de Havilland Tiger Moth

In addition to the type's principal use for ab initio training, the Second World War had RAF Tiger Moths operating in other capacities, including maritime surveillance and defensive anti-invasion preparations; some aircraft were even outfitted to function as armed light bombers.[4] de Havilland had developed successively more capable Gipsy engines, and the company had produced a new low-winged monoplane aircraft to test them.[4] The DH.60T Moth had several shortcomings, thus was subject to several alterations, such as the adoption of shortened interplane struts to raise the wingtips after insufficient ground clearance was discovered while it was undergoing trials at RAF Martlesham Heath.A single prototype, designated the DH.82 Tiger Moth, was ordered by the British Air Ministry under Specification 15/31, which sought a suitable ab initio training aircraft.[4] One of the main changes from the preceding Moth series was improved access to the front cockpit, since the training requirement specified that the front-seat occupant had to be able to escape easily, especially when wearing a parachute.[6] On 26 October 1931 the first 'true' Tiger Moth, the prototype E6, made its maiden flight at Stag Lane Aerodrome, Edgware, London, flown by de Havilland Chief Test Pilot Hubert Broad .[13] Throughout the period 1934–1936, production activity was centred upon meeting the demand for military trainers, including several contracts having been placed by the RAF to Specification T.7/35, along with export orders by seven overseas operators.[15] After 1936, the gradual rate of acceleration of Tiger Moth manufacturing had reached the point where production capacity finally became able to exceed the demands from military customers alone.[17] In 1941 de Havilland transferred principal manufacturing activity for the Tiger Moth from its Hatfield factory to Morris Motors Limited at their facility in Cowley, Oxford.[19] By the end of Canadian production, de Havilland Canada had manufactured a total of 1,548 of all versions, including the DH.82C and American Menasco Pirate-engined variants (with opposing "right-hand"/"counter-clockwise" rotation to the left-hand/clockwise-running Gipsy Major) known as the Menasco Moth; this also included 200 Tiger Moths that were built under wartime United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) Lend-Lease orders, which were designated for paperwork purposes as the PT-24, before being delivered onwards to the RCAF.[18] In New Zealand, 132 Tiger Moths were completed by de Havilland Aircraft of New Zealand;[20] 23 were built in Sweden as the Sk.11' by AB Svenska Järnvägsverkstädernas Aeroplanavdelning, 91 were built in Portugal by OGMA, and another 38 in Norway by Kjeller Flyfabrikk (some sources say 37 so the first may have been assembled from a kit) in addition to a large number of aircraft that were assembled from kits shipped from the UK.[22] A subsequent order was placed for 50 aircraft powered by the de Havilland Gipsy Major I engine (130 hp) which was the DH.82A or to the RAF Tiger Moth II.In addition, nearly all civilian-operated Tiger Moths throughout the Commonwealth were quickly impressed into their respective air forces to meet the wartime demand for trainer aircraft.It was the principal type used in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, where thousands of military pilots got their first taste of flight in a Tiger Moth.From 1941 onwards, all military and many civilian Tiger Moths were outfitted with antispin strakes positioned on the junction between the fuselage and the leading edge of the tailplane, known as Mod 11'; later on, the aileron mass balances were removed for improved spin recovery performance.The intention was to force any encroaching U-boat to dive; one aircraft would then remain in the vicinity while the other would search for a naval patrol vessel that could be led back to the spot.[28] Because they were not radio equipped, each aircraft also carried a pair of homing pigeons in a wicker basket to call for help in case of a forced landing at sea.[29] In the aftermath of Britain's disastrous campaign in France, in August 1940 three proposals for beach defence systems were put forward; 350 Tiger Moths were fitted with bomb racks to serve as light bombers as a part of Operation Banquet.A more radical conversion involved the "paraslasher", a scythe-like blade fitted to a Tiger Moth and intended to cut parachutists' canopies as they descended.[34] Three particular aircraft, G-APDZ, G-ANZZ and G-ANMZ, were accordingly rebuilt and were used in international competitions; the design changes led to substantially improved performance during inverted flight.These characteristics were invaluable to military operators, who must identify between pilots with the potential to go on to fly fighter aircraft, those more suited to lower-performance machines and those who must be relegated to non-pilot aircrew positions.