Handley Page Type A
1910 monoplane
The Handley Page Type A, sometimes called "Bluebird" and later designated HP.1, was the first powered aircraft designed and built by Frederick Handley Page.
Development
Following success in 1909 with an experimental glider Handley Page designed and built a single-seat monoplane. It was of wood construction with a tailskid landing gear, powered by a 20 hp (15 kW) Advance V-4 air-cooled engine . It used a wing with a shape patented by José Weiss which was claimed to provide automatic lateral stability, so there were no ailerons or wing warping mechanisms. Weiss was also responsible for the design of its tractor propeller. The wings, fuselage and tail surfaces were covered with a blue-grey rubberised fabric, hence the nickname Bluebird. After the aircraft had been displayed at the second Olympia Aero Exhibition, Handley Page successfully made a few straight hops in the Bluebird on 26 May 1910, but crashed at the first attempt to make a turn. Handley Page improved the design to include lateral control via wing warping and fitted a 25 hp (18.6 kW) Alvaston water-cooled flat-twin engine. The rebuilt aircraft was designated Handley Page Type C but it refused to fly. Although work was completed on modifying the aircraft to take a 50 hp (37 kW) Isaacson radial engine it was abandoned in late 1910.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as 1910 monoplane. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 8, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5647514. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1909 and 1910.
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This entry incorporates text from “Handley Page Type A” 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.