Handley Page Basic Trainer

The Handley Page Basic Trainer, designated H.P.R.2, was a British training aircraft of the 1940s and early 1950s: a single-engine, low-wing monoplane with a fixed tailwheel undercarriage and a three-bladed constant-speed propeller. Handley Page Reading Ltd designed it to answer Air Ministry Specification T16/48, which called for a trainer to replace the ageing Percival Prentice, and it was powered by a seven-cylinder Armstrong Siddeley Cheetah radial engine of 420 horsepower. It first flew in May 1950, and two prototypes were built and flown. Trials showed it to be a trickier and less forgiving aeroplane than its rival, the Percival P.56, and although the company believed it could be improved, the Air Ministry chose the P.56 for production as the Provost. No orders followed, so the type never entered service and remains a footnote in the story of the post-war British trainer competition.