The Vickers FB5, nicknamed Gunbus, was the first British plane designed to mount a machine-gun. The first of these planes arrived on the Western Front in December 1914. The Gunbus was no match for the faster and better-armed Fokker E and after a few months the plane was withdrawn from front-line fighting duties and was used for reconnaissance work.

 

 

Performance Data of the Vickers FB5
Type	fighter
Engine	100 hp Gnome Monosoupape
Wing Span	36 ft 6 in (11.13 m)
Length	27 ft 2 in (8.2 m)
Height	11 ft 6 in (3.51 m)
Maximum Speed	70 mph (113 kph)
Maximum Height	9,000 ft (2,743 m)
Endurance	4 hours 30 minutes
Armament	2 machine-guns

 

 

The Royal Flying Corps is available from Amazon

	Enter your search terms Submit search form
	Web www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk

Educational Websites Standards Site, BBC History, PBS Online, Open Directory Project, Virtual Library, Education Forum, History GCSE, Design & Technology, Learn History, Music Teacher Resource, Freepedia, Teach It, Science Active, Geography IST, Brighton Photographers, Sussex Photo History, Compton History, Universal Teacher, English Teaching, English Online, History Learning Site, History on the Net, Black History, Greenfield History, School History, Active History, I Love History, E-HELP, Ed Podesta Blog, Macgregorish History, Historiasiglo20, Sintermeerten, ICT4LT

News and Search Guardian Unlimited, Times Online, Daily Telegraph, The Independent, New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, CNN, Yahoo News, New Scientist, Google News, Channel 4, ZDNet, Google, Excite, Yahoo, MSN, Lycos, AOL Search, Hotbot, Metacrawler, Netscape, Ask, Search, Go, Looksmart, Dogpile, Raging Search, All the Web, Kartoo, Search Engine Watch, About