De Havilland Doncaster

The de Havilland DH.29 Doncaster was a British long-range high-wing monoplane of the early 1920s, ordered by the Air Ministry as an experimental aircraft. It had unswept wooden cantilever wings with a fabric covering, a box-section wooden fuselage and a single fin, with a crew of two in an open cockpit ahead of the wing. Two were built at Stag Lane Aerodrome between 1920 and 1921, and the second was fitted out as a ten-seat commercial aircraft. Airlines showed no interest, so de Havilland put its effort into the biplane DH.34 instead, and a proposed military reconnaissance version, the DH.30, was never built. Both aircraft ended their lives on trials at Martlesham Heath, where their thick-section cantilever wings were studied; the Doncaster was the first British aircraft to use such wings. Power came from a single 450 hp Napier Lion engine.