B.E.12

B.E.12
An early production B.E.12
Role	General purpose aircraft/Fighter
Manufacturer	Royal Aircraft Factory, Various
First flight	28 July 1915
Introduction	1 August 1916
Primary user	Royal Flying Corps
Number built	601

The Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.12 was a British single-seat aeroplane of The First World War designed at the Royal Aircraft Factory. It was essentially a single-seat version of the B.E.2.

Intended for use as a long-range reconnaissance and bombing aircraft, the B.E.12 was pressed into service as a fighter, in which role it proved disastrously inadequate, mainly due to its very poor manoeuvrability.

The B.E.12 was essentially a B.E.2c with the front (observer's) cockpit replaced by a large fuel tank, and the 90 hp RAF 1 engine of the standard B.E.2c replaced by the new 150 hp RAF 4. Aviation historians once considered the type a failed attempt to create a fighter aircraft based on the B.E.2 – that was improvised and rushed into service to meet the Fokker threat. Many writers perpetuate this view or something like it. J.M. Bruce, on the other hand, has pointed out that this is simplistic at best and doesn't fit historically.

The prototype (a modified B.E.2c airframe fitted with the more powerful 150 hp (112 kW) RAF 4a air-cooled V12 engine) was already in the process of conversion in June 1915, while the Fokker scourge cannot be said to have started before the first victory by a Fokker E.I on 1 August, when Max Immelmann shot down a British aircraft that was bombing Douai aerodrome. At the time the B.E.12 was conceived the necessity for an aeroplane to defend itself was by no means as clear as it became later. The idea of dispensing with defensive armament altogether and replacing the observer's seat with extra fuel capacity and/or bombload was typified by several contemporary designs, such as the bomber versions of the Avro 504, and Sopwith 1½ Strutter. In any case the B.E.12 cannot have been produced specifically as an "answer" to the Fokker.

In mid-1915 there was no way for a British single-seat tractor aircraft to carry a forward-firing armament as the Vickers-Challenger "interrupter" gear did not exist until December and was not available in numbers until the following March. The latest Royal Aircraft Factory single-seat fighter of the time, the F.E.8, was a nimble little pusher – proving if nothing else that its designers were very well aware of the basic requirements of a successful fighter.

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