Airco DH.3

The Airco DH.3 was a British bomber of the First World War, designed in 1916 by Geoffrey de Havilland as a long-range day bomber for the Aircraft Manufacturing Company. It was a large biplane with wide-span three-bay wings and a slender fuselage, powered by two 120 hp Beardmore engines mounted as pushers between the wings, and it had two wheels under the nose to stop it tipping forward. A second prototype, the DH.3A, was built with more powerful 160 hp Beardmore engines and the War Office ordered 50, but the order was cancelled before any were completed, possibly because the climb rate was still far too low, taking 58 minutes to reach 6,500 feet. The two prototypes were scrapped in 1917. The much more powerful DH.10 Amiens was developed from the DH.3A.