similar to that on the A.S.30 Queen Wasp.
AS27_1.jpg AS27_2.jpg
 
A.S.29

Airspeed’s tender to Specification B.1/35 for a heavy bomber to replace the AW Whitley. The earliest GA drawing seen is M388 dated Jan 1936 and shows the aircraft powered by four 650hp Bristol Aquila radials, the smallest of Bristol’s sleeve-valve engines. This is unusual as Spec. B.1/35 called for a twin-engine aircraft, although I have not seen the actual working of the document. Tiltman’s design was aerodynamically clean compared to most of the competitor designs and had ‘bespoke’ low-drag nose and tail turrets. The bombs were stored in two bays in the fuselage and one in each wing root. In Feb 1936 the design was updated with a larger tail turret, revised cockpit glazing and the substitution of the Aquilas with 850hp Rolls-Royce Goshawk Bs. The change in engines and heavier tail turret required the wing to be shifted rearwards. It is this version that is illustrated in Taylor’s Putnam, the Aquila version in Middleton’s article. On paper this looks like a good design let down by a poor choice of engines; the Aquila was never fully developed and saw little use while the Goshawk B was never produced, replaced by the troublesome Peregrine.
AS29_1.jpg AS29_2.jpg
 
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A.S.31

This aircraft, High Speed Fighter to AM Spec 35/35, is included here as the GA drawing, M421, includes information not noted before. In the past I had queried whether this project was really to be powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin E as that was rather low powered to meet the requirements of the Specification, top speed in excess of 400mph, and also the layout of the four exhausts suggested that a Rolls-Royce Vulture was the intended power plant. However the GA drawings confirms that it is a Merlin and the nacelle is the appropriate size for this engine. It should be noted that Spec 35/35 was actually for a specialised High Speed Aircraft trialling new research ideas but ‘capable of development into a multi-gun single seater fighter’ but most tenders ignored that and went straight for a fighter. The principal dimensions of the project include - Rudder Flaps (2) 6.4sq ft and Secondary Rudder 0.6 sq ft. The secondary rudder is clearly the small one on the trailing edge of the cockpit nacelle but the location of the rudder flaps is not noted. There are no such drag flaps drawn on the wings and they are not mentioned in the patent, GB470650, that Tiltman filed for the design. Given the size, 3.2sq ft each, the only plausible location for them would be the trapezoidal panels above the tail wheel.
AS31.jpg
 
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A.S.33

Drawing 3301001 is for an Intermediate Class Airliner, Oct 1936. A.S.32 may well have been an earlier version of the project. These airliner projects are the first stressed metal skin designs by the company. Drawing 3301001, June 1936, shows the top view and 3301003 the side and internal layout for a mixed load of 18 passengers and mail. Taylor says that the proposed engines were Bristol Aquilas, which is compatible with the cowling sizes as drawn. The front view in the following drawing is inferred from the plan and side views and from comparison with the related project A.S.34
AS33.jpg
 
A.S.34

The A.S.34 was basically a scaled down version of the A.S.33 for 12 to 15 passengers. Taylor says it was to be powered by four Armstrong Siddeley Cheetahs. The only drawing I have located is an un-numbered GA drawing for the wind tunnel model.
AS34.jpg
 
A.S.35

A further downscaling of the previous design to meet an Imperial Airways specification for an 8 seat aircraft dating from February 1937. Powered by four 205 hp DH Gypsy VI. Tiltman was not enthusiastic about the specification; in his covering letter for the tender brochure he wrote “Application of our normal guarantee margin to the tare weight quoted would reduce the pay load of this aircraft to a point which would appear to us to render the aircraft so uneconomical as to make it of little interest to an operator”.
AS35.jpg
 
A.S.36

A two-seat trainer monoplane tendered to T.1/37, drawings 3601001 onwards, May 1937. It is a fairly well known project but included here because the drawings in both Taylor and Middleton’s works show it as having enclosed cockpits. In fact they were normally open but were fitted with flexible transparent panels on either side that could slide up to any desired height and could meet on the centre line.
AS36.jpg
 
A.S.44

Airspeed had received a contract to construct the A.S.10, later named Oxford, as a military development of the Envoy to Specification T.23/36. The A.S.44, Oct 1938, was Tiltman’s concept for a replacement designed specifically for the role. The basic design came in two forms, low wing and high wing, with a choice of two Bristol Aquilas, Armstrong Siddeley Cheetahs or Alvis Leonides

These are the Aquila-powered versions

AS44_1.jpg AS44_2.jpg
 
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Excellent items all in one place, thank you. Seems like an ideal project to follow on from Supermarine Secret Projects 1 & 2 !
 
Cy-27 said:
Excellent items all in one place, thank you. Seems like an ideal project to follow on from Supermarine Secret Projects 1 & 2 !
Click to expand...
Actually I placed them all here in case someone else wanted to do that :):)
 
That is the AS.47.
It was covered in Tony Buttler's British Secret Projects, I think originally in the Appendix but in the revised edition moved to the Medium Bombers chapter along with the other high-speed bomber projects of 1939-40.
 
Hood said:
That is the AS.47.
It was covered in Tony Buttler's British Secret Projects, I think originally in the Appendix but in the revised edition moved to the Medium Bombers chapter along with the other high-speed bomber projects of 1939-40.
Click to expand...
Yes.
 

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