Talk:Handley Page Type O

Jackson refs
I think the Jackson refs may have been confused at some point. The page ranges of refs 17 and 18 correspond exactly with the relevant material in Jackson AJ (1974). I don't have Jackson 2006 but would be surprised in the same groups of pages were relevant in it. So what is Jackson (2006) referring to?TSRL (talk) 20:34, 22 August 2009 (UTC)


 * This dates from Simon Harley's edit of 10 May 2009 "standardising refs"; before that there was no mention of Jackson 2006.TSRL (talk) 20:57, 22 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Before this edit they were related to Jackson's 1974 civil aircraft book, for some reason Simon Harley changed the book! MilborneOne (talk) 21:19, 22 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Reverted changes back to refer to 1974. MilborneOne (talk) 21:23, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Biplane
Just from looking at the picture, it seems more apt to call it a Sesquiplane, rather than a biplane. Catsmeat (talk) 14:00, 26 July 2015 (UTC)


 * A biplane with a large "overhang" on the top wing (there were many of them) is not usually described as a sesquiplane unless the lower wing is more a "stub" than a true wing - in practice the difference in chord is more important as a defining factor than span (think of the Nieuport 10 and its immediate descendents). But essentially we are not in the business of defining this sort of thing here - if the sources generally called the Type O a sesquiplane we would too, in other words. WP:OR for us to do so off our own bat, even if we thought it fitted the definition. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 00:54, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
 * A small lesson both in early aviation and Wikipedia editing, thanks.Catsmeat (talk) 07:26, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
 * No worries. I have learned a lot about both in the last few years without becoming infallible myself in either just yet.--Soundofmusicals (talk) 11:26, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Recent additions
I used the RAF OH Appendices volume to add to the specifications section but haven't done this before so apols for any mistakes. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 08:14, 6 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Moved new section to text area.Keith-264 (talk) 12:38, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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Errors and Omissions?
The 2019 book "Anzac and Aviator" by Michael Molkentin has significantly different information relating to both the O/400 and Sir Ross Smith than that in the article. For instance, under Dardanelles, second line, it states that an O/100 was flown to Mudros and from July 1917 it operated from there over southern Europe. The second sentence begins "Flown by Lieutenant Ross Smith...." etc. Smith never operated from Mudros during the war, and indeed didn't arrive at No 1 SQN AFC, wearing his brand new wings, until 16th July 1917. He flew fighters until mid August 1918 when he converted to the HP O/400 that had been flown to Cairo by Brigadier General Amyas Borton, OC RAF Palestine Brigade. This was the first ever Britain to Egypt flight. Smith then operated that HP until the end of the war in Egypt and Palestine. The omission relates to the immediate post war flight in another HP O/400 to India, setting yet another record that is worth mentioning. Major General Geoffrey Salmond wanted to inspect the air units that he commanded across the Middle East, and this aircraft was to be flown by Borton and Smith. After Baghdad, the HP was authorised to continue to India to survey an air route, terminating in Calcutta on 18th December 1918. This was the first flight Europe to Asia. It gave Smith a significant advantage in the subsequent England to Australia air race, which he won (with his brother and the two mechanics, Bennett and Shiers, from the HP survey) in the Vickers Vimy. More research needed, I think.Lexysexy (talk) 05:23, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Palestine
Wikimedia Commons has a free-to-use copy of Stuart Reid's well-known painting 'Deraa: the Arab welcome to the first Handley Page machine to arrive in Palestine, 22 September 1918.' https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:On_22_September_1918,_a_Handley_Page_bombing_biplane_which_had_flown_out_from_England_was_ordered_to_proceed_to_the_Sherifan_HQ_with_supplies_of_petrol_for_two_Bristol_Fighter_biplanes_which_had_been_attached_t_Art.IWMART3198.jpg The painting has been in the Imperial War Museum's collection since 1920. The Museum's label reads: 'On 22 September 1918, a Handley Page bombing biplane which had flown out from England was ordered to proceed to the Sherifian HQ with supplies of petrol for two Bristol Fighter biplanes which had been attached to the Sherifan forces.' https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/22567 Note that the RAF tricolour tail flash, with the blue stripe at the front, is correct for 1918; during the Second World War it was the other way round. T.E. Lawrence, in Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1962, Penguin, Harmondsworth, ISBN 0 14 00 1696 1), pp.640-641, writing of 22 September 1918 during the Battle of Megiddo, says, 'Then, with Feisal and Nuri Shalaan, I packed into the green Vauxhall, and off we went to Um el Surab to see the Handley-Page alight... At Um el Surab the Handley stood majestic on the grass, with Bristols and 9.A [ Bristol F.2 Fighter and Airco DH.9A aircraft] beneath its spread of wings. Round it admired the Arabs, saying, "Indeed and at last they have sent us THE aeroplane, of which these things were foals." ... Borton himself [Brigadier-General Amyas Borton, Air Officer Commanding Palestine Brigade RAF ] had come over in the machine to concert help. We talked with him while our men drew from her bomb-racks and fuselage a ton of petrol; oil and spare parts for Bristol Fighters; tea and sugar and rations for our men; letters, Reuter telegrams and medicines for us. Then the great machine [piloted by Captain Ross Macpherson Smith ] rose into the early dusk for Ramleh, for an agreed programme of night-bombing against Deraa and Mafrak, to complete that ruin of the railway traffic which our gun-cotton had begun.'

