The Robey-Peters Gun-Carrier was a British three-seater armed
tractor
A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or construction. Most commo ...
biplane designed and built by
Robey & Company Limited at
Bracebridge Heath
Bracebridge Heath is a village and civil parish located approximately south of the city of Lincoln, in Lincolnshire, England. It lies at the junction of two major roads the A15 to Sleaford and the A607 to Grantham, and was (until modern sy ...
, Lincoln for the
Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS).
The gun-carrier was a single-engined three-
bay biplane powered by a Rolls-Royce engine.
The Gun-Carrier had a gondola on each of the upper wings to carry a
Davis gun
The Davis gun was the first true recoilless gun developed and taken into service. It was developed by Commander Cleland Davis of the United States Navy in 1910, just prior to World War I.
Development
Davis' design connected two guns back to bac ...
(a form of
recoilless rifle) and a gunner, while the pilot sat alone in a cockpit in the rear fuselage, just forward of the aircraft's tail. He was provided with windows in the sides of the cockpit to improve the extremely poor view caused by the cockpit's location.
Two were ordered for the RNAS in May 1916 but the first aircraft (
serial number ''9498'') crashed on its maiden flight from
Bracebridge Heath
Bracebridge Heath is a village and civil parish located approximately south of the city of Lincoln, in Lincolnshire, England. It lies at the junction of two major roads the A15 to Sleaford and the A607 to Grantham, and was (until modern sy ...
in May 1917.
The second aircraft was not completed and no others were built.
Operators
;
*
Royal Naval Air Service, two ordered but only one built.
Specifications
See also
References
;Notes
;Sources
*
*{{cite book , title= Royal Navy Aircraft Serials and Units 1911-1919, last=Sturtivant, first=Ray, last2=Page, first2=Gordon , year=1992, publisher=
Air-Britain Air-Britain, traditionally sub-titled "The International Association of Aviation Enthusiasts", is a non-profit aviation society founded in July 1948. As from 2015, it is constituted as a British charitable trust and book publisher.
History
Air-Brit ...
Historians Ltd, location=Tonbridge, Kent, UK, isbn=0-85130-191-6
1910s British fighter aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1917