Beardmore W.B.V

Developed in parallel with the W.B.IV, but of more conventional design, the W.B.V single-seat shipboard fighter was intended to carry a 37mm Puteaux cannon between the cylinder blocks of its 200hp Hispano- Suiza eight-cylinder water-cooled engine. It featured folding wings, a jettisonable undercarriage and inflatable flotation bags beneath the underside of the leading edge of the lower wing. Three prototypes of the W.B.V were ordered, the first of these flying on 3 December 1917, but the engine-mounted cannon was quickly removed and a more conventional armament mounted, this comprising a synchronised 7.7mm Vickers gun and a 7.7mm Lewis gun on a tripod ahead of the cockpit. The second prototype W.B.V was completed and flown in 1918, but further development was abandoned before the end of World War I.