Bristol Scout

Le Bristol Scout vu sur Wikipedia.en

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The Bristol Scout was a simple, single seat, [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] originally intended as a civilian racing aircraft.

Like other similar fast, light aircraft of the period - it was acquired by the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] and the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] as a "[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]", or fast reconnaissance type.

In the event it was one of the first single-seaters to be used as [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], although it was not possible to fit it with an effective armament until the first British [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] became available, by which time it was outmoded by later types.

Single seat fighters continued to be called "scouts" in British usage into the early 1920s.

Development

The prototype for the Bristol Scout was designed in the second half of 1913 by [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] and Harry Busteed.

The first flight was first on 23 February 1914 by Busteed, and it was first shown to the public at the March 1914 [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]'s Aero Show event.

It had the "racing" lines fashionable in light single seaters of the 1913-1914 period, with characteristics such as a main [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] wheel track measured at only 39 inches (99 cm) that was barely wider than the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], only about a one half degree [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] angle on the wing panels, making them look almost totally "flat" across from a nose-on view, and an engine [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] that had no open frontal area, even though the extreme bottom was sliced away horizontally to allow cooling air to get to its seven cylinder 80 hp [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] Lambda [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien].

It was fitted with a squared-planform "all-flying" [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] with no fixed [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], similar to that used on contemporary [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], and [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] types.

Operational history


The period of service of the Bristol Scout (1914 to 1916) marked the genesis of the fighter aircraft as a distinct type, and many of the earliest attempts to arm British "[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]" aircraft with weaponry were tested in action using Bristol Scouts.

These began with the arming of the second Scout B, RFC number 648, with two rifles, one per side, aimed outwards and forwards to clear the propeller arc.

Two of the Royal Flying Corps' early Bristol Scout C aircraft, numbers 1609 and 1611, flown by Captain [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] with the RFC's [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], were each in their turn armed with a single [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] on the left side of the fuselage, within a mount that Capt. Hawker had designed himself, almost identically in the manner of the rifles tried on the second Scout B.

When Hawker's No.1611 aircraft was used by him to down two German aircraft and force off a third on 25 July 1915 over [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] and [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] he was awarded the first [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] ever given for a British military pilot's actions in aerial combat.

A number of the 24 initial production RNAS' Scout C aircraft were armed with single Lewis machine guns, sometimes with the Lewis gun mounted atop the upper wing centre section in the manner of the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], and even more common was an apparently very dubious choice of placement by some RNAS pilots, in mounting the Lewis gun on the forward fuselage of their Scout Cs, just as if it were a synchronized weapon (which it was not) firing directly forward and through the propeller arc; an action likely to result in serious propeller damage.

The type of bullet-deflecting wedges as [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] had tried on his [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] monoplane were also tried on one of the RFC's last Scout Cs, No. 5303, but since this seemed, in this instance, to have also required the use of the Morane Type N's immense "casserole" spinner, which almost totally blocked cooling air from reaching this particular Scout C's 80-hp Le Rhône rotary engine, the deflecting-wedge concept for propeller protection from bullets was not pursued further with Bristol Scouts.

n the early part of the war, in attempts to down German [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] airships, one unusual weapon tried from a RNAS Scout D was the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], a type of droppable, explosive-laden [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] with 1 lb (0.45 kg) of explosive per projectile.

Scout D No. 8953, flown by Flt. Lt. C. T. Freeman, flew from the deck of the flight-deck-converted [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] packet steamer [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] (formerly with the civilian name Viking), which possessed a takeoff deck on its forward half, and on 2 August 1916, Flt Lt. Freeman tried to down the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] L.17 with Ranken Darts, released from two vertically-oriented internal cylindrical containers located just behind his feet, in the belly of his Scout D.

None of the darts did any damage to the Zeppelin, and since Freeman's aircraft could not land back on the Vindex, and was too far from land for a safe return, he had to [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] his Scout D in the ocean after the unsuccessful attack.

One attempt to arm RFC Bristol Scouts with a synchronizable machine gun, like the air-cooled version of the Maxim-type [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] that would later be used with great success on the contemporary [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] fighter, was first tried with the late production RFC Scout C No.5313 in March 1916, and even though six other Scouts, both late Scout Cs and
early Scout Ds, were tried out with the same setup as No. 5313 had used, the bulky Vickers-Challenger synchronizing gear used on all these Scouts seemed to have trouble in safely firing the Vickers guns; in May 1916 one of these Scouts fired every bullet from its Vickers gun through the propeller in testing.

Not one of the RFC or RNAS squadrons that ever received Bristol Scout aircraft was ever equipped "entirely" with the aircraft, and by the end of the summer of 1916 no new Bristol Scout aircraft were being supplied to the British squadrons of either service, often being replaced in RFC service with the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] single seat "[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]" fighter.

A small number of Bristol Scouts did end up being based in the Middle East (in Egypt, [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], and [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]) in 1916 with the last known Bristol Scout in military service being the former RNAS Scout D No. 8978 in [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], which was based at [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], near [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien], as late as October 1926.

Once the Bristol Scouts were no longer required for front line service they were officially classed as "trainers".

In fact most were not sent to training units, however, but retained by senior officers as personal "run-abouts" - their delightful flying characteristics making them very popular for this purpose.

Variants

Scout A

After its first public appearance, by May 1914 what would later become known as the "Bristol Scout A" had been refitted with a longer span - at 24 ft 7 in (7.49 m) compared to the initial 22 ft (6.71 m) - set of wing panels that were rigged with
1-3/4º of dihedral, a larger surface area rudder, and a much more conventional open-front, ring-style, "six segment" cowl to house the 80 hp Gnôme Lambda rotary engine.

The British military first evaluated the Scout A aircraft on 14 May 1914, at [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] when the aircraft achieved a top airspeed of 97.5 mph (157 km/h).

The Scout A also entered two air races in the summer of 1914 after being purchased by British [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] for £400 without its engine.

Flying with an 80 hp [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] 9C nine cylinder rotary installed by its purchaser it was ditched in the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] during the second air race it participated in; a round trip from [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] in the UK to the French Buc aerodrome (near [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]) and back, due to its running out of fuel.

While in France, the tanks had been only half-filled by mistake.

Scout B

Two Scout B aircraft, identical to the modified Scout A aircraft with the 80 hp Le Rhone rotary for power, except for having half-hoop-style underwing skids mounted on them, and a widened rudder surface, were built for military evaluation just as the Austro-Hungarian[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] was shot in [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] Bosnia.

The outbreak of the First World War followed shortly.

These two Scout B aircraft, bearing [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] serial numbers 644 and 648, first saw evaluational service from 20
September 1914, with the first one,serial number 644, being damaged beyond repair on 12 November of that year in a crash landing.

May 1916: First parasite aircraft, a [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] hooked on the upper wing of [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] flying boat

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