The Airspeed AS.30 Queen Wasp was a British pilotless target aircraft built by Airspeed Limited at

Portsmouth Portsmouth ( ) is a port and city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. The city of Portsmouth has been a unitary authority since 1 April 1997 and is administered by Portsmouth City Council. Portsmouth is the most dens ...

during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. Although intended for both

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...

and

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...

use, the aircraft never went into series production.

Design and development

The Queen Wasp was built to meet an

Air Ministry Specification This is a partial list of the British Air Ministry (AM) specifications for aircraft. A specification stemmed from an Operational Requirement, abbreviated "OR", describing what the aircraft would be used for. This in turn led to the specification ...

Q.32/35 for a pilotless target aircraft to replace the de Havilland Tiger Moth based

de Havilland Queen Bee The de Havilland DH.82 Tiger Moth is a 1930s British biplane designed by Geoffrey de Havilland and built by the de Havilland Aircraft Company. It was operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and other operators as a primary trainer aircraft. ...

. Two prototypes were ordered in May 1936, one to have a wheeled landing gear for use by the Royal Air Force and the other as a floatplane for Royal Navy use for air-firing practice at sea. Powered by the

Armstrong Siddeley Cheetah The Armstrong Siddeley Cheetah is a seven-cylinder British air-cooled aircraft radial engine of 834 cu in (13.65 L) capacity introduced in 1935 and produced until 1948. Early variants of the Cheetah were initially known as the Lynx Major.Lum ...

engine, a total of 65 aircraft were ordered, contingent on the success of the flight test programme. The aircraft was a single- engined biplane constructed of wood with sharply-tapered wings and fabric-covered control surfaces. An enclosed cabin with one seat was provided so the Queen Wasp could be flown manually with the radio control system turned off. The radio control system was complex with a number of backup safety devices to ensure radio and battery operation was uninterrupted. A trailing receiver aerial was winched out after takeoff and served as an automatic landing device which was activated when the trailing aerial weight hit the runway. The sensitivity of the system in turbulent weather meant that an alternative landing signal was used to initiate a landing procedure."Airspeed AS.30 Queen Wasp" 1978, p. 40. The landplane first flew on 11 June 1937, and the floatplane on 19 October 1937. The floatplane was successfully catapulted from HMS ''Pegasus'' in November 1937.

Operational history

In flight tests, the aircraft was found to be underpowered and water handling difficulties necessitated a redesign of the floats by their manufacturer,

Short Brothers Short Brothers plc, usually referred to as Shorts or Short, is an aerospace company based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Shorts was founded in 1908 in London, and was the first company in the world to make production aeroplanes. It was particu ...

. Although the production run of 10 aircraft was begun (P5441–P5450), only three more aircraft were completed and delivered to the Royal Air Force. Airspeed proposed a number of unsuccessful designs derived from the Queen Wasp including the AS.38 communications aircraft and the AS.50 trainer developed to meet Specification T.24/40.

Operators

; *

Specifications (AS.30 Landplane)

References

Notes

Bibliography

* * "Airspeed AS.30 Queen Wasp." ''Control Column'', Official Organ of the British Aircraft Preservation Council, Volume 12, No. 2, February/March 1978. * ''The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aircraft (Part Work 1982-1985)''. London: Orbis Publishing, 1985. {{Airspeed aircraft Queen Wasp 1930s British special-purpose aircraft Target drones of the United Kingdom Biplanes Single-engined tractor aircraft Floatplanes Aircraft first flown in 1937