De Havilland: DH 34
Note: This is a sub-section of De Havilland: Aircraft
The De Havilland DH.34 was a single engined British biplane airliner built by the de Havilland Aircraft Company in the 1920s. 12 were built, with the DH.34 serving with Imperial Airways and its predecessors for several years.
The DH.34 had a wooden, plywood-clad fuselage, with the cockpit (for two pilots) being positioned ahead of the wings and the passenger cabin. It had two-bay wooden wings and was powered by a Napier: Lion engine, which was fitted for inertia starting, avoiding the necessity for hand swinging of the propellor to start the engine. Unusually the design of the aircraft allowed an entire spare engine to carried on board across the rear of the passenger cabin. The cabin door's unusual shape was to allow the engine to be loaded and unloaded, and a specially-fitted 'porthole' on the other side of the cabin would be removed to allow the propeller boss to protrude out the side of the aircraft. Spare engines were not carried routinely (the DH.34's payload was too low to carry both passengers and a spare engine) but this facility was used by operators to quickly fly spare engines out to aircraft that had suffered breakdown.
Two DH.34s were ordered by the Daimler Airway, as part of an initial batch of nine aircraft, with the first prototype (registered G-EBBQ) flying on 26 March 1922.
The stalling speed of 63 mph (101 km/h) was considered high and was blamed for a fatal crash in 1923, so extensions were fitted to the upper wings, increasing the wingspan from 51.33 ft (15.65 m) to 54.33 ft (16.56 m).
Variants
DH.34
- Initial production version. 11 completed.
DH.34B
- Modication of DH.34 with extended upper wing to improve stalling characteristics.
See Also
Sources of Information