De Havilland DH.66 Hercules

The de Havilland DH.66 Hercules was a British seven-passenger trimotor airliner of the 1920s built by the de Havilland Aircraft Company. It was designed for Imperial Airways when that airline took over the Cairo to Baghdad air route and the airmail service from the Royal Air Force, which had been operating the obsolete DH.10 Amiens, and it was a three-engine two-bay biplane able to carry mail as well as passengers. Using three engines reduced the risk of forced landings over remote desert areas. The name Hercules was chosen in a competition in Meccano Magazine in 1926, while the prototype was still being built, and it first flew at Stag Lane on 30 September 1926. Slow though it was, it provided long-distance service to far-flung regions and pointed the way for later airliners. Four were built in 1929 for West Australian Airways, and surviving aircraft served as military transports in South Africa until the last were scrapped in 1943.