Pemberton-Billing Designs & Projects

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Wingknut

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Hello folks,
Pardon me if this is old news, but there's an interesting article on Noel Pemberton-Billing’s 'slip-wing' composite nightfighter and bomber designs at:

A sister to assist ‘er – Airminded

airminded.org airminded.org

For an artist's impression of a P-B carrier-plus-parasite-bomber design, see:

P-B apparently proposed at least six different slip-wings all told, including a giant flying-boat design. (None were completed, still less flown.) If anyone has any other data/images of these projects, I'd love to hear about it.
Thanks,

'Wingknut'
 
there's an article on this subject in Air Enthusiast, but i can't remember which one, will try to find it as and when time permits.

cheers,
Robin.
 
that's the one, all i could remember is that it has a blue cover... ;D

cheers,
Robin.
 
Thanks very much for your postings - both the info. and the image are great.

Just to check: was the P.B. 47 the twin-fuselage lower component and the P.B. 43 the biplane carrier? If so, does anyone happen to have any data/images for the upper bit, the P.B. 43 "slip-wing" itself?

Cheers,

'Wingknut'.
 
Hi,

the original design for Pemberton-Billing was long range bomber.
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1940/1940%20-%203226.html
and with slip-wing system.
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1940/1940%20-%203295.html
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1940/1940%20-%203296.html
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1940/1940%20-%203299.html
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1940/1940%20-%203300.html
 

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Well,
now I'm asking if someone has a 3-view resembling the real aircraft - I have one which is the one on the net, but I think that it has some shape problems (staggered wings, while I think it's the dihedral that makes them looking staggered in the photos)
Also photos and info about the predecessors are welcome.
best regards
ermeio
 
and also here, with adress on the bottom of tis page
 

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thank you, Toura
this is the 3-view that I had - I'm quite confident that there is another one a little better around, since I found a 3D model of this aircraft on the net some years ago which -pity - was not downloadable and that had the wings leading edge with a less exagerated stagger, which I think is the right solution.
I refer also to a model: http://www.peterangus.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/pb31.htm : the builder did use another 3-view...
The stagger of the external wing panels in thie 3-view enclosed is induced by an optical effect of the photos - that must have been a dihedral of the panels.
Can anyone confirm?
ermeio
 
Source: 'Supermarine Aircraft since 1914' by CF Andrews and EB Morgan, Putnam 1981
 

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Hi Ermeio
I have nothing more...
but here the pb 29 e
Bye
 

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PEMBERTON -BILLING Production
  • three monoplanes built or converted (to floatplanes) in 1909; none were successful, original types not known
  • P.B.1 Flying boat,exhibited at Olympia (1914)
  • P.B.IX designed in seven days, first flight 12 August 1914 (serial No.1267)
  • P.B.XI (serial No.1374, unconfirmed)
  • P.B.31E NIGHTHAWK (serial No.1388)
  • P.B.31E NIGHTHAWK (serial No.1389 — cancelled, not built)
  • P.B.23E For Pemberton-Billing School (serial No.8487)
  • P.B.25 (serial Nos.9001 to 9020)
The following built by Pemberton-Billing under licence:
  • Short S.38 (serial Nos.1580 to 1591)
  • Norman-Thompson NT.2B (N2760 to N2789 — N2785 to 2789 not completed
  • Norman-Thompson NT.2B (N3300 to N3374 — order cancelled ,not built)
  • Short 184 (N9170 to N9199 — N9182 to 9199 believed not completed)
Thereafter all production under Supermarine name.Supermarine Aviation Works Ltd, company registered 20 Sep. 1916.

I'm enclosing a few more pictures:
  • three later fighter projects, including night fighter concept that was to be launched from the top of a Hawker Hurricane
  • three photos of the NIGHTHAWK
 

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toura said:
Hi Ermeio
I have nothing more...
but here the pb 29 e
Bye
Click to expand...
No problem, Toura
this is an elusive aircraft, even I hava still the doubt if it is just my personal point of view that about wing stagger...
Even the photos are not of much help here: it suffices to give a look at two of the photos by stargazer to see that may be there is actually a stagger of the external wing panels...
Maybe something will surface
 
toura said:
Hi Ermeio
I have nothing more...
but here the pb 29 e
Bye
Click to expand...

Hello,
I didn't have this image - thanks for sharing
I didn't notice there was an attachment in your post
best regards
 
HI Ermeio
HERE THE PHOTO
Do you click on "scan pdf" ?
Bye
 

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It would be nice to have a 3-view also of this one - I did never find one.
regards
 
Watching Pemberton-Billing P.B.29E with eyes of today times seems an airplane of "Stop The Pigeon" !
;D ;D
 
Over the years I've come to appreciate Stop The Pigeon's realism. What surprises me most is people were actually willing to take these bizarre contraptions into the air.

Or try to, anyway :eek: .
 
