Percival Petrel
1930s British communications aircraft
The Percival Q.6 was a 1930s British communications aircraft built by Percival Aircraft Limited at Luton. Originally, the Percival Q.6 was a civil transport but It was used during the Second World War by the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy as a communications and liaison aircraft. It was a twin-engine, low-wing monoplane with a tailwheel undercarriage.
Design and development
The Percival Type-Q was Percival's first twin-engine aircraft. It was constructed of wood, with plywood and fabric covering. It had a fixed, tailwheel undercarriage, with faired mainwheels, although four of the production machines would be equipped with retractable undercarriage.
Two versions were designed: the Q.4, a four-seat executive transport, and the Q.6, a six-seat feederliner. The Q.4 was not built. The prototype Q.6, registration G-AEYE, first flew on 14 September 1937 at Luton Airport. Production started in 1938, and the first production aircraft, registered G-AFFD, was delivered to Sir Philip Sassoon on 2 March 1938.
The public source identifies “Percival Petrel” as 1930s British communications aircraft. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Percival, Petrel and 1930s.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7167140. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1937 and 1938.
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This entry incorporates text from “Percival Petrel” 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.