The Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2 is a British single-engine tractor two-seat biplane, designed and developed at the Royal Aircraft Factory. Most of the roughly 3,500 built were constructed under contract by private companies, including established aircraft manufacturers and firms new to aircraft construction.
Early versions entered squadron service with the Royal Flying Corps in 1912 and the type served throughout the First World War. Initially used as a reconnaissance aircraft and light bomber, as a single-seat night fighter the type destroyed six German airships between September and December 1916.
By late 1915, the B.E.2 was proving to be vulnerable to the recently introduced German Fokker Eindecker fighters, leading to increased losses during the period known as the Fokker Scourge. Although by now obsolete, it had to remain in front line service while replacement types were brought into service. Following its belated withdrawal from combat, the B.E. continued to serve in training, communications, and coastal anti-submarine patrol roles.
The B.E.2 became the subject of controversy. From the B.E.2c variant onward, it had been developed to be inherently stable, which was helpful for artillery observation and aerial photography duties; it also had a relatively low accident rate. However this stability was achieved at the expense of manoeuvrability; moreover the observer, in the front seat ahead of the pilot, had a limited field of fire for his gun.
Development
Background
The B.E.2 was one of the first fixed-wing aircraft to be designed at what was then called the Royal Balloon Factory (the organisation was formally renamed as the Royal Aircraft Factory on 26 April 1911). The team responsible for its design came under the direction of British engineer Mervyn O'Gorman, the factory's superintendent. The B.E.2 designation was formulated in accordance with the system devised by O'Gorman, which classified aircraft by their layout: B.E. stood for "Blériot Experimental", and was used for aircraft of tractor configuration (although in practice, all B.E. types were biplanes rather than the monoplanes typical of the Blériot company).
At first, the activities of the Factory were limited to aeronautical research and the design and construction of actual aircraft was not officially sanctioned. O'Gorman got around this restriction by using the factory's responsibility for the repair and maintenance of aircraft belonging to the Royal Flying Corps, so that existing aircraft needing major repairs were nominally "reconstructed" but often appeared as new designs, retaining few original components aside from the engine.
The first pair of B.E. aircraft were flown within two months of each other and had the same basic design, the work of Geoffrey de Havilland, who was at the time both the chief designer and the test pilot at the Balloon Factory. Its first public appearance was in early January 1912. With the contemporary Avro 500, the B.E.2 helped to establish the tractor biplane as the dominant aircraft layout for a considerable time.
B.E.1
This was ostensibly a rebuild of a Voisin pusher biplane, powered by a water-cooled Wolseley engine; however, the B.E.1 used only the powerplant of the Voisin.
It was a two-bay tractor biplane with parallel-chord unstaggered wings with rounded ends and used wing warping for roll control. The wings were of unequal span with the upper wing's span being and the lower . The fuselage was a rectangular section fabric-covered wire-braced structure, with the pilot seated aft behind the wings, and the observer in front under the centre section. This arrangement allowed the aircraft to be flown "solo" without affecting the aircraft's centre of gravity. Behind the pilot's position, a curved top decking extended aft to the tail, although the forward decking and cowling of later variants was not fitted at this stage. The tail surfaces consisted of a half-oval horizontal stabiliser with a split elevator mounted on top of the upper longerons and an ovoid rudder hinged to the sternpost. There was no fixed vertical fin. The main undercarriage consisted of a pair of skids each carried on an inverted V-strut at their rear and a single raked strut at the front while an axle carrying the wheels was bound to the skids by bungee cords and restrained by radius rods. A similarly sprung tailskid was fitted, while the wings were protected by semicircular bows located beneath the lower wing tips. The radiator being mounted between the front pair of cabane struts