Fairey Fox

The Fairey Fox was a British light bomber and fighter biplane of the 1920s and 1930s, produced first for the Royal Air Force and then for many years in Belgium. Charles Richard Fairey conceived it in 1923 as a private venture bomber free of Air Ministry limits, after the Fairey Fawn proved no faster than the aircraft it replaced, and built it around a licence-built Curtiss D-12 V-12 engine in a closely cowled installation. The prototype first flew at RAF Hendon on 3 January 1925. It entered service with No. 12 Squadron in June 1926 and was about 50 mph faster than the Fawns it replaced, as fast as contemporary fighters. Belgium bought Fox IIs from 1932 and kept building them at Avions Fairey at Gosselies, and over 100 were still in front-line Belgian service at the German invasion of May 1940.