The Armstrong Whitworth Wolf was a British two-seat

reconnaissance aircraft A reconnaissance aircraft (colloquially, a spy plane) is a military aircraft designed or adapted to perform aerial reconnaissance with roles including collection of imagery intelligence (including using Aerial photography, photography), signals ...

ordered by the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...

in 1923.

Design and development

The Wolf was a two-bay

biplane A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While ...

of unorthodox design, with the

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French language, French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds Aircrew, crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an Aircraft engine, engine as wel ...

mounted between the two sets of wings. No production order was placed, and the three machines built served their days at the

Royal Aircraft Establishment The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), bef ...

at Farnborough as experimental testbeds. Alongside the RAF's order in 1923,

Armstrong Whitworth Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Co Ltd was a major British manufacturing company of the early years of the 20th century. With headquarters in Elswick, Tyne and Wear, Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne, Armstrong Whitworth built armaments, ships, locomot ...

also built two for the RAF Reserve Flying School at Whitley, and a final, sixth aircraft in 1929. As

trainers Sneakers ( US) or trainers ( UK), also known by a wide variety of other names, are shoes primarily designed for sports or other forms of physical exercise, but are also widely used for everyday casual wear. They were popularized by compani ...

, they proved popular with pilots, although less so with ground crews for whom the rigging and undercarriage were awkward to maintain. All Wolves were retired from service in 1931 and all but the most recently built were scrapped. The final aircraft was taken to Hamble for use as an instructional airframe.

Operators

; *

Specifications (Wolf)

Notes

References

* * * {{Armstrong Whitworth aircraft 1920s British military reconnaissance aircraft

Wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the grey wolf or gray wolf, is a Canis, canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of Canis lupus, subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, includin ...

Biplanes Single-engined tractor aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1923

Design and development

Operators

Specifications (Wolf)

See also

Notes

References