Handley Page HP.21 / Type S (HPS-1)

History

Entering the 1920s, the United States Navy (USN) was looking for a new, state-of-the-art fighter with dual-role capability. This single-seat, single-engine mount will have a standardized design for mounting wheeled landing gear for land-based services or twin pontoons for water operations.

In 1921, the requirement was fleshed out and the competition was opened to the local aviation industry and to those with wartime experience in Europe.

The British company Handley Page, founded in 1909, responded with a modern monoplane of advanced design at the time. The hull is nicely streamlined and, in the usual fashion, incorporates the powerplant at the very front of the design, with an open-air cockpit at the stern. The pilot sits behind the windshield and in front of the dorsal ridge to protect the head and neck from violence or rollovers.

The fuselage tapers gracefully toward the tail, where a tall, large-area monoplane rudder system is installed. The main wings of the wing were placed lower on the sides of the fuselage, albeit almost in the nose, which greatly boosted the center mass. The undercarriage is a two-wheeled, support under the nose, with a rail mounted under the tail. As mentioned, the aircraft will be able to swap the landing gear with two floats for water landings.

The structure is mostly wood, with a plywood skin for the wings and fuselage.

The aircraft was planned to have a 400 hp engine in its production model from the start, but the prototype was powered by a lower rated Gwynne (Bentley) BR. 2 230-232 hp rotary engines drive a twin-blade propeller unit on the nose.

Like other fighter jets of that period, the monoplane was equipped with a pair of machine guns, which were mounted on fixed forward-firing mounts on the nose and fired synchronously through rotating propeller blades. According to local US Navy requirements, these weapons will be 2 x .30 caliber (7.62mm) Marlin machine guns (as opposed to the popular British Vickers machine guns used in Eurofighter designs).

Inside the Handley Page, the plane is referred to as the "Model S".

The U.S. Navy has contracted three prototypes under the local designation "HPS-1" (which stands for "Handley Page Scout"). The first of these was completed and flew for the first time on September 7, 1923, but its handling (especially with regard to directional stability) still left room for improvement, so various corrections were made to fix the problem. The second prototype gained an advanced principal plane shape with a dihedron (upper angle) of six degrees.

The model began testing in February 1924.

It was this prototype, with ballast added to simulate the required USN wartime loads, that landed hard during the evaluation period and its landing gear collapsed as a result. The accident more or less sounded the death knell for the monoplane project, and a third prototype, designed to have the requisite twin floats, never materialized. The Model S became Handley Page's only attempt at a front-line fighterthe company was known for designing and building very large aircraft better suited for bombing missions than single combat. In later literature, the S-type is called "HP.

21".

When finished, this sleek, race car-like aircraft has a barrel length of 21.5 feet, a wingspan of 29.2 feet and a height of 9.6 feet. Empty weight is 1,320 lbs and maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) is 2,030 lbs. It has a top speed of 147 mph, a service ceiling of 21,000 feet, and a climb rate of nearly 1,800 feet per minute.

Flight time using internal fuel is up to three hours.

Specification

Basic

Production

Roles

Dimensions

Weight

Performance

Performance

Armor

Changes