Saunders-Roe SR.A/1

The Saunders -Roe Sr.A / 1 was a prototype flying boat of the Royal Air Force.

The machine was created as a result of the tender E.6/44 of the Air Ministry. Motivation for this was the ( modest ) success of Japanese, equipped with floats Nakajima A6M2 fighter aircraft such as the N -, a variant of the Mitsubishi A6M.

They wanted to develop a hunter, which was designed as a flying boat and should make use of jet engines as a drive. Through the use of overhead jet engines of the fuselage of the aircraft could be interpreted as a flying boat and thus need for bulky swimmer. The air intake for the two engines was very far down upwards to avoid splashing water got into the engine. It was also made sure that the push tubes were not too long (then engines here had a very large performance loss).

In Saunders -Roe 3 prototypes were ordered. Due to the foreseeable end to the war and because we saw that a seaplane would be inferior to a gendarme, the project was taken from the priority list. The first prototype did not fly until 1947. This was stored after his trial, while the other two were lost during test flights. In 1951 it was decided to put the project on file, as future missile would make airplanes superfluous. The stored copy is now at the aviation museum in Southampton.

Specifications

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• Uncommon Aircraft (in English)

• Experimental aircraft
• Flying boat