DH.91 Albatross
Passenger Airliner
De Havilland
The DH Albatross was designed by Arthur Hagg as a long range mail plane and passenger airliner. Aerodynamic refinement was the driving consideration in the design of this elegant design and the result was a fantastically clean fuselage, which was combined with a retractable undercarriage and enormous attention to detail in achieving an engine installation with minimum frontal area. The Albatross also pioneered the monocoque fuselage plywood / balsa sandwich shell construction later to be used on the De Havilland Mosquito and Hornet.
The prototype (E2, later G-AEVV) flew for the first time on 20th May 1937 with power being provided by four air-cooled 525 hp Gipsy Twelve inverted-V engines installed in close-fitting nacelles.
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