The Tarrant Tabor was a British bomber triplane, which was designed towards the end of the First World War and was briefly the world's largest aircraft. It crashed fatally on its first flight.
The Tabor was the first and only aircraft design produced by W. G. Tarrant, a well-known developer and building contractor at Byfleet, Surrey, who had hired Walter Barling from the Royal Aircraft Factory to design a very large long range heavy bomber.
The Tabor was originally planned as a biplane powered by four 600 hp Siddeley Tiger engines. As these were unavailable, however, the aircraft was redesigned to use six 450 hp Napier Lion engines to give a similar power/weight ratio, and a third, upper wing added.
The final design was a triplane bomber with a wingspan of over 131 ft (40 m) across. Unusually, the central wing had by far the greater span. Four engines were mounted in push pull configuration pairs between the lower and middle wings with the two additional engines mounted in tractor configuration between the middle and upper wings, directly above the lower pairs.
The Tabor's maiden flight was from the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough on 26 May 1919. However while gathering speed, it pitched forwards onto its nose moments before take-off killing the two pilots Captain P. Townley Rawlings, D.S.C., and Frederick George Dunn.
Later analysis suggested that the upper engines were so far above the fuselage that they actually forced the nose down when driven up to full power. The situation may not have been helped by the addition of 1,000 lb of lead ballast in the nose against the wishes of Tarrant.
See Also
- [1] Wikipedia