Questions about British Spec. T23/43

[hesham]

Hi,


in British Specification T23/43 for elementary trainer aircraft,the tenders
were; De Havilland DH-105,Heston JC.1,Boulton Paul P.106,Miles M.53 and Percival P.40 Prentice (the winner),I have a drawings to M.53 and P.106,has anyone a drawings to DH-105 or JC.1 ?.

 

[hesham]

Some Info about DH-105.

 

[Hood]

Sorry for the thread necromance, but I have have some questions about the contenders for T.23/43.

I have read that five prototypes of the DH.105 were ordered but soon cancelled, can anyone confirm whether this is true?
Are there any details about the DH.105? I've seen nothing about this aircraft other than the snippet Hesham posted above back in 2017.

The Heston JC.1 seems to be equally enigmatic.

The P.106 and M.53 have been covered in depth elsewhere in other works, but the de Havilland and Heston designs seem to be forgotten - odd in the case for the DH.105 if it was indeed the runner up.

 

[Maveric]

I would like to ask again whether there are drawings or project pictures or models of the aircraft de Havilland D.H.105 and Heston J.C.1?

 

[Hood]

I never found any but that's not to say they won't turn up.

 

[VictorXL188]

I have spoke to the archivist at BAe Heritage, Farnborough, in regards to the D.H.105 but it looks as though I will have to wait until post Covid times to be able to access it personally to see what is available

 

[hesham]

Many thanks to you my dear Victor.

 

[Hood]

That's good news.
It does seem odd for a de Haviland product to fall so far under the radar, especially one that was - reportedly - briefly subject to an order for prototypes.

I would imagine it to be either something like a fat Chipmunk with side-by-side seating with a correspondingly larger canopy structure.

 

[VictorXL188]

Following your post Hood, I got to thinking how the DH 105 might look. As a basis I took a GA of a standard Chippie, then used a DH 93 Don GA as a side by side seating aircraft of almost the right timeline from de Havilland. It might not look pretty, and I'm no artist but it could give an idea of what the mythical DH 105 might look like! As a former Staff Cadet with No 6 AEF, not sure if I would have preferred strapping cadets into one of these, but one thing I know is that cleaning up after a spill would not be fun. And I'm not sure the pilot would be too happy when the sprog was talking to his friends Ralph and Huey either!

 

[Hood]

As a hypothetical its getting closer, I feel it would be a bit shorter in span and length but I would be surprised if the overall layout wasn't much like this. We do know the canopy was a bubble canopy, probably not unlike the Canadian Chippies (would probably have been the biggest bubble canopy of that time, certainly in Britain).

Given DH's other design commitments of the time (Super Mossies, Vampire) I wonder how much time they allocated to this. That's probably why the prototype order was cancelled, the MAP had DH earmarked for other bigger things than a cheap and cheerful trainer built to take hard knocks.

 

[Schneiderman]

That's good news.
It does seem odd for a de Haviland product to fall so far under the radar, especially one that was - reportedly - briefly subject to an order for prototypes.

I would imagine it to be either something like a fat Chipmunk with side-by-side seating with a correspondingly larger canopy structure.

Not an area I know much about but is it possible that this was actually an Airspeed design submitted under the DH 'umbrella'? As you pointed out in a later post DH were fully committed to high priority projects and would no doubt have farmed out production to Airspeed or another had they received an order.

 

[Hood]

Not an area I know much about but is it possible that this was actually an Airspeed design submitted under the DH 'umbrella'? As you pointed out in a later post DH were fully committed to high priority projects and would no doubt have farmed out production to Airspeed or another had they received an order.

That did cross my mind. I agree that sub-contracting production seems highly likely.
However I suspect had this been the case it would have received an AS number instead (I'm not sure how much cross-over between systems there was).

Besides Christchurch in 1942/43 were busy with Horsa II, the AS.54 glider trainer to TX./43, the AS.55 transport and the AS.56 fighter to F.6/42. Which is maybe why they didn't have a crack at the Spec themselves.

 

[VictorXL188]

Following the comments above from Hood, got me trying different variations. As I completed the first one with the bubble though, it got me thinking that perhaps a bubble canopy wasn't the only possibility and perhaps a modified Mosquito one might also be possible.

 

[Schneiderman]

r.

That did cross my mind. I agree that sub-contracting production seems highly likely.
However I suspect had this been the case it would have received an AS number instead (I'm not sure how much cross-over between systems there was).

Besides Christchurch in 1942/43 were busy with Horsa II, the AS.54 glider trainer to TX./43, the AS.55 transport and the AS.56 fighter to F.6/42. Which is maybe why they didn't have a crack at the Spec themselves.

Yes, it was a bit of along shot. Lots going on with Airspeed for sure. In 1943 they were also focussing on the initial Ambassador after MAP deemed them to have spare design capacity

 

[riggerrob]

Following the comments above from Hood, got me trying different variations. As I completed the first one with the bubble though, it got me thinking that perhaps a bubble canopy wasn't the only possibility and perhaps a modified Mosquito one might also be possible.
View attachment 673668
View attachment 673669

Your sketches are improving.
May I suggest a wider aft fuselage to smooth airflow aft of the wing root?
A "what-if?" scenario has deHavilland of Canada building a Chipmunk variant for the anticipated post war boom in private flying. Perhaps DHC speculates about a Chipmunk variant as big as a North American 4-seater Navion.