'The Phantom of the Fleet' - the most bizarre reconnaissance aircraft of World War II

The unusual-looking reconnaissance aircraft in the "Fleet Phantom" project were developed by the British navy to counter enemy warships.

A completed Fleet Shadower. Photo: War is Boring.

In the period before World War II, the British Navy still relied heavily on battleships. To help scout targets at sea, in 1938, the force asked two aircraft manufacturers, General Aircraft and Airspeed, to develop reconnaissance aircraft prototypes. The result was the most bizarre aircraft of World War II, according to War is Boring.

The project was called Fleet Shadower and the finished product was the GAL38 from General Aircraft and the AS39 from Airspeed. Both were designed for covert nighttime reconnaissance, capable of landing and taking off from aircraft carriers, with a large range and a low minimum speed. This allowed the aircraft to hover and track enemy warships for hours.

The Fleet Shadowers all used a single wing structure mounted on the upper part of the fuselage. The GAL38 was equipped with a 130 horsepower Pobjoy Niagara III engine, with a continuous operating time of up to 11 hours, nearly double that of the AS39 model with the Niagara V engine. In return,AS39has a minimum speed of 52 km/h, lower than the 62 km/h on the General Aircraft model.

The two reconnaissance aircraft had a very different front fuselage, with two separate sections. The crew consisted of three people, the reconnaissance officer sat in the forward observation deck, while the radio operator sat in the rear. The pilot sat in a separate cockpit above, which did not interfere with target tracking.

The two Fleet Shadower models differ mainly in the engine. Photo: Alternathistory.

Naval expert Norman Polmar described the Fleet Shadower as “among the most bizarre carrier-based aircraft ever conceived.” On paper, the Fleet Shadower was a good idea. However, by the time the two aircraft took to the skies in 1940, they were already obsolete.

Had they appeared 10 years earlier, they might have been in service with the British navy. But the reality of naval warfare in the Atlantic showed that the main threat came from submarines, which required a different kind of equipment than the slow reconnaissance aircraft, which were designed for naval battles between surface fleets.

At the same time, bombers optimized for maritime reconnaissance missions were far superior to the Fleet Shadower in both range and target identification, resulting in only one GAL38 and one AS39 being built before the project was cancelled.

According to VNE