Royal Aircraft Factory B.S.1 biplane crash, Farnborough, April 1913

[pomme homme]

Geoffrey de Havilland was employed as chief designer at the Royal Aircraft Factory, Farnborough. In the course of that employment he designed the B.E. tractor biplane, which would achieve its zenith in the B.E.2c. However in April 1913 the design was still in the course of evolution. De Havilland had modified the design to produce an aeroplane with a very high maximum speed (I have found this described as the B.S.1), which he was testing. He took off from Farnborough to make two high speed runs over a measured course above the aerodrome. His aim was to make two runs and achieve an average speed of 91.4 mph. Achieving this would be a world air speed record for a biplane and would be some 20 mph faster than the speed at which any other British built aircraft had flown to that date. Sadly it failed to achieve this and instead crashed, causing serious injury to de Havilland, which necessitated two weeks in hospital. A veil of secrecy was drawn across the incident by the War Office and a news embargo was placed on it. Whether or not that is the reason, an internet search, for information on the date and circumstances of the crash and the injuries suffered by de Havilland, draws a blank today - although this may be down to me having failed yet to light upon the most appropriate key words for the search engine! 

[pomme homme]

Ah, changing the key words has produced more information on this crash. The source of that is the de Havilland Moth Club website, which elaborates on the incident as follows:

GDH’s only serious flying accident occurred at Farnborough in March 1913 when flying a BS 1, a single seat biplane ‘scout’ fitted with a double row, 14 cylinder, 100hp Gnome rotary engine. The aeroplane was a scaled down BE 2 and, when assembled, GDH realised that the rudder probably was not of adequate area. He commissioned a larger rudder but flew the aeroplane before it could be fitted. During a tight turning manoeuvre she entered a spin, fortunately at a height of less than 100ft, and went flat into the ground. GDH suffered a broken jaw and the loss of several teeth which were later recovered from the wreckage by a mechanic and sent to him in an envelope. He spent some time recovering in the Cambridge Hospital at Aldershot and later flew many hours on the reconstructed BS 1 before the aircraft was sent to France for use by the RFC as a front-line fighter.

The Century of Flight website also contains a little more on the subject, this being:

1913 was a year of consolidation and further experimentation. The year also saw de Havilland’s first “flying crash worthy of that name”. The BS.1, also known as the SE.2, first flew in March. It was fast for its time, achieving a speed of 91.7 mph (147.5 Kph), and was one of the first single-seat scouts. Unfortunately its rudder was too small and de Havilland crashed while trying to recover from a spin.