ASN Wikibase Occurrence # 307444
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| Date: | Sunday 7 February 1943 |
| Time: | |
| Type: | De Havilland Queen Bee |
| Owner/operator: | 1621 'L' Flt PAU / 1 AACU RAF |
| Registration: | P4761 |
| MSN: | 5345 |
| Fatalities: | Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 0 |
| Aircraft damage: | Destroyed |
| Location: | north-east of Cardigan, Ceredigion, Wales -
 United Kingdom
|
| Phase: | Manoeuvring (airshow, firefighting, ag.ops.) |
| Nature: | Military |
| Departure airport: | RAF Aberporth, Ceredigion |
5345 DH82B QUEEN BEE P4761: Crashed in forced landing nr Cardigan 07/02/1943
Details:
Provided by the De-Havilland Museum.
‘The Queen Bee was devised as a low-cost radio-controlled target aircraft, for realistic anti-aircraft gunnery training. If it survived the shooting as intended, by offset aiming, its controller would attempt to recover it for re-use. The Queen Bee used the engine, unslatted wings, under-carriage, and tailplane of a Tiger Moth. But instead of a Tiger Moth fabric-covered metal frame fuselage, it used a wooden (spruce and plywood) Moth Major fuselage since this was cheaper and offered buoyancy in the event of a ditching. The carburettor was reversed to cope with the high forward accelerations experienced in a catapult launch. The aircraft could be flown manned, from the front seat. The enclosed rear cockpit position was equipped with RAE radio-control gear including pneumatically operated servo units linked to the aircraft rudder and elevator controls. A four-bladed wooden windmill in the propeller slipstream on the fuselage port side drove an air-pump to provide compressed air for the gyro unit and servos. The Queen Bee was first flown, manned, at Hatfield in 1935, then remotely controlled at Farnborough later that year. 412 were built between 1933 and 1943, 360 as float planes. Over 380 Queen Bees were built, operated by the Fleet Air Arm (many on twin floats) and the Royal Air Force. The Museum’s exhibit is one of only two left in the UK, was built by Scottish Aviation Ltd of Glasgow in 1943 and flew at least three times for the Army guns off Manorber, South Wales until March 1946, it was acquired in incomplete form in 1986 and restored in its original colours and markings.’
P4761 was number 5345 to come off the production plant of De Havilland at Hatfield between February and May 1939. She was one of a run batch of 110 delivered to the RAF. It appears P4761 was still under control as the records state ‘Crashed during a forced landing’. That is all that is known.
Crew:
N/A.
Sources:
www.dehavillandmuseum.co.uk
www.rafcommands.com
www.airbritain.com
Revision history:
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