de Havilland DH.50
The de Havilland DH.50 was a British single-engined biplane transport of 1923, designed as a successor to the wartime DH.4 and DH.9 and carrying four passengers in an enclosed cabin. De Havilland built only 17 at Stag Lane; the other 21 of the 38 built were licence-produced in Australia, Belgium and Czechoslovakia. Alan Cobham's long-distance flights to Cape Town and Australia made the type's reputation, Qantas built and operated it in numbers, and one became the first aircraft used by the Royal Flying Doctor Service. The last examples were lost during the Second World War, and the DH.50 displayed at Longreach today is a replica.
Why It Mattered
The DH.50 was de Havilland's answer to a problem every operator faced after the First World War: the war-surplus aircraft then flying transport work were wearing out, and their replacement had to be economical, reliable and long-ranged. It carried four passengers in an enclosed cabin at a time when much air travel still meant open cockpits and converted bombers. Alan Cobham's long-distance flights of 1925 and 1926 took the type from England to Cape Town and then to Australia and back. In Australia the type became a mainstay, and Qantas founder Hudson Fysh rated it the finest Australian air transport of the single-engine era.
Design Notes
The DH.50 drew directly on de Havilland's wartime types, the DH.4 and DH.9, which it was meant to succeed, and it kept the DH.9C's Siddeley Puma engine. Its four passengers sat in an enclosed cabin between the wings, with the pilot behind them in an open cockpit. The standard powerplant was a 240 hp Siddeley Puma, a six-cylinder liquid-cooled in-line engine. Engines were the type's main variable: aircraft with Puma or Nimbus in-lines were designated DH.50A, while those fitted with Jaguar or Jupiter radials became DH.50Js. Cobham's Australia aircraft was fitted with twin floats, and flew part of that journey as a seaplane.
Operational History
The first DH.50, G-EBFN, made its first flight at Stag Lane on 30 July 1923, flown by Hubert Broad. Within days Alan Cobham had flown it to a reliability award in trials between Copenhagen and Gothenburg, and in 1924 he won the King's Cup Race in the same aircraft. Production at Stag Lane was small: de Havilland built only 17 aircraft, and the remaining 21 were built under licence. Australia took the type up most keenly: Qantas built seven at Longreach, four DH.50As and three DH.50Js, Western Australian Airways built three, and the Larkin Aircraft Supply Company one. In Europe, SABCA built three at Brussels in 1924 for SABENA's routes in the Belgian Congo, and seven more were built in Prague in 1926. Qantas was the type's major Australian user, while only four of the British-built aircraft were based in the United Kingdom, two of them with Imperial Airways. A British-built DH.50 modified at Longreach as an aerial ambulance for the Australian Inland Mission became the first aircraft used by the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Cobham's flights gave the type its wider fame: in the Jaguar-engined second aircraft he flew from Croydon to Cape Town between November 1925 and February 1926. In June 1926 he set out in the same aircraft for Australia, returning 78 days later. That same year the Royal Australian Air Force made its first international flight in a float-equipped DH.50, A8-1, which surveyed New Guinea and the Solomon Islands under Group Captain Richard Williams.
Afterlife
The last of the Belgian-built aircraft survived until 1937, and the type's working life ran into the Second World War. The longest-lived example, delivered to Australia's Controller of Civil Aviation in 1928, was destroyed by enemy action in New Guinea in 1942. Another Australian aircraft, impressed by the Royal Australian Air Force in November 1942, did not survive the war. The DH.50 on display at the Qantas Founders Museum at Longreach is a replica, not a survivor. Completed in early 2011, it has a steel-tube framework with wood and fabric covering and a replica Puma engine, and is painted as Qantas aircraft VH-UFA. An earlier wooden replica for the museum was never finished; it stands in a diorama as an aircraft under construction.