Airco DH.9A WW1 Aviation Art Painting

The success of the Airco DH.4 and failure of the DH.9 convinced designer Geoffrey de Havilland that an aircraft combining the best features of both aircraft would culminate in the best member of the company’s light bomber family.

In the DH.9A, or “Ninak” given its colloquial name, de Havilland combined the better fuselage of the DH.9 with the superlative Rolls-Royce Falcon engine from the DH.4. The resulting type, though coming late in the war, proved to be an instant hit with it being both fast and manoeuvrable for an aircraft of its size. It was, for its time, the ideal day-bomber.

At wars end it became the standard British day-bomber type and remined so through much of the 1920s.

Roger H. Middlebrook’s First World War aviation art has won many awards and this painting won both Aviation Painting of The Year and the Cross & Cockade awards at the GAvA annual exhibition in 2011.