BLACKBURN MONOPLANE

Alex Whittaker examines Andrew Hilton's highly characterful ‘1912’.

- Alex Whittaker

The Blackburn Monoplane was a design years ahead of its time. In an age where biplanes and triplanes were considered the correct way forward a thoughtful and visionary Yorkshireman had other ideas. Robert Blackburn's Type D of 1912 was essentially a modern aircraft. First of all, it was a monoplane, and a mid-wing design at that. Perhaps, most significantly, the general arrangement of its key elements presaged the now accepted layout for most modern aircraft.

The Type D 1912 was a fabric covered wooden aircraft powered by a 50hp Gnome rotary engine. Originally built for Cyril Foggin, it was soon sold on to Montague Francis Glew, who promptly crashed it. The Great War intervened, so it was not repaired. Much later, Richard Ormonde Shuttleworth bought the remains in 1938. He had it rebuilt for the Shuttleworth Collection, where it remains as the oldest airworthy British aircraft.

It is a little-known fact of aviation history that Robert Blackburn introduced the first Air Service in Great Britain, too. This offered half-hourly flights between Leeds and Bradford. Of course, it is never explained why anybody would wish to travel between Bradford and Leeds.

THE MODEL

Noted scale modeller Andrew Hinton built this beautifully observed model from scratch, based on the David Boddington plans. She is built to 1/4 scale and spans 96”, so she is a decent size. She weighs 15lbs 8ozs and required 7ozs of nose weight. She is powered by a Laser 150 driving a 16” x 8” Master Airscrew. Naturally, Andrew's model is a faithful version of the only extant example at the Shuttleworth Collection, Old Warden.

The whole of the model is covered in linen Solartex.