Blackburn Bluebird IV
type of aircraft
The Blackburn Bluebird IV was a single-engine biplane light trainer/tourer biplane with side-by-side seating designed by the British aviation manufacturer Blackburn Aircraft. It was an all-metal development of the wooden Blackburn Bluebird I, II and III aircraft.
The Blackburn IV was developed as a refinement of the preceding members of the Bluebird series; in addition to its all-metal airframe, it was noticeably more streamlined and its structure was simplified as to more readily facilitate its construction. Individual areas such as the tail unit and undercarriage were extensively revised. Conventional controls were used wherever practical. The Bluebird IV was a larger and heavier aircraft than its predecessors and could be fitted with various engines as standard, such as the de Havilland Gipsy, ADC Cirrus, and Cirrus Hermes. The first prototype performed its maiden flight on 23 February 1929. One month prior to the first flight, the prototype Bluebird IV had already been sold to a private owner that, only two weeks following, undertook a five-week long-distance journey to South Africa with it.
Due to a lack of capacity, Blackburn did not proceed with quantity manufacture of the type in-house; instead, this work was outsourced to other aviation companies. Saunders-Roe was subcontracted to construct the Bluebird IV, building 55 aircraft between late 1929 and May 1931.
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This entry incorporates text from “Blackburn Bluebird IV” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.