The Bristol Badger was designed to meet a British need for a two-seat fighter-

reconnaissance In military operations, reconnaissance or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, terrain, and other activities. Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops (skirmisher ...

aeroplane at the end of the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Three Badgers were delivered to the Air Board to develop air-cooled radial engines, particularly that which became the

Bristol Jupiter The Bristol Jupiter was a British nine-cylinder single-row piston radial engine built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company. Originally designed late in World War I and known as the Cosmos Jupiter, a lengthy series of upgrades and developments turn ...

; two other Badgers were also built.

Development

The Bristol Badger had its roots in the Type 22 F.2C, a proposed upgrade of the

Bristol F.2B The Bristol F.2 Fighter is a British First World War two-seat biplane Fighter aircraft, fighter and reconnaissance aircraft developed by Frank Barnwell at the Bristol Aeroplane Company. It is often simply called the Bristol Fighter, ''"Brisfit ...

using a 200 hp (150 kW) Salmson radial (Type 22), a 300 hp (220 kW) ABC Dragonfly radial (Type 22A), or a 230 hp (170 kW)

Bentley B.R.2 The Bentley B.R.2 was a nine-cylinder British rotary aircraft engine developed during the First World War by the motor car engine designer W. O. Bentley from his earlier Bentley BR.1. Coming as it did near the end of the war, the BR.2 was buil ...

rotary (Type 22B). The Type 23 Badger was a new design using the Dragonfly engine, drawn up at the end of 1917 to meet a two-seat fighter-reconnaissance role and owing a good deal to the Bristol Scout F. It was a single-bay

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 ...

with strongly staggered, unswept and unequal-span wings. The pilot and observer sat in tandem, the pilot in front under the upper-wing trailing edge and the observer behind with a ring-mounted 0.303 in (7.7 mm) Lewis Gun. At first, the Badger had almost no fixed fin. Construction was the usual for the era fabric covered wood-and-fabric. The

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 single axle plus tailskid arrangement. During the design process, it became clear that the Dragonfly engine was proving unreliable and Bristol looked to a new nine-cylinder, 400 hp (300 kW) radial produced by Brazil Straker and known then as the

Cosmos Jupiter The Bristol Jupiter was a British nine-cylinder single-row piston radial engine built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company. Originally designed late in World War I and known as the Cosmos Jupiter, a lengthy series of upgrades and developments turn ...

as a possible alternative. Later, this engine became the

. Bristol was awarded a contract to build three Badgers, two powered by the Dragonfly and one (the second) by a Jupiter. The first Badger flew on 4 February 1919 but crashed on this first flight with fuel supply problems. It was rebuilt with a larger rudder and delivered to the Air Board eleven days later. The second, Jupiter-engined Badger, flew on 24 May but was re-engined with a Dragonfly and was purchased by the Air Board in September. It had full armament and a fixed, rounded fin, introduced to cope with the heavier Jupiter engine. The Badger proved to have a lateral stability problem, an adverse yaw effect caused by aileron drag, and because of this the third machine was not accepted by the Air Board. These first three examples were designated Badger I. Despite the instability, and without having received a Jupiter-powered Badger, the Air Board were sufficiently encouraged by this engine's promise to order a fourth, fully armed Badger with this powerplant. After some testing the

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 ...

was modified with a horn balance and larger

aileron An aileron (French for "little wing" or "fin") is a hinged flight control surface usually forming part of the trailing edge of each wing of a fixed-wing aircraft. Ailerons are used in pairs to control the aircraft in roll (or movement around ...

s were fitted. This aircraft was the sole Badger II and was loaned by the Air Board to Bristol for the development of the Jupiter and its cowling during 1920-1. The lateral stability problems of the Badger worried its designer

Frank Barnwell Captain Frank Sowter Barnwell OBE AFC FRAeS BSc (23 November 1880 – 2 August 1938) was a Scottish aeronautical engineer. With his elder brother Harold, he built the first successful powered aircraft made in Scotland and later went on to a c ...

, because a 1/10 scale model had been carefully tested in the NPL wind tunnel without showing any problems. Scaling from model to full size was a problem because the

Reynolds number In fluid mechanics, the Reynolds number () is a dimensionless quantity that helps predict fluid flow patterns in different situations by measuring the ratio between inertial and viscous forces. At low Reynolds numbers, flows tend to be domi ...

s reached in the atmospheric pressure wind tunnels of the time were much lower than those encountered in full-size flight. Flight tunnel tests also often involved the use of simplified aircraft models, with no attempt made to model the fuselage shape in detail. Using a spare set of Badger wings and

empennage The empennage ( or ), also known as the tail or tail assembly, is a structure at the rear of an aircraft that provides stability during flight, in a way similar to the feathers on an arrow.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third ed ...

, Barnwell designed a new single-seat flat-sided and very simple fuselage made from

plywood Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured ...

on a wooden frame for a fifth and final Badger, the Badger X. This first flew on 13 May 1919 and was Bristol's first civil registered aircraft, initially as ''K110'', then ''G-EABU'', but was never able to provide the intended comparative data with tunnel models, crashing on 22 May.

Specifications (Badger II)

References

Notes

Bibliography

* * {{Bristol aircraft 1910s British fighter aircraft Military aircraft of World War I Badger Aircraft first flown in 1919