Blackburn Ripon
The Blackburn T.5 Ripon was a two-seat carrier torpedo bomber and reconnaissance biplane built by Blackburn Aircraft to Air Ministry Specification 21/23. First flown on 17 April 1926 and powered in British service by the Napier Lion, it equipped Fleet Air Arm carriers from 1929 until the Baffin began replacing it in 1934; British orders came to 92 aircraft across the II, IIA and IIC marks. Finland bought one pattern aircraft and built 25 more under licence, flying them in the Winter and Continuation Wars until 1944. One Finnish-built Ripon survives in a Finnish museum.
Why It Mattered
The Ripon was Blackburn's answer to Air Ministry Specification 21/23, which asked for one aircraft that could work as both a torpedo bomber and a reconnaissance machine. It beat the Avro Buffalo and the Handley Page Harrow in competitive tests, and it went on to equip the Fleet Air Arm's carriers in the interwar years. British front-line service was brief, but licence production in Finland gave the design a much longer second career that ran into the Second World War. The Ripon also pointed forward: the Baffin that replaced it from 1934 was an improved development of the same design.
Design Notes
The T.5 was a two-seat biplane developed from Blackburn's earlier Dart and Velos torpedo bombers, and in character it sat closer to the Velos, a two-seat floatplane built for Greece. The specification required an aircraft that could change easily between floatplane and landplane forms, so interchangeable undercarriages were part of the design from the start. British aircraft were powered by the water-cooled Napier Lion; on the first Ripons its cylinder blocks stood exposed to aid cooling, but the Ripon II enclosed the engine in a streamlined cowling and moved the radiator from the nose. A Lewis gun in the rear cockpit formed the defensive armament, and the load was either six 230lb bombs, three 520lb bombs or a single 18-inch torpedo. Published figures for the IIA add a forward-firing Vickers gun in the nose. Structure grew progressively more metallic: the IIA had duralumin wing ribs, and the IIC introduced an all-metal wing with steel spars and duralumin ribs. Finland's version, the Ripon IIF, exchanged the Lion for a Bristol Jupiter radial and kept the interchangeable wheel and float undercarriages.
Operational History
Two prototypes were built, a landplane and a floatplane, and the first of them made its maiden flight on 17 April 1926. Production was ordered in three marks: 21 Ripon IIs between November 1927 and January 1929, 40 Ripon IIAs in 1930, and 31 Ripon IICs in two batches across 1931 and 1932. The type went to sea with the Mediterranean Fleet's HMS Glorious and the Home Fleet's HMS Furious from August 1929, and HMS Courageous followed from 1933. From January 1934 the newer Baffin began to replace it on the carriers, and many of the Ripons that remained were converted to Baffins by fitting the Pegasus radial. Finland's single Blackburn-built pattern aircraft was produced in August 1928, and the Finns built 25 more under licence between 1931 and 1934, powered by a number of different radial engines. Those Finnish aircraft flew against Soviet forces in both the Winter War and the Continuation War, typically on nighttime reconnaissance missions after one had been lost to Soviet fighters in late 1939. Their work also ranged over U-boat patrols, casualty evacuation, leaflet dropping and aerial supply operations. Finland struck off its final aircraft on 15 December 1944, by which time losses and cannibalisation for parts had left only one Ripon operational.
Afterlife
Finland was the Ripon's only export customer, and its aircraft outlasted British service by almost a decade, remaining in use until 1944. Just one Ripon survives: RI-140, a Finnish licence-built aircraft, which was stored after its service and later reassembled and put on display. It is held by the Päijänne Tavastia Aviation Museum at Asikkala in Finland, and it still has its Armstrong Siddeley Panther radial engine. The design also lived on abroad in another form, as the basis of Mitsubishi's licence-produced B2M in Japan.