Port Victoria P.V.7

The Port Victoria P.V.7 Grain Kitten was a prototype British Fighter aircraft of the First World War designed and built by the Port Victoria Marine Experimental Aircraft Depot on the Isle of Grain. A very small and light biplane intended to fly off platforms on Royal Navy Destroyers, it was unsuccessful, only a single prototype being built.

Design and development

Following Royal Navy experience in operating land planes from platforms on ships, in late 1916, the British Admiralty came up with the idea of a lightweight fighter aircraft, capable of flying off short platforms on the forecastle of Destroyers in order to provide large numbers of aircraft at sea capable of intercepting and destroying German Airships. It therefore instructed the Marine Aircraft Experimental Department at Port Victoria on the Isle of Grain, and the RNAS Experimental Flight at Eastchurch to each produce a design to meet this requirement.

The Port Victoria aircraft, designed by W.H. Sayers, was designated P.V.7. It was a very small single bay tractor biplane, of sesquiplane configuration, with its lower wing much smaller than its upper wing. The wings featured the same high-lift section as used in previous Port Victoria aircraft, and were fitted with ailerons only on the upper wing. It was intended, as was the competing Eastchurch design, to use a 45 hp (34 kW) geared ABC Gnat two-cylinder air-cooled engine. Armament was a single Lewis gun mounted above the upper wing.

While the Port Victoria design was designed and built, the commander of the Experimental flight as Eastchurch, Harry Busteed took over command of the Port Victoria Marine Aircraft Experimental Department, taking the designer of the Eastchurch competitor and the part built prototype with him to the Isle of Grain, with the Eastchurch design gaining the Port Victoria designation P.V.8.