page_title: Royal Aircraft Establishment
section_title: Designs produced
hierarchical_section_title: Royal Aircraft Establishment / Royal Aircraft Factory / Designs produced
caption_attribution_description: English: The Royal Aircraft B.S.1 in its original form
context_page_description: The Royal Aircraft Establishment was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the UK Ministry of Defence, before finally losing its identity in mergers with other institutions.
  The first site was at Farnborough Airfield in Hampshire to which was added a second site RAE Bedford in 1946.
  In 1988 it was renamed the Royal Aerospace Establishment before merging with other research entities to become part of the new Defence Research Agency in 1991.
context_section_description: Several aircraft were produced during the days as the Army Balloon Factory. These include the airships as well as the Cody and Dunne designs.
  Subsequent Royal Aircraft Factory type designations are inconsistent and confusing. For instance the "F.E.2" designation refers to three quite distinct types, with only the same broad layout in common, the F.E.2 (1911), the F.E.2 (1913), and finally the famous wartime two-seat fighter and general purpose design, the F.E.2 (1914). This last aircraft was the one that went into production, and had three main variants, the F.E.2a, F.E.2b, and the F.E.2d. As if this wasn't enough, there is the F.E.2c; this was a generic description rather than a subtype proper, and refers to several one-off conversions of F.E.2b's that experimentally reversed the seating positions of the pilot and the observer.
  The B.E.1 was basically the prototype for the early B.E.2 but the B.E.2c was almost a completely new aeroplane, with very little common with the earlier B.E.2 types apart from engine and fuselage. On the other hand, the B.E.3 to the B.E.7 were all effectively working prototypes for the B.E.8 and were all very similar in design, with progressive minor modifications of the kind that many aircraft undergo during a production run. The B.E.8a was at least as different from the B.E.8 as the B.E.7 was.
  The S.E.4a had nothing in common at all with the S.E.4, while the S.E.5a was simply a late production S.E.5 with a more powerful engine.
  Several early RAF designs were officially "reconstructions" of existing aircraft, because the Factory did not initially have official authority to build aircraft to their own design. In most cases the type in question used no parts whatever from the wreck, in some cases not even the engine.
  British Army Dirigible No 1 Nulli Secundus—1907
  Nulli Secundus II—1908
  British Army airship Beta – 1910
  Dunne D.1 – 1907
  British Army Aeroplane No 1 (Cody) – 1908
  Dunne D.3
  Dunne D.4
  Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.1—1911
  Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.1—1911
  Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.1—1911
  Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.1—1911
  Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2—1912
  Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.3—1912
  Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.4—1912
  Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.3—1913
  Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.7—1913
  Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.2—1913
  Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.1—1913
  Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.2—1913
  Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.8—1913
  Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.3—1913
  Royal Aircraft Factory H.R.E.2—1913
  Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2—1914
  Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.2—1914
  Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.5—1914
  Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.4—1914
  Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.6—1914
  Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.7—1915
  Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.12—1915
  Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.9—1915
  Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.8—1915
  Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.4a—1915
  SS class airship – 1915
  Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.4 – 1916
  Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.10 – 1916
  Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.7 – 1916
  Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.8 – 1916
  Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.9 — 1916
  Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5—1916
  Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5a—1917
  Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.9—1917
  Royal Aircraft Factory N.E.1—1917
  Royal Aircraft Factory A.E.3—1918
  Royal Aircraft Factory C.E.1—1918
  Royal Aircraft Factory Ram—1918
caption: Royal Aircraft Factory B.S.1 in 1913
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