Original art print of the Fairey Battle, in the colours of No. 300 (Polish) Squadron Royal Air Force. The Fairey Battle was a single-engined light bomber developed by Fairey Aviation Company for the RAF in the 1930s, entering service in 1937. The Battle had a crew of three (pilot, bomb aimer, and gunner) and could carry a bomb load of 1,000 lbs. Although the Battle was a significant improvement upon the Hawker Hart and Hind bombers it replaced, by the outbreak of the Second World War it was already relatively obsolete. Nonetheless, the aircraft played a role in the Battle of France. The RAF's first air-to-air victory of the war was won by a Fairey Battle against a Bf 109.
In 1940 the Battle was assigned to the newly-created No. 300 and 301 Polish bomber squadrons, and used for raids on German shipping (amassed in expectation of an invasion of Britain, Operation Sealion) across the English Channel; it is one such raid in September 1940 that is depicted in this illustration. In November 1940 No. 300 Squadron was reequipped with Vickers Wellington medium bombers, and later in the war, with Avro Lancaster heavy bombers. The Fairey Battle, meanwhile, was mostly withdrawn from frontline service by mid-1941, last seeing combat with the RAF during the invasion of Greece in April 1941; the South African Air Force used them into early 1942. Later, the Battle found a new purpose as a dual-cockpit trainer aircraft, in which role it was used until 1949.
The illustration was produced in partnership with the Polish Heritage Flight, which honours the memory of the Polish pilots who served with the Royal Air Force in the Second World War. You can learn more about them and their mission here.
This illustration by Rob Wisdom is a high quality Giclée art print on cotton-rich fine art paper.
12x16" art print shown. Cropping and title position (if applicable) may differ slightly on 'A' size art prints.
