British Handley Page Type O

The Ministry of Supply selected Avro out of the British manufacturers though it had no previous experience in working on guided weapons other than some private venture work ; Handley Page had suggested a missile but the Elliots gyro based guidance system was inaccurate beyond.

In addition, the pilots of the Avro Vulcan or Handley Page Victor bombers could tie their systems into those of the missile and make use of the guidance system to help plot their own flight plan, since the unit in the missile was more advanced than that in the aircraft.

Nearby Radlett was the base for Handley Page Aircraft Company, while Hatfield became home to de Havilland.

View from Handley Page Hastings flying over Kiritimati in 1956, during the nuclear testing period. Bridges Point is at the central upper margin.

* Handley Page Marathon, British four engined light transport aircraft

He was in time for the bombing of Germany, serving on the Handley Page Halifax with No. 76 Squadron RAF, initially at RAF Breighton and then at RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor.

Trained by the British Special Operations Executive ( SOE ), the pair returned to the Protectorate by parachute, jumping from a Handley Page Halifax, on 28 December 1941.

* Supermarine 521 ( 1950 ) – Modified Attacker fuselage as basis for Handley Page HP. 88

A number of different aircraft platforms were considered including a variant of the Vickers VC10 airliner and two of the current V bombers, the Avro Vulcan and Handley Page Victor.

The bombers, whose names all started with the letter " V " and which were known collectively as the V-class, were the Vickers Valiant ( first flew 1951, entered service 1955 ), Avro Vulcan ( first flew 1952, in service 1956 ) and Handley Page Victor ( first flew 1952, in service 1958 ).

Handley Page and Avro came up with very advanced designs for the bomber competition, which would become the crescent-wing Victor and the delta-wing Vulcan respectively, and the Air Staff decided to award contracts to both companies as insurance against one of the designs being a failure.

Air Chief Marshal Sir John Slessor believed that had the air force been forced to choose among the three British bombers under development in the late 1930s — the Avro Manchester, Short Stirling, and Handley Page Halifax — it would have chosen the wrong one.

* April 21 – Sir Frederick Handley Page, British aircraft manufacturer ( b. 1885 )

* BAe / Handley Page Jetstream

* BAe / Handley Page Victor

* Handley Page HP. 88 ( Blackburn Y. B. 2 )-Experimental aircraft for Handley Page using a Supermarine-built fuselage.

Many of these made one-way journeys into occupied France as part of the D-Day landings, and later Holland for the Arnhem landing, towed from England behind aircraft such as the Douglas Dakota and Handley Page Halifax.

The Handley Page H. P. 42, a large all-metal biplane airliner of the 1930s.

Two bay biplanes ( with one set of struts closer to the fuselage, and another closer to the wing tips ) like the Avro 504 of World War I, were also common during the biplane's heyday, and some larger biplanes had three or more bays, the Handley Page Hyderabad for example had three.

This included the conversion of Handley Page Halifax bombers into freighters, six of which were sold to Bond Air Services, an early post-war independent British airline.

The Accountant was designed for 28 passengers and, like the more successful Avro 748, Handley Page Dart Herald, Fokker Friendship and YS-11, was powered by two Rolls-Royce Dart turboprop engines.

* Heavy bombers received the names of cities and towns-Short Stirling, Avro Lancaster, Handley Page Halifax.

* Handley Page Halifax ( 1946 )

On the night of 23 / 24 September 1942, his Handley Page Halifax bomber took part in an air raid on the U-boat pens at Flensburg, Germany.

To cover the 22nd Armoured Brigade group's withdrawal on 14 / 15 June, 337 Royal Air Force ( RAF ) bombers ( 223 Avro Lancasters, 100 Handley Page Halifax, 14 de Havilland Mosquitos ) from No. 4 Group RAF, No. 5 Group RAF and No. 8 Group RAF dropped 1, 700 tons of high explosives on the town of Évrecy and on targets around Villers-Bocage, destroying one Tiger tank of the 101st SS Heavy Panzer Battalion and damaging three more.

* Handley Page Halifax ( 13, 000 lb )

The He 219 was particularly prone to this ; its high wing loading at the edge of stalling speed, left it unmanouevrable, and the 61-victory night fighter ace Manfred Meurer lost his life 21 / 22 January 1944 when, after shooting down a Handley Page Halifax bomber, his He 219 was rammed by a Bf 110.

Operation Tonga began at 22: 56 on the night of 5 June, when six Handley Page Halifax heavy bombers took off from Tarrant Rushton airfield towing six Horsa gliders carrying the coup-de-main force consisting of D Company, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry reinforced with two extra platoons from B Company and a party of sappers, who were tasked with capturing the bridges over the Caen Canal and the River Orne.

The eight Locusts were loaded into separate Hamilcar gliders between 17 – 20 March, and on the morning of 24 March were towed from the airfield by Handley Page Halifax heavy bombers to join the rest of the gliders and transport aircraft carrying the two airborne divisions.

* Handley Page Halifax

In 1940, a second factory was built on the site and the runway was extended to allow for construction of the Handley Page Halifax four-engined heavy bomber to begin.

Halton gave its name to the Handley Page Halton, a cargo version of the Halifax bomber.

Józefa Poniatowskiego ) which mainly flew Fairey Battle, Vickers Wellington, Vickers Warwick and Handley Page Halifax bombers.

In the early evening of 23 May 1948 an ex-RAF Handley Page Halifax, registered G-AIZO, and operated by Bond Air Services Ltd. carrying a cargo of apricots from Valencia, Spain, crashed at Studham.

By this period in the war, SOE had insufficient resources to mount the huge operation on its own ; for example, it had access to only 23 Handley Page Halifax aircraft for dropping agents and stores, barely sufficient to maintain SOE's existing networks.

Diagram comparing the Stirling ( yellow ) with its contemporaries ; the Avro Lancaster ( blue ) and the Handley Page Halifax ( pink ).

* No. 10 Squadron RAF between 8 July 1940 and 5 July 1942 flying the Handley Page Halifax Mks I & II.

296 Squadron and 297 Squadron both moved in on 14 March 1944 with their Armstrong Whitworth Albemarles before 296 squadron added the Handley Page Halifax V to their inventory and moved to RAF Earls Colne on 29 September 1944 and 297 squadron moving to the same place a day later.

Fairey's also built 498 Bristol Beaufighter aircraft and over 660 Handley Page Halifax bombers in their northern facilities.

During the Second World War, Fairey produced nearly 500 Bristol Beaufighters and nearly 600 Handley Page Halifax ( 326 B Mk III and 246 B Mk V )

Production included another RAF heavy bomber, the Handley Page Halifax.