The Blackburn F.1 Turcock was a British single-seat single-engine

biplane A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While ...

fighter built in 1927. Designed to be produced in several variants, only one was completed.

Development

In 1926 Blackburn partially deviated from their practice of building Naval aircraft to design an interceptor fighter, intended to meet Air Ministry specifications F.9/26 (day and

night fighter A night fighter (also known as all-weather fighter or all-weather interceptor for a period of time after the Second World War) is a fighter aircraft adapted for use at night or in other times of bad visibility. Night fighters began to be used i ...

) and N.21/26 (fleet fighter). The first fighter from Blackburn under their new numbering system, it became the F.1; the name Blackcock was applied to the design, but it was intended that each variant, powered by a different engine, should have its own name. Blackburn intended to produce variants with the 446 hp (332 kW) Armstrong Siddeley Jaguar VI radial engine, the 585 hp (436 kW)

Bristol Mercury The Bristol Mercury is a British nine-cylinder, air-cooled, single-row, piston radial engine. Designed by Roy Fedden of the Bristol Aeroplane Company it was used to power both civil and military aircraft of the 1930s and 1940s. Developed from ...

radial and the 510 hp (380 kW)

Rolls-Royce Kestrel The Kestrel or type F is a 21 litre (1,300 in³) 700 horsepower (520 kW) class V-12 aircraft engine from Rolls-Royce, their first cast-block engine and the pattern for most of their future piston-engine designs. Used during the interwar pe ...

water-cooled inline engine, though in the event, only the Jaguar-powered aircraft was completed. The F.1 emerged as a clean biplane with swept and staggered single-bay wings of unequal span, the upper wing having both greater span and chord. Apart from the front

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraft t ...

, the aircraft was fabric-covered over a steel frame for the fuselage and a mixture of steel spars and

duralumin Duralumin (also called duraluminum, duraluminium, duralum, dural(l)ium, or dural) is a trade name for one of the earliest types of age-hardenable aluminium alloys. The term is a combination of '' Dürener'' and ''aluminium''. Its use as a tra ...

ribs in the wings. The fuselage narrowed to the rear, carrying a braced

tailplane A tailplane, also known as a horizontal stabiliser, is a small lifting surface located on the tail (empennage) behind the main lifting surfaces of a fixed-wing aircraft as well as other non-fixed-wing aircraft such as helicopters and gyroplane ...

and a low, wide-chord fin and

rudder A rudder is a primary control surface used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, aircraft, or other vehicle that moves through a fluid medium (generally aircraft, air or watercraft, water). On an aircraft the rudder is used primarily to ...

with a flat top. Underneath, a faired skid provided more fin area; the rudder also projected beneath the fuselage. The main

undercarriage Undercarriage is the part of a moving vehicle that is underneath the main body of the vehicle. The term originally applied to this part of a horse-drawn carriage, and usage has since broadened to include: *The landing gear of an aircraft. *The ch ...

was a standard fixed-axle design. The pilot's open cockpit was at the trailing edge of the wing, where a small cutout enhanced his forward and upward view. On the only F.1 built, the Jupiter engine was uncowled. The intended armament of two 0.030 in (7.7 mm)

machine gun A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles) a ...

s on either side of the fuselage and firing through the two-blade propeller was never fitted.

Operational history

Blackburn won no Air Ministry orders for the F.1 and indeed no manufacturer received an order under either of the above Ministry contracts, but there was one Jupiter-engined F.1 built for the Turkish government. This aircraft was therefore named the Turcock. It was flown to Turkey under the British registration ''G-EBVP'' in January 1928 but was lost in an accident on 13 February.Mason, Francis K., "The British Fighter since 1912", Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 1992, Library of Congress card number 92-63026, , p. 196.

Specifications (Turcock)

References

* {{Blackburn aircraft Turcock 1920s British fighter aircraft Single-engined tractor aircraft Biplanes Aircraft first flown in 1927