Blackburn Twin Blackburn

The Blackburn TB, short for Twin Blackburn, was a long-range twin-engined anti-Zeppelin seaplane and Blackburn's first multi-engine aircraft to fly. The first German airship attacks on the United Kingdom in the winter of 1914 and 1915 led the Admiralty to ask for a long-endurance two-seat aircraft that could drop incendiary Ranken darts onto airships, and an order for nine TBs was placed in March 1915. The seaplane had twin wooden fuselages 10 feet apart, with the pilot in one and the observer in the other and no means of communication except hand signals, and a tractor engine in front of each fuselage. Weak Smith Static radials were replaced by 100 horsepower Gnome Monosoupape engines, allowing the first flight in August 1915. Seven TBs reached the Royal Naval Air Service, saw little action, and all nine were broken up in 1917.