An article I got from lark showed the christmas card with the P.B.39. Although I'm not quite sure
about the seriousness of that design, I made a 3-view of it, to be taken with a pinch of salt ! ;)
 

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Schneiderman said:
Here are PB's sketches from his 1916 book. Very poor quality unfortunately but it should fill a few gaps on your Aviadesign website.
Click to expand...

Excellent, thanks! :D I'll try to grab hold of a copy of the original book so as to get a better scan.

Jemiba said:
An article I got from lark showed the christmas card with the P.B.39. Although I'm not quite sure
about the seriousness of that design, I made a 3-view of it, to be taken with a pinch of salt ! ;)
Click to expand...

Well this sure feels like a bit of Christmas four months ahead of time... Thanks a lot for this beautiful plan! :)
 
Jemiba,

There is a 1934 Pemberton Billing patent, UK446509, that shows two rotating wing aircraft, a form of helicopter. Two more for your collection?
 

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And from Alternathistory site;


http://alternathistory.org.ua/proekt-tyazheloi-passazhirskoi-letayushchei-lodki-pb4347-velikobritaniya
 

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Ah, so it is primarily a way of increasing wing loading (and possibly lowering power to cruise requirements), without impairing takeoff/climbing power and takeoff run?

I could see this working... especially in the era of piston power (where you have a lot of engine weight - e.g. in a diesel powered flying boat).
 
Hi Hesham,
I only just found the image you posted above - that is a great find. (Hope you don't mind but I attach a slightly bigger version below - again from the alternate-history website you cite.)

Pardon my lack of Russian but if the translation website I found is working, it seems some data for the P.B. 47 are as follows:

Crew: 20 people
Seating capacity : 500 people
Power plant : 8 × 2000 hp
Wingspan: 67 m
Length: 55 m

Does anyone know of any data for the biplane 'slip-wing' P.B. 43?

Many thanks and all best wishes,
'Wingknut'
 

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Reading Billing articles in Flight from 1940, and his book, Defence against the night bomber is, how shall I phrase it, 'entertaining'. He presents his concepts as radical and says that he can only present details subject to Air Ministry approval. Well, yes and no. It is wartime and all publications were subject to scrutiny but in this case his slipwing ideas were neither new nor secret. In fact in the UK the patent for the system was held by John North at Boulton Paul and had been published, and hence freely available, in 1935. Several methods of assisted take-off were investigated by the Air Ministry in the pre-war years and none had proven to offer much advantage over conventional aircraft, Billing was simply restating old ideas and presenting them as new.

Billing gave his concepts, none came anywhere near to project status, odd numbers. So if the catamaran flying boat was PB47 and the slipwing PB43 what was the PB45; something else to be lifted by the PB43?
 

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Thank you, Schneiderman - that is very interesting and does indeed (as 'jcf' says) seem like typical P-B. (Old P-B more of a self-publicist than a genuine aviation innovator?) Still, good for Boulton Paul.
Bit of a side-bar this but if you're interested in what P-B got up to during WW1, besides the 'Nighthawk' project et al, (and it makes for weird and rather grisly reading), try Philip Hoare's 'Wilde's Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy and the First World War' (1997).
Thanks again and all best, 'Wingknut'.
 
I think that there is a very clear line between a 'concept' and a 'project'. For me a project has to be the result of serious studies and calculations, a design that really just requires detailed work before it becomes reality. A concept can be anything from the stuff I drew in the back of my work books at school, a fantasy piece of artwork on a magazine cover, or the kind of half thought-out aircraft that P B presented. In the pioneering era his ideas may not have been so far removed from those of other designers but by WW2 he was living in fantasy land.

As you say, his exploits in Parliament and in the courts during WW1 were inexcusable. Although he started with a degree of popular support he rapidly lost most of that through his actions.

By the way there was a US patent Dornier for a form of slipwing that dated from 1928. Had Boulton Paul or P B tried to market their ideas no doub there would have been a legal challenge.
 
Schneiderman said:
I think that there is a very clear line between a 'concept' and a 'project'. For me a project has to be the result of serious studies and calculations, a design that really just requires detailed work before it becomes reality. A concept can be anything from the stuff I drew in the back of my work books at school, a fantasy piece of artwork on a magazine cover, or the kind of half thought-out aircraft that P B presented
Click to expand...

Hmmm, then I suppose that Edgar Percival was a conceptualist rather than a designer. I now await the writ from beyond the grave!
 
To some extent, yes. And so, for example, was Miles. But in both cases they also produced a significant number of good designs and aircraft which sets them apart from dreamers and speculative types. To be honest you wouldn't be much of a designer if you didn't throw in a few speculative ideas now and again, but they would be based on a firm foundation of design and construction.
When my book on R.J.Mitchell's unseen designs come out you will see plenty of examples there too.
 
joncarrfarrelly said:
In other words, fairly typical P-B. ;D
Click to expand...

Schneiderman said:
In the pioneering era his ideas may not have been so far removed from those of other designers but by WW2 he was living in fantasy land.
Click to expand...

Quite.
 

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