Royal Aircraft Factory 'Aerial Target' 1917

avion ancien

avion ancien

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In The Royal Aircraft Factory (P. Hare, Putnam 1990) it is mentioned, in the context of the Royal Aircraft Factory's 1917 'Aerial Target' (a seminal, radio controlled pilotless drone, designed to be launched against Zeppelins and as a flying bomb), that:

One example was later converted to a manned aeroplane by No 3 (Western) Aircraft Depot at Bristol, and was fitted with a wheeled undercarriage and ailerons. As a rebuilt aircraft it was allotted a serial number from a batch allocated for that purpose. It received the number B8962, with numerals similar to those of its original, uncertain identity, and this has caused much ill-founded conjecture among latter-day historians. By 1934 it had been disposed of, and was owned by Mr Ron Shelley of Billericay, but it was broken up without appearing on the civil register.
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Does a photograph of this example exist? Does anyone know more about (a) its use by Nº 3 (Western) Aircraft Depot and (b) the apparent plans for it to be used as a civil light aircraft?
 
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Thank you, Fluff. Vis à vis your hyperlink, the fourth photograph - with the wheeled undercarriage - is most interesting. Can you tell me the original source of this and anything more about it?
 
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AA, I tried working from the other end and looked for references to Ron Shelley. None in the Royal Aero Club minutes and no sign on G-INFO that he was ever the registered owner of any other aircraft.
From Ancestry - In the 1939 Register he is listed as a Garage Proprietor/Engineer in Billericay. Born in 1903 Ronald Charles Shelley, no sign of an Aviators' Certificate.
 
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Thank you, Schneiderman. I pursued a similar approach - i.e. searching against Ron Shelley/Billericay/1934 - with a similar outcome.

Vis à vis G-INFO, beware of false negatives. It's my understanding that the website's search facility only searches data uploaded to it, which does not include the content of documents uploaded. This means that the content of the old paper register entries is not searched and so if these contain details of an aircraft owner, such details do not appear in the search result. For example, Laurence Charles Mansfield was the owner of Auster Alpha G-AHCK in 1972-73. If you use the advanced search facility and enter MANSFIELD in the registered owner box, G-AHCK does not appear in the search results. Thus the only way to overcome this shortcoming is to undertake a visual inspection, on the G-INFO website, of the paper register entry for every aircraft registered before 1986 - that is, if you have nothing else to do during the next seven days and more!
 
avion ancien said:
Vis à vis G-INFO, beware of false negatives. It's my understanding that the website's search facility only searches data uploaded to it, which does not include the content of documents uploaded.
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Thanks for the advice, I'd never used a search in this was before and was unaware of the limitation. Next time I'm back at Hendon I will check the Club card index to see if Shelley actually did hold an Aviators' Certificate, they should all be on Ancestry but you never know.
 
If you have that issue, hesham, I think that you've posted the wrong page. That which you've posted concerns the Italian Telebomba Crocco. The manned version of the Royal Aircraft Factory 'Aerial Target' seems to be mentioned under the title BAT Target Monoplane. If you can post that extract, I'll be most grateful.
 
Excellent. Thank you, hesham. The letter and photographs are most interesting.

What is not clear, from the pages that hesham has attached, is who wrote the letter and when. Was it, as is suggested by the heading on page 68, written by Ron Shelley? If not, then by whom? Is the letter an historical document or was it sent to the publisher of the magazine in 1987? If the former, was it written prior to 1934 or subsequent to that but prior to 1987? Also, who took the photographs and/or supplied them to the publisher of the magazine? Finally, does the letter continue onto page 70 (as the table of contents suggests that the following piece starts on page 71)? If it does, would you please, hesham, attach page 70 as well.
 
Having revisited the letter, evidently it was written no earlier than 1945 because it says:

I kept the rudder and tailplane for a number of years, but they got destroyed before WWII
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As to the serial number which appears on the fin in the first photograph, this replicates the last of the series allocated to the unmanned 'Aerial Target' aircraft (A8957-8962) but with a B prefix being subsrituted for the A prefix. B8962 appears to have been part of a block of serial numbers which Bruce Robertson (British Military Aircraft Serials 1911-1979, PSL 1979) describes as being:

Various types rebuilt by Nº 3 (Western) Aircraft Repair Depot, Yate, Bristol .....
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but no mention is made of B8962 in the 'remarks' column, from which one might deduce that the serial number was not officially allocated to the manned 'Aerial Target' aircraft and, for that reason, it was convenient to Major Brown simply to apply it to the aircraft to give it a semblance of legitimacy (bearing in mind that it was being kept at RAF Northolt).

Hesham, I hope that you'll respond to my post #18.
 
Thank you, Scapaflow. I now know that we have seen the letter in its entirety. That just leaves the question of when the letter was written and to whom.
 

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