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de Havilland DH82 Queen Bee

The de Havilland DH82 Queen Bee is a 1930s British biplane designed by Geoffrey de Havilland and built by the de Havilland Aircraft Company. It was operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Royal Navy The Queen Bee was a modification of the highly successful and reliable DH82A “Tiger Moth”. The main differences between the two aircraft are that the Queen Bee has an entirely wooden fuselage (that of a De Havilland “Moth Major”) and a fuel tank 5 gallons larger than a Tiger Moth. Queen Bees were first produced in 1935 in response to an Air Ministry request for an inexpensive, expendable radio-controlled target drone for anti-aircraft gunnery practice. The front cockpit was fitted with conventional controls for a test pilot or ferry pilot, while the rear carried the radio control receiver and pneumatically operated servos for the flying controls. It is said to be the first full-size aircraft originally designed to fly unmanned and under radio control. A total of about 400 were built, mainly at Hatfield, and most were destroyed, suffering the fate for which they were built. After the Second World War, virtually all of the remaining airframes were broken up as scrap and burned at Redhill Airfield.