Pemberton-Billing Designs & Projects

Hi,in Aeroplane Monthly 2004-10,

here is a mystery recce triplane project,designed by Mr. Frank Munger.

Merged with this thread, as it is a design by Pemberton Billing, NOT by Frank Munger,
who just did the reconstruction of the drawing.
 

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Considering the fact that all types up to P. B. 31 had already been designed by 1915 and this is a 1916 photo, it would be logical for it to have received the next available uneven designation, i.e. "P. B. 33". Unfortunately we know that this number was allocated many years later to NPB's "Durotofin" helicopter project...

So maybe the design didn't get a designation. Maybe also it was not actually an NPB design, and he was only sitting in front of it!
 

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Billing claimed that he made early experiments with gliders around 1905, eventually testing one by jumping off the roof of his house. If this is what he built then he is lucky not to have ended up in hospital.
 
Hi,

maybe that was anther version of PB.49,please note the pusher prop was mounted
at the rear of the fuselage.
 

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Yes Hesham it does appear to be so. The article refers back to the November 1940 edition of Rivista Aeronautica but I can find no mention of it there.

Mods, you may want to modify the title of this thread as it currently refers to Pemberton Billing designs prior to 1916. Either that or open a new thread for Billing's later concepts, such as this one.
 
Thank you Schneiderman,

and for change the title,I hope the Moderator do it.
 
I've merged this topic withe the "...slip-wings" one, which already was a general one.
So, please post all PB types here.
Some posts from the designations section were added here, too and I think, we should
return to the good old practice to post designations and only designations in the designations
section and the types itself (as long, as there actually is worthwhile stuff !) here.
PLease no repititions here, that don't add drawings, pictures or the like. ;)
 
Hate to rain on everyone's parade with this comment, but I have noticed a couple of inconsistences and I wonder if I can get the actual truth (probably any answer from Schneiderman would be the best!) of which model is which. The PB.2 is listed as the the machine pictured in posts 53 and 54, however referring to the post from Stargazer (#42) it shows the shaft propellor monoplane as the PB.11 (I do realise that this could have been the use of roman instead of Arabic numerals, but confirmation would be nice. Also the Blandford post (#55) states that this is the PB.1 and in fact the artwork even has that written on it. Referring back to the display of types (#42), this design is listed as the PB.7, or certainly a machine that looks mightily like it. Any comments would be welcome
 
VictorXL188 said:
Hate to rain on everyone's parade with this comment, but I have noticed a couple of inconsistences and I wonder if I can get the actual truth (probably any answer from Schneiderman would be the best!) of which model is which. The PB.2 is listed as the the machine pictured in posts 53 and 54, however referring to the post from Stargazer (#42) it shows the shaft propellor monoplane as the PB.11 (I do realise that this could have been the use of roman instead of Arabic numerals, but confirmation would be nice. Also the Blandford post (#55) states that this is the PB.1 and in fact the artwork even has that written on it. Referring back to the display of types (#42), this design is listed as the PB.7, or certainly a machine that looks mightily like it. Any comments would be welcome
Click to expand...
Ah well, there's a story behind that. #53 and #54 come from a brochure issued by Pemberton Billing, the company, in mid-1914. After P-B sold the company and embarked on a political career, he wrote a book, Air War: how to wage it in which he included an illustration of all the aircraft projects he claimed to have designed. In typical P-B style and to support his new career as an MP, describing himself as the 'air member' championing the RFC and RNAS (he was not) he wished to portray himself as both a major player and expert in aviation, one of the pioneer aviators and important designer in the early days of flying in Britain. One way to do this was to renumber projects and aircraft retrospectively to suggest a long history. Hence the PB1, displayed at Olympia in 1914 as the Supermarine PB1, became the PB7, the PB2 the PB11 and so on. Its was all smoke-and-mirrors and total BS.
 
Schneiderman said:
VictorXL188 said:
Hate to rain on everyone's parade with this comment, but I have noticed a couple of inconsistences and I wonder if I can get the actual truth (probably any answer from Schneiderman would be the best!) of which model is which. The PB.2 is listed as the the machine pictured in posts 53 and 54, however referring to the post from Stargazer (#42) it shows the shaft propellor monoplane as the PB.11 (I do realise that this could have been the use of roman instead of Arabic numerals, but confirmation would be nice. Also the Blandford post (#55) states that this is the PB.1 and in fact the artwork even has that written on it. Referring back to the display of types (#42), this design is listed as the PB.7, or certainly a machine that looks mightily like it. Any comments would be welcome
Click to expand...
Ah well, there's a story behind that. #53 and #54 come from a brochure issued by Pemberton Billing, the company, in mid-1914. After P-B sold the company and embarked on a political career, he wrote a book, Air War: how to wage it in which he included an illustration of all the aircraft projects he claimed to have designed. In typical P-B style and to support his new career as an MP, describing himself as the 'air member' championing the RFC and RNAS (he was not) he wished to portray himself as both a major player and expert in aviation, one of the pioneer aviators and important designer in the early days of flying in Britain. One way to do this was to renumber projects and aircraft retrospectively to suggest a long history. Hence the PB1, displayed at Olympia in 1914 as the Supermarine PB1, became the PB7, the PB2 the PB11 and so on. Its was all smoke-and-mirrors and total BS.
Click to expand...
Ah totally explains it now. Funnily enough the aviation group I belong to has a talk on PB in a couple of weeks time, so this is forewarned and forearmed. Thanks for this, I thought you would be the best guy to answer this Schneiderman!
 
VictorXL188 said:
Ah totally explains it now. Funnily enough the aviation group I belong to has a talk on PB in a couple of weeks time, so this is forewarned and forearmed. Thanks for this, I thought you would be the best guy to answer this Schneiderman!
Click to expand...
A basic rule-of-thumb is that if PB said it then it is almost certainly untrue and easy to disprove ;) Enjoy the talk
 
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