In the Wide Blue Yonder
Seen on a glorious day at the Shuttleworth Collection's 2015 Wings and Wheels show is an original World War I-vintage Royal Aircraft Factory SE.5A.
This aircraft was originally serial F904 of No. 84 Squadron RAF, then flew as G-EBIA from September 1923 to February 1932. It was restored and passed to the Shuttleworth Collection. Re-registered as G-EBIA, it was first painted as D7000, and now flies again as F904.
The SE.5 was a British biplane fighter aircraft, the first examples of which reached the Western Front before the Sopwith Camel. Although it had a much better overall performance than the Camel, problems with its Hispano-Suiza engine, particularly the geared-output H-S 8B-powered early versions, meant that there was a chronic shortage of SE.5s until well into 1918 and fewer squadrons were equipped with the SE.5 than with the Sopwith fighter. Together with the Camel, the SE.5 was instrumental in regaining Allied air superiority in mid-1917 and maintaining it for the rest of the war, ensuring there was no repetition of "Bloody April" 1917 when losses in the Royal Flying Corps were much heavier than in the Luftstreitkräfte.
The SE.5 (Scout Experimental 5) was designed by Henry Folland, John Kenworthy and Major Frank Goodden of the Royal Aircraft Factory in Farnborough. It was built around the new 150 hp Hispano-Suiza 8, a V8 engine that, while providing excellent performance, was initially under-developed and unreliable. The first of three prototypes flew on 22 November 1916. The first two prototypes were lost in crashes (the first killing Major Gooden, the chief test pilot at the Royal Aircraft Factory, on 28 January 1917) due to a weakness in their wing design. The third prototype underwent modification before production commenced; the SE.5 was known in service as an exceptionally strong aircraft which could be dived at very high speed – the squarer wings also gave much improved lateral control at low airspeeds.
Like the other significant Royal Aircraft Factory aircraft of the war (BE.2, FE.2 and RE.8) the SE.5 was inherently stable, making it an excellent gunnery platform, but it was also quite manoeuvrable. It was one of the fastest aircraft of the war at 138 mph, equal at least in speed to the SPAD S.XIII and faster than any standard German type of the period.
While the SE.5 was not as agile and effective in a tight dogfight as the Camel it was much easier and safer to fly, particularly for novice pilots. The SE.5 had one synchronised .303-inch Vickers machine gun to the Camel's two, but it also had a wing-mounted Lewis gun on a Foster mounting, which enabled the pilot to fire at an enemy aircraft from below as well as providing two guns firing forward. This was much appreciated by the pilots of the first SE.5 squadrons as the new hydraulic-link "C.C." synchronising gear for the Vickers was unreliable at first. The Vickers gun was mounted on the forward left dorsal surface of the fuselage with the breech inside the cockpit, at a slight upwards angle. The cockpit was set amidships, making it difficult to see over the long front fuselage, but otherwise visibility was good. Perhaps its greatest advantage over the Camel was its superior performance at altitude, making it a much better match for the Fokker D.VII when that fighter arrived at the front.
Only 77 original SE.5 aircraft were built before production settled on the improved SE.5a. In total 5,265 SE.5s were built by six manufacturers: Austin Motors (1,650), Air Navigation and Engineering Company (560), Curtiss (1), Martinsyde (258), the Royal Aircraft Factory (200), Vickers (2,164) and Wolseley Motors Limited (431). A few were converted to two-seat trainers and there were plans for Curtiss to build 1,000 SE.5s in the United States but only one was completed before the end of the war.
At first, airframe construction outstripped the very limited supply of French-built Hispano-Suiza engines. The troublesome geared "-8b" model was prone to have serious gear reduction system problems, sometimes with the propeller (and even the entire gearbox on a very few occasions) separating from the engine and airframe in flight, a problem shared with the similarly-powered Sopwith Dolphin. The introduction of the 200 hp (149 kW) Wolseley Viper, a high-compression, direct-drive version of the Hispano-Suiza 8a made under licence by Wolseley Motors Limited, solved the SE.5a's engine problems and was adopted as the standard powerplant.
About 38 of the late-production Austin-built SE.5as were assigned to the American Expeditionary Force, with the 25th Aero Squadron getting its aircraft (mostly armed only with the fuselage-mounted Vickers gun) at the very end of the war.
