Hawker Horsley

The Hawker Horsley was a British single-engined biplane bomber of the 1920s. It was the last all-wooden aircraft built by Hawker Aircraft, and served as a medium day bomber and torpedo bomber with Britain's Royal Air Force between 1926 and 1935, as well as the navies of Greece and Denmark.

Design and development

The Horsley (named after Sir Thomas Sopwith's home of Horsley Towers) was originally designed to meet Air Ministry Specification 26/23 for a day bomber powered by a single Rolls-Royce Condor engine. While the specification called for any production aircraft to be of metal construction, Hawker proposed to build the prototype of wooden construction, gradually switching to a metal structure during production. This was acceptable to the Air Ministry, and an order for a single prototype was placed. The first prototype was flown in March 1925, powered by a 650 hp (485 kW) Condor III engine, and was delivered to the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment at Martlesham Heath on 4 May 1925.