Handley Page H.P.43

The Handley Page H.P.43 was a three-engined biplane bomber-transport built to an Air Ministry specification, and it did not fly well. After Handley Page's design for a smaller three-engined Imperial Airways airliner went no further, the company offered the Air Ministry a design for specification C.16/28, a replacement for the Handley Page Clive and Vickers Victoria, that married the tri-motor's wings and engine mountings to a new fuselage; the Ministry asked for a more familiar fabric-covered tubular fuselage. Like the H.P.42 it was an unequal-span Warren girder biplane, but with a smaller span of 114 ft and a third Bristol Pegasus radial engine on the upper wing, and it was to be a 30-seat troop carrier. It first flew at Radlett on 21 June 1932, was found lacking in performance and heavy on the controls at RAF Hendon in 1933, and its only airframe was converted into the monoplane H.P.51, forebear of the Harrow.