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One of the most important, but least well known, early jet aircraft is the twin jet English Electric Canberra, which first flew in 1949.
The Canberra was a jet version of one of World War II’s most versatile and effective aircraft, the de Havilland Mosquito. Like the Mosquito, the Canberra was a straightforward design, with a circular fuselage and large bomb bay; broad, thick, low aspect ratio wings; and the most powerful engines available semi-submerged in the wings. Like the Mosquito, it carried no defensive armament, depending on speed and altitude performance to keep it out of harm’s way.
In May 1949, a Canberra showed its range by flying unrefueled back and forth across the Atlantic in a little over 10 hours, and a Canberra set a world altitude record of over 70,000 feet in 1957 – 20,000 feet higher than contemporary fighters. It also proved remarkably adaptable and performed such roles as day and night bomber with both conventional and precision munitions, nuclear weapons “toss bomber,” night intruder, low and high level tactical reconnaissance and electronic warfare.
Twenty-seven versions of the Canberra were built and they equipped 35 RAF squadrons, as well as being exported to Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Ethiopia, France, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, Peru, Rhodesia, South Africa, Sweden, Venezuela and West Germany.
***image1***The Canberra was built in the U.S. under license by Martin as the B-57 and sold to several other countries.
The Canberra conducted combat operations in most of the post-Korean War conflicts, including the Suez Crisis, the Malayan Emergency, small wars in Africa in Katanga, Eritrea, Somalia, the Rhodesian/South Africa Bush Wars and used extensively in the Vietnam War.
In the Indo-Pakistani Wars of the 1960s and 1970s, British-built Canberras flew for India and American-built B-57s flew for Pakistan. In the Cold War, Canberras and RB-57s flew spy missions into the Soviet Union and China, and ironically, Argentinean Canberras were used against the British in the Falklands War.
In post-Cold War combat, Canberras flew combat missions in Desert Storm and the RAF’s 39 Squadron flew Canberras PR9s on tactical reconnaissance and photographic mapping missions in support of combat operations in Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan until July 2006.
One of the more interesting roles for the Canberra was as the first jet aircraft used for “stealth” technology experiments. At this time, the radar principles of deflection and dispersion were not well understood; it was thought that the sleek lines of jet aircraft would need only the addition of radar absorbent material to significantly lower the aircraft’s radar signature.
In 1956, the leading edges of the wings, tall surfaces, engine nacelles and the bottom part of the fuselage of a Canberra were covered with a 3/16 inch thick black rubber RAM, called DX3. However, there were significant problems attaching the RAM and tests showed that the material only produced minor reductions in the radar signature from most angles.
The weight of the DX3 was also a significant handicap and an April 1959 RAF report on the results ended the experiments to produce a RAM-only stealth aircraft – one of the few occasions where the remarkable Canberra proved unsuitable for a role.
