Handley Page HP.88 Pillow

The Handley Page HP.88 is one of British aviation's most tragic footnotes — a fleeting but fascinating machine that existed entirely in service of one of the most audacious bomber designs ever conceived. Built to Air Ministry Specification E.6/48, it was designed as an aerodynamic testbed for the proposed Handley Page Victor V-bomber, and in particular to evaluate the Victor's revolutionary crescent wing — a planform of breathtaking ingenuity where sweep and chord decreased in three distinct steps from root to tip. The crescent wing concept had itself come about after a one-third scale radio-controlled glider, the HP.87, crashed on its very first flight, making a piloted demonstrator all the more urgent. To save time and cost, the HP.88's fuselage was based on the Supermarine Attacker, with detail design contracted to General Aircraft before passing to Blackburn at Brough, where the sole completed airframe — serial VX330 — first flew on 21 June 1951. Its career lasted just 36 days. On 26 August 1951, during a high-speed pass over Stansted in preparation for the SBAC Air Display at Farnborough, the HP.88 began pitching violently before breaking up in mid-air — the flight recorder later showing accelerations of +/- 12g, caused by a servo instability in the tailplane control system involving a bob-weight that had been added as a safety measure. Test pilot D.G. "Duggie" Broomfield was killed. By the time the HP.88 was ready, the Victor's wing design had already evolved to the point where the HP.88 was no longer representative of it — making its loss, heartbreaking as it was, ultimately of little consequence to the programme. The Victor flew the following year, and went on to serve as a cornerstone of Britain's nuclear deterrent. The HP.88 gave everything it had — which, cruelly, was only 14 hours of flight — so that one of the most elegant aircraft Britain ever produced could take to the skies.

Product details:
• 100% polyester case and insert
• Fabric weight: 6.49–7.37 oz./yd.² (220–250 g/m²)
• Hidden zipper
• Machine-washable case
• Shape-retaining polyester insert included (handwash only)
• Blank product components in the US sourced from China and Mexico
• Blank product components in the EU sourced from China and Poland

This product is made especially for you as soon as you place an order, which is why it takes us a bit longer to deliver it to you. Making products on demand instead of in bulk helps reduce overproduction, so thank you for making thoughtful purchasing decisions!