Talk:Handley Page Type W

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There is a story by F. Britten Austin, dated 1920, called "In Mid-Air", which was republished in "Adventure Stories From The Strand", Folio Society 1995.

The door was closed upon the passengers in the saloon-interior of the aeroplane... There were ten of them, all men, each at a wicker chair at a window of the saloon, five on one side and five on the other, with a narrow gangway between...

Electric lamp-brackets provided for the contingency of a flight unduly prolonged into the hours of darkness. A little door in the after-wall led, by its indication, to a lavatory. Another little door, in the forward end... opened into a small compartment containing the petrol-tanks, pressure-pumps, etc., and thence communicated with the cockpit where the pilot and mechanic sat, in the open, behind their little glass windscreens.

The interior appointments sound a lot like the HP W8 series!

The atmosphere of the story is also authentic, making much of the deafening noise of the engines and the toytown appearance of the country below.

Patrick Miles 04:55, 30 March 2007 (UTC)Patrick Miles[reply]

W.8c version appears to have remained a paper project

I stumbled across a [detailed description of the W.8c] in the 16 November 1922 issue of Flight, and became curious, so I looked for other mentions of it, but I can't find any source saying that any examples of the W.8c were actually built. I think it never got past the drawing board, or at least never left the shop. This doesn't surprise me when I consider the financial difficulties facing the British airlines at the time, which in 1924 resulted in their merger to form Imperial Airways. --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 23:47, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]