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The Frobisher class Aircraft of Imperial Airways Ltd. were the first to bear the Speedbird symbol.
During 1938 the Armstrong Whitworth Ensign and de Havilland Albatross were entered into service.
There were two versions of the Armstrong Whitworth AW27 Ensign airliner. A short range European version carried 36-40 passengers and a longer range Empire version carried 27 day-passengers or 20 night-passengers sleeping in berths. The Ensign was the first British large, four-engined, all-metal land (as distinct from flying boat) monoplane airliner. The type saw service on European routes, and first went into service on the London-Paris route on 20th October 1938. They carried heavy mail loads during the Christmas period in 1938, and did valuable work between the United Kingdom and France in 1939 and 1940. The Ensigns were used in the Empire by B.O.A.C., but World War II put an end to the original plans for its use.
(Another factor in their failure was that they were delivered about two years late to Imperial Airways due to problems with the engines and rearmament.)
The second airliner to be introduced in 1938 was the de Havilland DH91 Albatross, known as the 'Frobisher' class (after the name of their flagship), which was designed for the European routes. The Albatross was the first British airliner to top the 200 mph cruising speed, and with a top speed of 234 mph, it set a number of records for flights between European capitals, such as a 200 mile trip from London to Brussels in forty-eight minutes by the aircraft 'Falcon'.
The North Atlantic
The vast stretch of the North Atlantic seemed an almost insurmountable barrier, preventing the start of air services westwards to Canada and the USA.
Imperial Airways experimented with two methods of getting over the problem of getting heavily loaded aircraft into the air with a reasonably short take-off run. The first was assisted take-off, and the second was flight refuelling.
The assisted take-off came in the form of the Short-Mayo composite aircraft, which was a large four-engined flying boat similar to the Empire design called 'Maia', with a smaller seaplane ' Mercury' mounted on top. The 'Mercury' was designed to carry mail over long distances but when fully laden with fuel and mail, could not take off unassisted. Therefore the sole purpose of 'Maia' was to take-off with 'Mercury' on its back (all engines on both aircraft would be used for take-off), and when they got to a suitable height they separated and 'Maia' would return to base, whilst 'Mercury' set off on its journey.
The first trial of 'Mercury' was on 21st July 1938, when it left 'Maia' near Foynes and flew non-stop to Montreal, 2,930 miles in twenty hours and twenty minutes. After unloading cargo, 'Mercury' flew to New York with newspapers and news photographs, making a total time of twenty-five hours and eight minutes. These flights had set three new records: the first commercial flight across the North Atlantic by a 'heavier-than-air' machine, the first east to west crossing from the British Isles to Montreal and the fastest east to west crossing of the North Atlantic. The time taken from Foynes to the Newfoundland coast was thirteen hours and twenty-nine minutes.
The 'Mercury' helped carry Christmas mail between Southampton and Alexandria in December 1938, and received further fame when it made the longest non-stop flight by a seaplane between Dundee and Walvis Bay just short of Cape Town in the autumn. The flight was 6,045 miles at a speed of 144 mph, which was the highest maintained speed on a long-distance test.
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The second of Imperial Airways' trans-Atlantic experiments was flight refuelling. On 5th and 6th August 1939 a modified C-class flying boat, 'Caribou', flew from Southampton to New York via Foynes, Botwood and Montreal. This was the first in a series of flights along with the 'Cabot', where air mail was carried on scheduled flights and the aircraft were refuelled in the air by a Handley Page Harrow tanker aircraft, after setting course for the ocean sector of the route. Even though war came during the programme, the experiments carried on until September as planned, the 'Cabot' arriving in New York on the morning after war had been declared.
In the summer of 1939, the last aircraft type designed for Imperial Airways, the Short S-26 G-class, was launched. They were developments, on a larger scale, of the Empire Class flying boat, and the 'Golden Hind' was the first of three aircraft ordered by Imperial Airways. Before they could be put into commercial service, the war had started and so they were fitted with gun turrets and served with the Royal Air Force on long-range reconnaissance duties. The 'Golden Fleece' was lost off Finisterre in August 1941. Suitably modified, the remaining two S26s entered BOAC service on the United Kingdom-West African routes in July 1942. The 'Golden Horn' was lost in the River Tagus, Portugal on 9th January 1943. The 'Golden Hind' continued in service with BOAC on a variety of routes until the end of 1947.
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