Handley Page Halifax
The Handley Page Halifax was a British four-engined heavy bomber of the Second World War, built by Handley Page and flown mainly by the Royal Air Force. Developed from a twin-engined design, it entered service in 1940 and, with the Lancaster, composed the majority of Bomber Command's Main Force in the last three years of the war. It also towed gliders, dropped agents and supplies, and served with Coastal Command. A total of 6,176 were built; three complete examples survive.
Why It Mattered
The Halifax shared with the Lancaster the main burden of Bomber Command's night bombing campaign, and together the two types composed the majority of the Main Force over the last three years of the Second World War. It got there the hard way: early aircraft were underpowered, losses mounted on operations over Germany, and from September 1943 the type was restricted to less hazardous targets while its faults were addressed. What kept it indispensable was its versatility: the same basic aircraft towed gliders, dropped agents and supplies, and flew general reconnaissance in Coastal Command as well as bombing by night. Its legacy has often been overshadowed by the Lancaster's, yet it was also flown in large numbers by other Allied and Commonwealth air forces, including Canada's, Australia's and the Free French.
Design Notes
The Halifax began as the twin-engined H.P.56, Handley Page's answer to Specification P.13/36 for a medium bomber, designed around the Rolls-Royce Vulture engine. Doubts about the Vulture led the company to convert the design to four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, and the enlarged result became the H.P.57. The airframe was an all-metal, mid-wing monoplane with twin fins and rudders, and its slab-sided fuselage held a 22-foot bomb bay, with further bomb cells in the wings. Flight testing exposed insufficient rudder control, a fault not properly rectified until August 1943, when production aircraft received much more efficient D-shaped rudders. Power grew through successive Merlin marks, and from the Mk III the type was fitted with Bristol Hercules radial engines, after which its performance finally matched the Lancaster's.
Operational History
The Halifax entered service with No. 35 Squadron in November 1940. Its first operational sortie was the bombing of the Le Havre docks on 10 March 1941, and on the night of 12–13 March 1941 one took part in a raid on Hamburg, the type's first attack on Germany. It was the second British four-engined bomber to enter service in the Second World War. Between 1941 and 1945, Halifaxes made over 75,000 bombing sorties and dropped more than a quarter of all bombs dropped on Germany by the RAF. The type served well beyond Bomber Command: over 70 percent of the operations flown by No. 6 (RCAF) Group were flown on Halifaxes. Being replaced as a front-line bomber in 1945, it continued in service with Coastal and Transport Commands after the war, and the last operational flight was made by a Coastal Command Halifax in March 1952, operating from Gibraltar.
Afterlife
Of the 6,176 Halifaxes built, only three complete examples remain. In 1995 only two were in museums: an unrestored aircraft at the RAF Museum, and a Yorkshire Air Museum aircraft rebuilt from the parts of many different aircraft. The RAF Museum's aircraft, W1048, had force-landed on a frozen Norwegian lake during its first operational mission, an attack on the battleship Tirpitz in April 1942, and sank where it remained for the next 31 years; it is now displayed at the museum's London site. The third complete aircraft, NA337, was raised from Lake Mjøsa in Norway in 1995 and, after a nine-year restoration, was officially dedicated at the National Air Force Museum of Canada at Canadian Forces Base Trenton in November 2005. At the Yorkshire Air Museum, the rebuilt aircraft honours LV907, "Friday the 13th", which completed 128 missions; no other Halifax flew more sorties.