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The Royal Aircraft Factory H.R.E.2 was intended as a Naval reconnaissance floatplane. The single example built was serving with the
Royal Naval Air Service The Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) was the air arm of the Royal Navy, under the direction of the Admiralty's Air Department, and existed formally from 1 July 1914 to 1 April 1918, when it was merged with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps t ...
at the start of
World War I 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 ...
.


Design and development

The H.R.E.2 was the second aircraft designed by the
Royal Aircraft Factory Royal may refer to: People * Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name * A member of a royal family Places United States * Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community * Royal, Illinois, a village * Royal, Iowa, a cit ...
under its Reconnaissance Experimental designation. This team was headed by Chief Engineer Fred Green, but details were by
John Kenworthy John Kenworthy B.Sc., F.R.Aes (1883–1940) was an English aviation engineer and aircraft designer. John Kenworthy appears in the 1901 Census of Darlington, aged 17, living with four sisters, one brother and his parents George and Ellen Kenworth ...
, who had designed the derivatives of the B.E.3, The H stood for hydroplane (sea- or float plane), for the specification came from the Air Department of the Admiralty for the Naval Wing of the R.F.C.''Flight'' 15 October 1954 p.575-6
/ref> It was a two-bay biplane with staggered wings of equal span and equal, constant chord. Lateral control was by wing warping. The fuselage was flat sided with a deep, rounded decking similar to that of the earlier R.E.1, though the front cockpit was much longer and more open-sided in the later aircraft. The pilot sat behind, just aft of the wing trailing edge; there was no cut-out for visibility. The elevator and tailplane were both single-piece surfaces. Though it was intended as a floatplane powered by a 100 hp (75 kW) 12-cylinder
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engine, it initially flew as a landplane with the smaller 70 hp
Renault Groupe Renault ( , , , also known as the Renault Group in English; legally Renault S.A.) is a French multinational automobile manufacturer established in 1899. The company produces a range of cars and vans, and in the past has manufactured ...
air-cooled upright V-8 as used in the R.E.1. In this configuration the rudder was mounted above and clear of the tail plane, leaving room for the one piece elevators and having the same shape, roughly a flattened oval with its long axis parallel with the fuselage, as that of the B.E.3. The landplane version was often referred to as the R.E.2. The floats of the H.R.E.2 were fitted at the same time as the more powerful engine. They were typical of the time: a pair of main short floats were mounted to the fuselage by two pairs of struts, those at the front sloping back to around the engine bulkhead and the aft pair running vertically to the point where the front wing spar joined the fuselage. The aircraft sat tail down in the water, the rear supported by a third small double float. A triangular fin was fitted and a new teardrop-shaped rudder, cropped at the bottom, mounted on it. The elevator hinge was near the trailing edge of the rudder, giving the elevator clearance to move. The fin and rudder design was essentially repeated on the later R.E.3. The aircraft was seriously damaged in an attempted take off from Frensham Pond and then rebuilt as a landplane once again, fitted with ailerons rather than wing warping. It kept the revised fin and rudder and had a two-wheeled, single-axle undercarriage mounted on two longitudinal members that projected forwards to form "hockey stick" anti-nose-over skids like those of the B.E.1. In this form it served with the
Royal Naval Air Service The Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) was the air arm of the Royal Navy, under the direction of the Admiralty's Air Department, and existed formally from 1 July 1914 to 1 April 1918, when it was merged with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps t ...
(RNAS) as aircraft no.17 and was still in service at the start of World War I. It was wrecked in a crash on 10 February 1915.


Specifications


References


Citations


Cited Sources

* * * * * * O'Gorman, Mervyn
"The Design and Construction of Different Types of Aeroplanes: Sea Planes"
pp. 268-269 of ''Technical Report of the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics for the Year 1912–13'', London:
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, 1919. {{Royal Aircraft Factory aircraft H.R.E.2 1910s British military reconnaissance aircraft Floatplanes Biplanes Single-engined tractor aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1913