In the Wide Blue Yonder
Seen on a glorious day at the Shuttleworth Collection's 2015 Wings and Wheels show is an original World War I-vintage Royal Aircraft Factory SE.5A.
This aircraft was originally serial F904 of No. 84 Squadron RAF, then flew as G-EBIA from September 1923 to February 1932. It was restored and passed to the Shuttleworth Collection. Re-registered as G-EBIA, it was first painted as D7000, and now flies again as F904.
The SE.5 was a British biplane fighter aircraft, the first examples of which reached the Western Front before the Sopwith Camel. Although it had a much better overall performance than the Camel, problems with its Hispano-Suiza engine, particularly the geared-output H-S 8B-powered early versions, meant that there was a chronic shortage of SE.5s until well into 1918 and fewer squadrons were equipped with the SE.5 than with the Sopwith fighter. Together with the Camel, the SE.5 was instrumental in regaining Allied air superiority in mid-1917 and maintaining it for the rest of the war, ensuring there was no repetition of "Bloody April" 1917 when losses in the Royal Flying Corps were much heavier than in the Luftstreitkräfte.
The SE.5 (Scout Experimental 5) was designed by Henry Folland, John Kenworthy and Major Frank Goodden of the Royal Aircraft Factory in Farnborough. It was built around the new 150 hp Hispano-Suiza 8, a V8 engine that, while providing excellent performance, was initially under-developed and unreliable. The first of three prototypes flew on 22 November 1916. The first two prototypes were lost in crashes (the first killing Major Gooden, the chief test pilot at the Royal Aircraft Factory, on 28 January 1917) due to a weakness in their wing design. The third prototype underwent modification before production commenced; the SE.5 was known in service as an exceptionally strong aircraft which could be dived at very high speed – the squarer wings also gave much improved lateral control at low airspeeds.
Like the other significant Royal Aircraft Factory aircraft of the war (BE.2, FE.2 and RE.8) the SE.5 was inherently stable, making it an excellent gunnery platform, but it was also quite manoeuvrable. It was one of the fastest aircraft of the war at 138 mph, equal at least in speed to the SPAD S.XIII and faster than any standard German type of the period.
While the SE.5 was not as agile and effective in a tight dogfight as the Camel it was much easier and safer to fly, particularly for novice pilots. The SE.5 had one synchronised .303-inch Vickers machine gun to the Camel's two, but it also had a wing-mounted Lewis gun on a Foster mounting, which enabled the pilot to fire at an enemy aircraft from below as well as providing two guns firing forward. This was much appreciated by the pilots of the first SE.5 squadrons as the new hydraulic-link "C.C." synchronising gear for the Vickers was unreliable at first. The Vickers gun was mounted on the forward left dorsal surface of the fuselage with the breech inside the cockpit, at a slight upwards angle. The cockpit was set amidships, making it difficult to see over the long front fuselage, but otherwise visibility was good. Perhaps its greatest advantage over the Camel was its superior performance at altitude, making it a much better match for the Fokker D.VII when that fighter arrived at the front.
Only 77 original SE.5 aircraft were built before production settled on the improved SE.5a. In total 5,265 SE.5s were built by six manufacturers: Austin Motors (1,650), Air Navigation and Engineering Company (560), Curtiss (1), Martinsyde (258), the Royal Aircraft Factory (200), Vickers (2,164) and Wolseley Motors Limited (431). A few were converted to two-seat trainers and there were plans for Curtiss to build 1,000 SE.5s in the United States but only one was completed before the end of the war.
At first, airframe construction outstripped the very limited supply of French-built Hispano-Suiza engines. The troublesome geared "-8b" model was prone to have serious gear reduction system problems, sometimes with the propeller (and even the entire gearbox on a very few occasions) separating from the engine and airframe in flight, a problem shared with the similarly-powered Sopwith Dolphin. The introduction of the 200 hp (149 kW) Wolseley Viper, a high-compression, direct-drive version of the Hispano-Suiza 8a made under licence by Wolseley Motors Limited, solved the SE.5a's engine problems and was adopted as the standard powerplant.
About 38 of the late-production Austin-built SE.5as were assigned to the American Expeditionary Force, with the 25th Aero Squadron getting its aircraft (mostly armed only with the fuselage-mounted Vickers gun) at the very end of the war.