De Bruyne-Maas Ladybird

Congratulations on your very patient detective work, AA! I await the next instalment with interest but would prefer it not to take 14 years, if at all possible 🙂 

Seriously though – it’s intriguing to think the Ladybird may have flown again and/or may possibly still be tucked away somewhere.

At the risk of thread drift but for the sake of completeness, the ‘high wing cabin monoplane’ was a modified Corben Baby Ace. Although it seems that it flew, it did not aspire to civil registration. Stored for the duration of WWII, it is said that it was burned – which is rather at odds with Doig’s letter!

Fourteen years later, today I came across the following letter, written by Robert Doig, in the November 1964 issue of Air Pictorial magazine:

Engines for historic aircraft

I have a Blackburn Thrush aero engine which was fitted to a high wing cabin monoplane built by Mr Fred Brown of Peterborough and which I tested before WWII. We are now going to rebuild this aircraft and require spares for the engine, which is believed to be the sole survivor of its type. If any reader knows of any such spares that may be lying in some “dark corner”, I should be very pleased to hear from him. The engine is a three cylinder radial (Blackburn Thrush R.A.F.) 1,097 c.c. +; bore 81 m.m.; stroke 97 m.m. We also need a propeller as the one we used for our test flights disappeared during the war.

We have another aircraft, the Ladybird, which is the only one of its type in existence and was the first British tricycle; it was designed by Dr. N. A. de Bruyne of Aero Research (now CIBA (A.R.L.) Ltd.), Duxford. I tested the Ladybird before the war, and we are now going to put it back in the air. I require an engine for this machine around 50 to 65 h.p. I would be most grateful for any help readers can give me in these matters.

Robert G. Doig, 85 Bromley Road, Shortlands, Kent

[The engine to which Doig was referring was not a Blackburn but a Blackburne Thrush 1, the product of Burney & Blackburne Ltd., the Great Bookham, Surrey, motorcycle engine manufacturers.]

Ah well, another one bites the dust!

I don’t think that I’ve seen any images of the Ladybird that show it wearing its civil registration marks. It would be interesting to know what flying career – if any – it had after the outbreak of war. Maybe it made only experimental flights before the second world war intervened and, in consequence, never took up its civil registration marks. Perhaps with the outbreak of war it went into storage in the Peterborough barn, and had no post-war flying career, leading to a seventy year enigma concerning its continuing existence! However it would be interesting to know what was the evidence for the assertion, made in 1972, that it was extant in the Peterborough barn until at least 1960.

The continued existance of the Labybird had almost turned into a legend in its self. One thing that has always puzzeled me is that in the coulpe of photos I have sen the aircraft has its c/n painted in large letters on the fuselarge, did it ever carry its civil registration?

Sadly the brief note in ‘Flight’ doesn’t shed a great deal of light on how these curious air brakes worked. However I assume that they both opened either outwards or inwards. It would be interesting to know the mechanical arrangement for these air brakes because, having regard to the narrow chord of the undercarriage fairings, it seems that it would be difficult to build in something with enough leverage to make them effective. And what became of the Ladybird? Did it just disappear into the ether at some time over the past half century?

Thanks, Martin – you’re right, of course. I think that I had better invest in some new glasses.

I’ll take a look at the Flight article tomorrow, but air brakes make more sense. Thinking about it, who would steer with their trouser legs!

… do you mean this?
‘The trailing edge of each of the main undercarriage trousers can be turned to provide airbraking surface.’
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1938/1938%20-%202518.html

edit: guess you meant G-AFEG, De Bruyne-Maas Ladybird, DB3 M1