Handley Page H.P.42
1930 airliner family by Handley Page
The Handley Page H.P.42 and H.P.45 were four-engine biplane airliners designed and manufactured by British aviation company Handley Page, based in Radlett, Hertfordshire. They held the distinction of being the largest airliners in regular use in the world on the type's introduction in 1931.
The H.P.42/45 were designed in response to a specification issued during 1928 by the British flag airline Imperial Airways. The two models are very similar, with the H.P.42 optimised for range at the expense of payload while the H.P.45 carried more passengers over shorter distances. Imperial Airways approved Handley Page's proposals and ordered four aircraft of the two variants to serve as the new land-based long-distance flagships of its fleet.
On 14 November 1930, the prototype, named Hannibal made its first flight. Following their introduction into Imperial Airways service, they formed the backbone of the airliner's land-based fleet through most of the 1930s and, along with the company's numerous flying boats. Eight aircraft were built, four of each type and all had names beginning with the letter "H". Three survivors were pressed into Royal Air Force (RAF) service at the outbreak of the Second World War. By the end of 1940, all of the aircraft had been destroyed.
“Handley Page H.P.42” enters the record as 1930 airliner family by Handley Page. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Handley, Page and airliner can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1326565. The Library of Congress control number is sh2009011018. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1931, 1928, 1930 and 1940.
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This entry incorporates text from “Handley Page H.P.42” 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.