Gunbus

Vickers F.B 5 "Gun Bus"
Airworthy Gunbus replica built in 1966 and painted in RFC colours
Role	Fighter
Manufacturer	Vickers Limited
Designer	Archibald Reith Low
First flight	17 July 1914
Introduction	5 February 1915
Retired	1916
Primary users	Royal Flying Corps Aéronautique Militaire
Number built	224

The Vickers F.B.5 (Fighting Biplane 5) (known as the "Gunbus") was a British two-seat pusher military biplane of the First World War. Armed with a single .303 in (7.7 mm) Lewis gun operated by the observer in the front of the nacelle, it was the first aircraft purpose-built for air-to-air combat to see service, making it the world's first operational fighter aircraft.

Vickers began experimenting with the concept of an armed warplane designed to destroy other aircraft in 1912. The first resulting aircraft was the "Destroyer" (later designated Vickers E.F.B.1) which was shown at the Olympia Aero Show in February 1913, but crashed on its maiden flight ; its designer, A R Low, Chief Designer at Vickers at the time, on dismantling the engine of the stricken aircraft, discovered that there had been no oil in the engine, rather than a design fault. This aircraft was of the "Farman" pusher layout, to avoid the problem of firing through a tractor propeller, and was armed with a single belt-fed Vickers gun. The E.F.B.1 was the first in a line of Vickers' "Experimental Fighting Biplanes", of which the F.B.5 was the most famous, and the first to be built in quantity.

While the "Destroyer" was, arguably, a failure, Vickers continued to pursue the development of armed pusher biplanes, and their Chief Designer Archie Low drew up a new design, the Vickers Type 18, or Vickers E.F.B.2. This was a two-bay biplane powered by a single 80 hp (60 kW) Gnome Monosoupape nine-cylinder rotary engine; the aircraft had a steel tube structure, with fabric-covered wings and tail, and a duralumin-covered nacelle with large celluloid windows in the sides. The unequal-span wings were unstaggered, with lateral control by wing warping, while the aircraft had a large semi-circular tailplane. Armament remained a single Vickers gun mounted in the nose of the nacelle, with limited movement possible, and a very poor view for the gunner. The E.F.B.2 made its first flight at Brooklands on 26 November 1913. It was soon followed by the E.F.B.3, powered by a similar engine, but using ailerons instead of wing warping, and with equal-span wings, while the nacelle omitted the large windows fitted to the E.F.B.2.

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