The R.E. 7 has been called the most useless airplane ever made, and for some good reasons. Between it's top speed and the speed at which it stalled and spun out of control there was a margin of only twenty miles an hour. It was intended to have a top speed of 80 mph, but it usually managed only 60, and it's stall speed was 48 mph. This made take-offs, landings and manoeuvring in the air very difficult. But the aircraft had to be thrown about the sky, as they were as manoueverable as 10-ton trucks. They had been designed as stable camera platforms for observation.

Technical Details

In RFC parlance, the R.E. 7 was "a pig - on a windy day a boy on a bicycle could pass it." It was powered by the 150hp RAF 4a engine giving it a theoretical speed of 82 mph (37 km/h), and a ceiling of 6,500 ft (1980 m). It first flew operationally in 1915. Only 250 were built, then they were superceded by the RE8, which wasn't much better. It came armed with a forward firing machine gun mounted oblique to the aircraft to avoid the propeller. This made it very difficult to hit anything, as the aircraft had to be crabbed to one side when aiming at another plane. The observer could not stand, or turn around like in later aircraft, so a machine gun in the back was nearly ineffective as the observer had to aim it by leaning back and swivelling the gun while looking over his shoulder.

"It was a machine designed to mount four guns, cameras, and all manner of other equipment including a 500 lb bomb lashed to the fuselage. The idea was to fly over the target, take a quick look over the side of the cockpit, pull the wire cable - and away the bomb would go. All that was wrong was that this machine stoutly refused to leave the ground when all this gear, plus the pilot and observer, were packed into it."