In the early hours of 19 September, the Handley Page flown by Smith had already dropped sixteen 112 lb bombs on the telephone exchange and railway station at Al-Afuleh, isolating the Ottoman army's communications during the battle. And in the early hours of 23 September, Lt-Col Lawrence adds (p.643): 'We sat and told stories of experience until midnight, when the Handley-Page was to bomb Mafrak [now Mafraq ] station. It came, and hundred-pound bomb after hundred-pound bomb crashed into the packed sidings till they caught fire, and the Turks' shooting stopped.'

Reid's painting used to feature on the cover of the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Lawrence's book. Ross Smith's O/400 was the only such machine in the theatre, but it was used well and it seems to have been enough. The relative ease with which Handley Page crews could carry out precision bombing at night may initially have misled the RAF as to what the much faster and higher-flying bombers of the Second World War could do, especially seeing that, until 1943, they were still fitted with bombsights not so different from those of the Great War. Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:14, 19 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I dont believe the fin flash has ever changed it should be red/white/blue, blue/white/red is used by the French. MilborneOne (talk) 17:49, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * No. During the Great War, the blue stripe went in front. Have a look at the Shuttleworth Collection's SE5a here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AziEyh8jutc And here. https://www.shuttleworth.org/collection/se5a/ Or their Bristol Fighter here. https://www.shuttleworth.org/collection/bristolf2b/ Or their lovely Sopwith Pup. https://www.shuttleworth.org/collection/sopwithpup/ Or Sopwith Triplane. https://www.shuttleworth.org/collection/sopwithtriplane/ The tricolour fin flash was that way round, the French way round, for example on Bristol Bulldogs, into the 1930s. (The RAF Museum's Bulldog is embarrassingly displayed with the wrong fin flash, red at the front, but when it was originally restored to flight in the 1960s, when people still knew what they were doing, the fin flash was blue at the front and I have here a colour photo of the aircraft, taken before its infamous 1964 crash, to prove it. See John WR Taylor, Aircraft Aircraft, Hamlyn, Feltham, 1970, ISBN 0 600 000370, p.78.) The fin flash was dispensed with in the late '30s and then reintroduced during the deployment to France in 1939-1940, so that British aircraft were more recognisable as 'friendly', with the difference that the British tricolour now had the red stripe at the front. Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:36, 1 September 2020 (UTC)